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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2013 23:09:22 GMT -5
Nice work on the subs. Cherry sounds good on there . Tuned porting to 15hz, oh man hahaha. Make sure to dial in your channel levels with an spl meter if you haven't yet. Awesome man, I am using both the Emo amps here atm, playing Battlefield 3, sounds like a war outside the place.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2013 8:57:10 GMT -5
Thought that I would add that the replacement new and technician looked over UPA-700, arrived and has no issues. Going to go send the faulty back as soon as I can. Any newer impressions from your UPA-700? I am still loving mine, and it really shines over the Denon when sounds are on surround/rear channels solely.
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Post by dougc on Mar 2, 2013 20:11:32 GMT -5
I'm glad your second amp works good and your happy with it. I am totally happy with mine. I never realized how crappy my Yamaha sounded until I got this amp. For anyone out there who thinks a receiver vs a UPA 700 would be a latteral move, let me asure you. Your wrong, point blank. My neighbor has came over and listen to it a couple times, and I think he is going to buy one too. Unfortunatly he just bought a new $1000 pioneer reciever about a month ago and gave his older Onkyo away. He is bumming because this amp is so much better. He is clearly jelous. Gotta go I'll post more latter. Where near Seattle do you live? My wifes family lives in Federal Way, we go up there quite a bit.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2013 3:54:01 GMT -5
I live in Monroe, WA. about 35 minutes away with avoiding traffic jams. Absolutely, a huge difference over integrated receivers for sound quality. I thought the Denon integrated units sounded decent, but when I swapped Denon units out and heard a totally different sound than before, I knew that I needed some clean power .
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Post by dougc on Mar 7, 2013 23:31:03 GMT -5
This last Sat. (March 2nd) I finally got to sit back and have a movie day , due to a hangover from Fri night . But thats ok, I finally got to expeirence movies on the new 700. I'll tell you what ,the sound was nothing short of spectactular. My front 3 speakers produced sounds that I've never heard before, scary lifelike, totally realistic. And my Paradigms in the rear, well they sounded like new speakers. Thats a good thing, they blended well with my fronts and sounded awsome. I can only imagine what it will sound like when I build new surrounds to match my fronts. But with that being said, this amp brought the speakers so much closer together in sound I'm not in a big hurry. This amp is incredible, watts are way over rated. I had the cops show up that night and walk in. Sorry I didn't hear the door ;D. Oh well, the cops even liked it but still had to ask me to turn it down (reluntically). gotta go more later.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 10:21:08 GMT -5
. That is exactly the result that I had gotten, tones were different, and you could hear things that were subtle but lost when powered with an integrated receiver. Yes watts are overrated, all one has to do is look at tube amps and see the low wattage, and have an open mind that old is not always bad (harder for the newer generations to understand so it seems). 1980's child myself. I felt like I had new speakers when I put feet back on my front speakers a while back and moved them away from the wall (Bass trap-muddled sound), then I followed that with every speaker I had. I got and used a dB meter to balance, felt like I had way more surround channels volume (I did ). Felt like new speakers a second time. I then got the Emotiva 2ch, it blew my mind for vinyl recordings, to the crummiest digital files that I could find (better translucency). I expected nothing less when getting the UPA-700, and it served me a home cooked meal :b. HAHA. I am completely amazed at the last 5 months of saving and tinkering around, how much better it all sounds. I feel like I completely upgraded 7 channels, without buying speakers, giving a whole new experience and like you said, sounds you did not hear before...good sounds that were like samples missing right out of the recording in a sense. I am now looking at getting some new fronts in the future. I have no idea other than Vienna Acoustics Schonbergs. My father has a real nice Vienna thing going. I would get more wattage on Vienna's dropping my Infinity Primus 362's from 8ohm to the Vienna's 4 ohm. The Schonbergs are 91dB sensitivity rating? which is not too far from the 93dB sens. rating on the fronts I have now. I really have no price on the Schonbergs, they were more expensive back in the day, still in production I guess, and am reading various prices over the years. Hoping it was not a typo on a review that I read haha. Going to make some calls and see what I can find for the price. I want to eventually switch the L C and R channels, and leave the surrounds. The 362's that I have were kicking the other speakers apart at a store when I previewed, in the range of double price, store staff agreed, and reviews online are phenomenal as well. Great bang for buck, but a bit clashy on the top end of the tweeter spectrum, making rock a bit harsh to listen to at high volumes.
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Post by garym on Mar 8, 2013 15:32:36 GMT -5
If you want it super loud and are not concerned about clarity, go for the higher gain stage. Same scenario with non efficient speakers. I had called Emotiva and asked some questions in the past, before I had ordered the XPA-200, and was advised to not get the XPA-2 for my fronts, after the guy looked up what speakers I had. He told me that with the patented design on the Infinity Primus 362 model, that he would go with a lower gain stage due to the frequency response accuracy in the tweeters and how efficient the speakers were (or it might give undesirable distortion in the tweeter). That is interesting. Why should higher gain produce a loss of clarity? To what is this loss of clarity due --- more THD? More IM? Some explanation from KeithL would be welcome! Well, you did. Now I'm wondering whether I made a bad choice buying the XPA-2.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 16:38:00 GMT -5
garym - You could be even better with your higher gain stage. I believe it depends what you are running for speakers. For example, the design on the set of speakers that I have, are really clashy at the peak of the high frequencies. There may be more susceptability to the higher frequencies as opposed to the lower frequencies, when having a higher gain. I have no scientific knowledge and will not feed you any directions of bs lol. I am going to guess that it is a near same result of adding gain to a song file. I record my vinyl collection, it varies in loudness per album, but if I record, and then add gain, without clipping, it gets a pinch harsh on high frequencies, usually with rock music. Not to mention the speakers that I use, have that sort of built into its design, so it makes it worse. If you have inefficient speakers or a warm sounding tweeter, the higher gain is probably preferred. dougc, I found out that the schonberg speakers were 4 grand haha.
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Post by dougc on Mar 10, 2013 13:38:45 GMT -5
@tiwer I did a little research on your speakers. Their are a couple of problems I can see (IMO) of course. #1 It's only a 3/4" opposed to a 1-1 1/8 while being great for a small 2-way bookshelf alittle small for a floor stander. The main problem I can see is it's a metal dome and horn loaded. There are some great and some bad metal domes, unfortunatly yhe cheaper ones have a tendancy to get edgy at high volumes. The main prob. is it's horn loaded. Some manfacturers will use hornloaded treeters to gain a couple of db's. While this is a great theory it often proves impractical. It creates to much compression for the diafram and doesn't let it breath properly and colors the sound. Its like saying something, then saying the same thing with your hands cupped around your mouth. you get a diff. sound. Kinda boxy or hallway sound. Aside of replacing your tweeters (partsexpress.com) or (madisound.com) the first is my choice. There is a couple of things you can try, #1 pull 1 of your tweeters and reverse the wires see how that sounds. It will either become more edgy or more natural.#2, Go to Radio Shack and buy a few 10watt 1ohm resistors wire them in series with the + side of the tweeter. This will autenate your tweeter to bring it vol. down. Try 1 at a time to desired vol. I suspect it will take 3, this will reduce the vol by aprox. 2db's. Good luck and let me know. Doug
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Post by dougc on Mar 10, 2013 13:49:11 GMT -5
PS. Initially try this with all other speakers turned off and bass turned all the way down so you can listen to the tweet for reversing the wires. Leave bass up but sub off for resistor test.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2013 15:22:57 GMT -5
dougc Thanks for the info man! Yeah I am definitely not techie as far as speakers internal workings...that is for sure. Very good info and interesting too. I tried using the EQ on my aftermarket Audio card on my pc, which everything is by my pc, except the turntable. The EQ helped, and I tried using the Denon 3312CI treble adjustment, which I had gotten to about -2dB, which fixed a good portion of the issue, it left the speakers muddled and not airy. I would try the resistor thing as it probably would be an entire tweeter change rather than a frequency range dB drop, if I was going to keep them. I decided to save up to just go for something a bit crazy compared to what I have now. I have the Emotiva amps, tv, pc, audio processor, speaker placement and decoupling, just how I want them all, only thing at the moment for my choice is to change the front 2 channels to some clean sounding bad boys, then save for a center, and then if i choose to, surrounds and rears. Definitely not going to keep the infinitys, but for what they cost, they are a performer without any doubt. Again, superb advice . I lack in that department lol.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 11:53:36 GMT -5
@douc - Well I decided to take the star shaped screws out that hold the tweeter in. I felt like it was going to be a while before I sold these anyways...up to a year perhaps. I tried reversing polarity, and it was for sure, more natural. There was fatiguing listening sessions, even after a few minutes or part of a song, where the scratching sound was a pain in the #!$. I like to be able to have equipment that can play music genres that I do not normally listen to. I had a hard time with rock/metal, mostly older rock, or any metal, techno, or guitar distortion. I listen to mainly older rock on vinyl. Each type was completely less scratchy, and I played with treble gain a few times from my Denon 3312CI, and found that I like it at no more or less from 0dB...so a flat EQ response at least. I am so thankful that you taught me about that, it made the speakers so pleasant. I changed one speaker and left the other alone, used a sound panel on my PC to silence a channel, and the untouched channel felt completely treble like, and the other a bit muddy (myself not being adjusted haha). I swapped the other channel, played a few genres, techno, metal, rock, rap, you name it....pleasant! I might even need to do this to the center channel, which will be harder to tell without a side by side comparison. I have primus sides and rears as well, I will tinker with those after I fully finish the fronts. Today has a task...and I have the time for such a beautiful project and experience. Thank you..from the bottom of my heart...very awesome!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 13:12:18 GMT -5
dougc - I think I can hear a frequency dB drop gap between the woofer and tweeters. I suspect that is most likely a bit normal from the polarity change. I am noticing a frequency range that might be getting less attention, probably a side effect from doing this. It is totally worth it still. Like I said I am going to get different speakers later on, but this is icing on the cake for what I have atm . Whomever I sell these to later on, I will let them know that I switched the polarity and in fact, I kind of did this half *bleep*. I could have had to redo connectors on all of the wires, but Instead I just used aviation snips and cut the bigger wire connector to the speaker itself, so that I could jury rig the bigger connector on the wires to the small port, and can easily be swapped back and forth for preference now. Had I planned on keeping this or wanting better quality, I would have redone the wires or maybe even soldered them. I am struggling on the center speaker to get the tweeter out, and am trying to not scratch the cabinet too lol. I will let you know how the center one comes out. I have 2 rears, 2 fronts done. I have 2 sides to do, that are the same as rears, and then the center which I have no idea what to expect. I should expect the same result, as it looks like they took the cheap route making these speakers, and universally can use tweeters and woofers etc. The tweeters look to be the same as the floorstanders..which implies what you said about bookshelf sized tweeters in the floorstandes. Thank You again. I will post back on the center channel, it has a bit different sized midranges from the fronts, and the rear/sides are 2 ways. I bet I need to level trim all of this with the dB meter again, all worth it!
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Post by garbulky on Mar 11, 2013 16:47:31 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 17:03:09 GMT -5
garbulky - The "speaker phase test", if played back in the correct phase, should sound like there is a center channel correct, and the out of phase sounds like you hear the speakers to the sides? That is how I am perceiving this. Thanks for the link, and help.
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Post by garbulky on Mar 11, 2013 17:08:59 GMT -5
That's correct. If your tweeters polarity was reversed you should be getting some out of phase weirdness.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 17:10:24 GMT -5
It sounded great . I know the speaker cabinets are wired correctly to the power amp, I swapped the tweeter pos and neg. only.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 17:23:45 GMT -5
I inverted an acapella with audacity, and the inverted sounded more centralized...so is that a big deal then?
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Post by dougc on Mar 11, 2013 20:47:18 GMT -5
I'm glad that made a difference, and free at that. I was hoping you would take it a little slower and try the resistor method also. Question; does everything sound in sinx? Bass, mid, and tweets? And yes a 1-2 db drop is normal, providing that was the prob. If the tweets sound out of phase then the resistor method is the route that needs to be taken. On the hand if all sounds good, but still a little scratchy on the top end. You can still throw 1-2 ohms of resistance in there. This will only take the edge off the top end. Doug
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2013 21:35:01 GMT -5
It seems that the scratchy behavior was due nothing to the dB's produced, but to the reaction of the reversed polarity. Does that seem like an accurate theory? It sounds great now, and maybe a pinch out of phase, it does feel like it is weak somewhere between the tweeter and the midrange...guessing that it is due to the polarity as well. All in all, it sounds so much better even then. So would a resistor just lower the volume by increasing the ohms, or will it affect sonic behavior. If it just lowers the volume produced, then it probably won't take any scratchy away. It was a really pronounced scratch at any volume in my opinion.
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