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January 22, 2008 - 5:58am
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Are these decent entry level speakers?
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That is a decent tweeter which is used in many Parts Express DIY speakers. The tweeter and woofer should be matched and a crossover should be designed to optimize the transition between the drivers. The woofer should be matched to the cabinet. Hopefully your friend was able to calculate the volume of the cabinets and determine any port dimensions to match a suitable woofer. If that was done I would imagine they could sound OK. More careful design is key to good sound, not trying to accommodate an existing cabinet with a retrofit.
How much money do you have to spend if we suggest dumping these speakers? What's the rest of the system?
$500 or so. The rest of the system hasn't shown up yet. Bought a Yaqin 100B tube amp (KT88 output tubes) off of eBay, and it'll be here in a week or so. Right now the speakers sound okay through my crappy sony tuner. For now, CDs will be played on a brand new (old stock) Pioneer Laserdisc player. (CLD-E2000). I eventually want to upgrade to a MHZS or Shanling tube CD player. I'll also be playing my iTunes collection through an Airport Express (mostly mp3 right now, but I'm working on re-ripping everything to lossless)
My goal is to build a decent system... not a perfect system, but a decent system, paying about $500 per component over the period of a year or two. (And I already blew way more than that on the amp alone)
Charles.
You will definitely want to upgrade your speakers. There are many wonderful affordable speakers right now that are wonderfully designed to sound good.
That being said, try the new amp with the speakers and see what you get. You may end up with very nice sound that will keep you happily listening until you finish upgrading the rest of your system. As pointed out above, a thoughtful rebuild of the speakers may have produced a nice result.
Paradigm Titan Monitors $500/pair
Triangle Titus ES $479/pair
PSB Image B25 $450/pair
Klipsch RB-61 $450/pair
Monitor Audio BR2 $400/pair
Human 81 $400/pair
You're right. My existing speakers do sound pretty good now. They sound worlds away better than they did hooked up to my POS Sony amp. The new MC-100B amplifier really made a huge difference. Although, I think I'm detecting the sound breaking up at very high volumes in Triode mode (it sounds fine in Ultralinear at high volumes), so I may indeed need new speakers in the future. But for now, I'm really happy with my setup. I can't turn it up all the way... my ears start to bleed before the amp gets anywhere near max volume, and in UL mode I never hear anything that sounds like distortion at those insane volumes.
In short... I'm pleased. I think I'll buy the turntable an phono preamp I want before upgrading my speakers.
Charles.
And don't forget Epos ELS3 speakers. Many awards, great brand, excellent value!
I know it sounds counter-intuitive but volume controls are not meant to be run at their max position. In most cases the amplifier will begin to clip when the vc is at about 1-3 O'Clock depending on the input voltage. CD sources tend to run very high output voltages compared to turntables and will probably clip the amp even sooner.
Well that's good, because I can't get it anywhere near the max setting on the dial. Maybe it was clipping I was hearing though... but I'm not going to worry, because it was at "neighbors call the cops" volume, not at a volume I normally listen at.
Charles.
cositirozadd is a spammer!