[ted_b]

Moved this over to new thread.  Here's a compilation of my first thoughts on Bob and Jason's 5 hr trip to my home in Westlake, OH last night!!!   

OK, so I have to post something right?  Well, Bob and Jason showed up about 6pm and just left (midnight).  They have a 5 hr drive back to Indiana!!  Bob will sleep while Jason listens to his girlfriend, the Garmin GPS chick, talk to him.   Smile

The Revs are incredible, and this is with about 40 lbs of Mundorf caps (holy sh$5t they are huge!!) needing about 2000 hours of break in.  I'll post pix this weekend (edit: new gallery album, see below).

The outboard crossover boxes are nice (and huge).  Bob didn't have his cables quite ready yet.  The real value of these cables are the zero resonance, perfectly matched capacitance he figures into them, based on length, etc.....and we had to redo the math, so he needed to redo the entire cable run.  Stay tuned.  In the meantime we used my AZ Satori biwire shotgun from DNA-500 amp to crossover, then some Canare star quad biwire I had, from xover to speaker.   

By the time we finished setting them up, wiring them up, labeling the crossover boxes and toe-ing them in properly (much less toe in than the Sasons) it was 10pm.  Then after listening for about an hour to 4 or 5 different setups (Transporter as source, Transporter as dac, Modwright 3910 analog, Bob/Jason's own DVD-to-Orpheus DAC setup) we all had a good-but-not-great kind of response.  It wasn't until I realized I had installed some older Kimber Hero XLR cables between pre and amp, and promptly replaced them with good ole' BlueJean Belden 1800F XLR's...then the fun began.  Wow!  The soundstage opened up, the transient attack was mindblowing.  The dynamics of the Revs are one of their most obvious features, along with musically accurate and deep bass.  But it's the other things, the layering, the timbre, that later become patently obvious.  And the microdynamics aren't even there yet (a few hundred hours or so).

I'm tired, but happy.  Will post more later.....I just hope Bob and Jason have a safe trip back.  My home was all full of relatives tonight, and although I offered a floor to sleep on they needed to get back.  Thanks again to the both of them; two better people you'd be hard pressed to find.

And then.....

Nothing against any of the kind and supportive words but the audio in this room was no slouch before the Revs, with the Sasons.  They are great speakers that disappear like none I've ever heard (incl the Revs so far).  They image like crazy.  They just don't work as well in this room, with it's viewing angles, etc as I'd like so I went another direction with my HT/music room.

I am very excited at the potential of the Rev's, and what I've heard so far, after a long evening of setup and cable pulls, and likely not anywhere close to their final placement or final cable configuration, is remarkable.  I woke up this morning realizing I hadn't continued the break-in process so I promptly put the Modwright Transporter to work and started the XLO burn-in selection (track 9) on repeat.  It's on low or the dogs would think aliens are landing.

Thanks again to Bob, Jason and my buddy Rob for the work last night, and especially for the incredible customer service of driving in from Indiana.  This is the second time a speaker designer/mfg from LaPorte IN drove to my house to set up speakers!!  What a great thing.  I feel bad that, as they left, I had only offered drinks and had left them go on their way hungry.  A few chocolate pretzels were all we ended up munching on as we got to work lifting, securing, poking, proding, labeling, wiring, measuring and positioning....oh, and listening....with the cables, label makers, power cords, dacs, dvd players and various tools laid strewn across the floor.   When the Continuums come we will be ready with a feast, both for the ears as well as the tummies.

Followed by.....

I created a new album to document my HT makeover.  The pix from last night begin the album:
Revs arrive

I'll add more as the paint, carpeting and risers are installed, as well as new shots of the new equipment/rack, etc...should anyone care.

[ecramer]

Wow nice setup What can you say about customer service like that. Hope you made Jason a thermos of coffee for the drive home 

[ted_b]

Wow nice setup What can you say about customer service like that. Hope you made Jason a thermos of coffee for the drive home 

No I didn't!!    That's my point.  I sucked as a host.  I was so enthralled with the arrivals (speakers and humans), and my house was filled with in-laws and other guests and dogs and ... and...
and it was just too whacked.   

Now, of course, everyone has left, the place is quiet, and all I need to do, other than settle in tonight for a good listen, is to find the damn hum that permeates my Paradigm-Servo-15-Sub-that-was-previous-to-last-night-a-music-sub-and-is-now-the-new-LFE-sub.  The former one hummed too, and I thought it was the culprit.  Clearly a coax connection or something.....anyway, another topic, another forum.

[mcullinan]

No I didn't!!    That's my point.  I sucked as a host.  I was so enthralled with the arrivals (speakers and humans), and my house was filled with in-laws and other guests and dogs and sick people sleeping in other people's beds, with throw-up pails standing by.... and... and it was just too whacked.   

BOB: MMM... This Pail of Chicken Soup Is delicious! What did you use to thicken the broth?
Ted: Nooo ooo oooo oo! I t s BAR   F!
BOB: O yeah.. still..  Pretty tasty.

Mike

[ted_b]

Edited my post.  Sorry.  Let's get back to talking speakers.

I'm going to try and move them slightly further away from each other (total of 1 ft, 6 inches each) and keep the toe-in angle.  Jason thinks this would be the optimal setup for the right combination of imaging and bass output.

[zybar]

Looks great Ted.   

You have motivated me to finally get my butt in gear on my own changes...

George

[RodMCV]

A half starved cowboy walks into the Saloon to get something to eat but the cook is on break.
He sits down at a table with another grizzled guy who has a big bowl of stew in front of him.

Guy 1 waits and waits and guy 2 just sits there looking at the stew and doesn't eat.

" will you take a gold piece for that stew?"
"I reckon"

So the cowboy gets to furious eating and gets to the bottom of the bowl and there's a big dead rat there.
Upchucks the stew back into the bowl.

The other guy says"That's about as far as I got too"

[ted_b]

You guys are disgusting.   I am so rueing the details I included. 

[RodMCV]

My most sincere apologies my friend.
It was such a timely opening I couldn't help myself.

Sorry to take the glow off your post.

Enjoy the REV's to high heaven Ted.

Regards,
Rod

[ted_b]

Agreed.  When it's teed up that high go for it.

[Aether Audio]

Ted,

Thanks for the compliments!   Glad we could help get things worked out a little.  You sure have a sweet "cave" and now you get to have fun getting it all fixed up.  

Don't sweat the small stuff... we were too wired to eat or whatever anyway.  When we're working, food is the last thing on our minds.  I mean, c'mon...what's more important - food or audio?  

Have fun tweaking and adjusting.  As an added pointer, you might try this - if space permits the luxury, that is.

Position the speakers out away from the wall behind them such that the room loading of the bass gives the best response.  You should walk around the room and be listening for the smoothest average response over the maximum possible number of locations. This would be from the center of the room to the back wall behind the seating area.  Don't worry about toe-in too much at this point.

Once you get the front-to-back distance that give the best average bass response, then select a seating area that is at the point of an equilateral triangle with respect to the speakers.  From that point adjust the toe-in and spacing between the speakers that gives the best soundstage and imaging.

After that is done, adjust your seating area a little forwards or back until the bass sounds best.  Shouldn't be more than a few inches either way.  From that point you repeat the toe-in and spacing adjustment until the soundstage is as preferred.

As you cycle through the above process, first optimizing the bass by moving your seat forward or back... then the soundstage by adjusting toe-in and speaker spacing, you will be creating a circular "zone" of space that keeps getting smaller and smaller until you have everything "locked in" to a single, optimized sweet spot.  After a few weeks I'm sure you'll get it all worked out just fine.

Have fun and enjoy

-Bob

[JP78]

ted,

congratulations on your new speakers...it looks to be a beautiful thing you have.  as long as you're happy, that means your hard-earned dollars were well spent; and hats off to bob for the detailed service provided...i'm sure it makes for a great holiday .

the one (small) criticism i could humbly offer has nothing to do with the quality of your sound or your enjoyment.  however, for the large amount of persons reading this thread, the difference you mention in sound coming from your beautiful new speakers from a change in interconnects can be alarming.  there's that whole camp of people that may want to fall in love with your words, but could be hesitating in based on the tremendous amount of difference in sound you've achieved from one ic swap.

for the record i do absolutely believe in the sound of a difference in cables, and personally rely on steve nugent of empirical audio to get that job done for me.  i just think for people that are so value-oriented reading your journey, it's difficult for them to appreciate what you just experienced without having that personal epiphany themselves...a lot of what people base decisions on comes from some inflated msrp in cables, and not a true honest-to-goodness performance gain from cabling that fits one system.

there's really no reason to post this other than the nagging voice in my head to; i really look forward to hearing more impressions of your soon-to-be longterm enjoyment. please keep the posts coming early and often.  you're a lucky man.

best,

jp

[ted_b]

Thanks....but I'm not sure what you are getting at; why you call my cable switch a criticism?   I mean, this is an audio forum.  I'm very sure a lot of us on this forum can hear cable differences.  Jason and Bob heard it immediately.  It was not difficult.  It's all about synergy, but that's not new news.   Thanks again for the nice comments.

[bluemike]

JP
To add my 2 cents

Until the speakers are fully broken in it's premature to draw any sort of conclusions

Ted, Enjoy

[carusoracer]

Hey Ted,

That really looks good...The previous setup looked nice as well...

Let me know when you have the rig all set up and can expect some company aa

[BrianM]

So these speakers sounded just okay until you swapped out one pair of interconnects?  Seriously?

[2bigears]

   were these old pos inter-connects ?? Taking notes here.

[ted_b]

No, the speakers sounded great upon initial fire-up, but since I don't know the potential of these unbroken-in beauties I had had my listening chair usurped by the very critical ears of Bob and Jason. 

My setup (which has changed since Thurs) required a 5M pair of balanced ic's from Modwright LS36.5 preamp to my McCormack DNA-500.  Although I'd been living with BlueJean Belden 1800f for some time I bought a pair of Kimber Hero 5M XLR's a few weeks ago and was trying them.  Seems the synergy with everything else we were doing was just not right with Jason and Bob.  They didn't like the laid back nature and the recessed vocals comapred to what they were used to.  We listened to a number of different setups, all sounding pretty damn good, frankly.  But then I realized I had not tried one final move, replacing the Heros.  Voila; Jason and Bob were floored at the difference (ask them).  They left that night with smiles on their faces and a realization that they heard their Revelations begin to sing like they knew they could.   

Me.....I'm just going along for the ride until the ridiculously huge Mundorf caps break in a bit more.    So far they sound extremely good, with tremendously dynamic swings, great macrodetail, tactile almost chest-pounding bass (and not the thumpy kind, no, the kind you feel when you hear a live acoustic bass in a small venue) and nice imaging.  I expect I'm hearing 50% of their potential right now.  I've moved the amp over to the side wall to be near the preamp and rack so I can test my real prize, the Synergistic Research Tesla Accelerator XLR's I demo'd from The Cable Company back when my whole system was under the front screen. 

So, net/net....these great speakers were dialed in by the designers, and the final focus was brought on by a major cable change....preamp-to-amp.  Shouldn't surprise anyone, that's a major artery.

[Double Ugly]

So these speakers sounded just okay until you swapped out one pair of interconnects?  Seriously?

I wasn't there, but I'd bet dollars to donuts the answer is yes.

Having owned SP Tech speakers for years, I know differences in cables are sometimes easily heard... and sometimes not.  Regardless, it has nothing to do with the cost of the cable, but with (I assume) the quality, and certainly it has to do with synergy.

I'm currently using relatively inexpensive speaker cables from a small manufacturer well-known 'round these parts, but the same manufacturer's ICs sounded terrible in my system.  I don't know why they performed so poorly, but I know what I heard.  Conversely, an even less expensive IC from a relative new-comer sounded quite good. 

It isn't about cost, but it is about quality and/or synergy.  And yes, though I wish it weren't true, it is quite easy to hear the difference with SP Tech speakers.  As most everyone who owns them will tell you, they are revealing to the extreme, which is both a blessing and a curse.  The curse part usually happens in the beginning, because when you finally get everything working well together, it is most definitely a blessing! 

Now then... how about we all allow Ted to get back to the real purpose of the thread. 

[Double Ugly]

Me.....I'm just going along for the ride until the ridiculously huge Mundorf caps break in a bit more.   

Enjoy the ride, Ted. 

I suspect the aural 'scenery' will be a little odd occasionally, but it should be glorious when you eventually arrive at your destination.