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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2016 12:53:10 GMT -5
I can say with out doubt I did own the XPA 2 gen 1, clean output very powerful I ran 4 ohm speakers so the output was 500 watts into each channel and could not get that amp to red line. My Son has that amp now in a much bigger living room and he can't get it to clip out. So pick just about any speaker you like cause your XPA 2 gen 2 will handle anything you can put it through. Emo built that amp it has specs as close as you can get to monoblocks..best of luck in your hunt for speakers nice to know uh that your amp is not the weak link happy hunting smooth man I can dig it...
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Post by garbulky on Aug 9, 2016 15:07:56 GMT -5
The XPA-2 is a darn nice amp!
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Post by sme on Aug 9, 2016 18:18:46 GMT -5
Given your interest in DIY, I strongly recommend looking at the offerings from DIYSG based on the SEOS waveguide. The kits they sell include all the drivers and crossover parts you need along with a front baffle. They also sell flat packs of pre-cut MDF or BB ply that you can glue to make suitable enclosures. You also have the option of implementing your own active crossover instead of the passive one. Or you could just buy the SEOS horns and maybe some of their compression drivers and design and build your own. The speakers use pro-style drivers and are very efficiency as far as home use speakers go. You'll also get sound that's better than the vast majority of speakers you can buy, at any playback level. Seriously. The SEOS horns are state of the art for imaging and smooth high frequency response. The curved profile is mathematically optimized to control dispersion horizontally within a window of approximately +/- 45 degrees while minimizing the bad effects of diffraction. The asymmetric shape compromises vertical dispersion at lower frequencies but allows the horn to be situated closer to the woofer to minimize center-to-center spacing and provide a broader vertical listening window within the crossover region where the two drivers interfere. You can Google around for some polar response measurements, or look at my data for the DNA-360 in SEOS-15. If you toe in your speakers just right for your listening area, you can actually maintain a very close level balance (at least above the crossover frequency) between the pair of speakers at a variety of listening positions. This works because you are likely be physically closer to the off-axis speaker, so the shorter distance will compensate for the loss in level and visa-verse with the other speaker. This helps prevent the stereo image from collapsing when away from the sweet spot, as is the case with just about any other speaker design. For a kit with best sound quality in a two channel system with subs, I recommend their Fusion 15 as the 15" horn offers the benefits of controlled dispersion all the way down to and somewhat below the 1000 Hz crossover. This covers all the most important frequencies for imaging. While the Fusion 15 can work without subs, you may be better off with a 3-way if you intend to use the speakers full-range. for this purpose, I suggest any of the XX99 series, depending on your available space and how much overkill you want. These 3-ways are also offered in a center-channel version with a horizontal layout optimized to minimize horizontal lobbing. These uses smaller horns that don't provide the exceptionally smooth dispersion to frequencies as low as with the SEOS-15, but they should still sound very good. AIUI, there are some minor voicing differences between them, which could also affect your decision. For example, the 1099 crossover has a reputation for making it sound a bit on the bright side, and the 1899 is designed with a bit more bass. OTOH, it's possible to adjust the voice using crossover tweaks or using DSP. Or you can go active and do the voicing yourself using whatever DSP capability you have. All of the designs I mention here are rated at least 99 dB/2.83V sensitive, and most are 8 ohm. While I do agree with others here that active is better than passive, the passive crossover designs of these DIYSG kits are high quality, and the speakers are so sensitive that you aren't nearly as likely to run into the usual problems with passive crossover as compared to these. Also realize that going active adds a lot of cost and complexity. You need additional amps. You need a DSP solution, and you have to deal with more components in the signal chain, any of which can contribute unwanted noise that it unfortunately a lot easier to hear with these high sensitivity designs. I personally went active, but I added passive circuits to the DNA-360 + SEOS-15 waveguides to tame their (100% legit) 108 dB/1W sensitivity to closer to 98 dB/1W to reduce hiss. I also used to use MiniDSP OpenDRC-AN and 2x4 units for DSP, but I migrated away from them because of their poor noise floors. I am now using a custom PC-based DSP solution along with a Motu A16 audio interface. This gives me immense flexibility, but is obviously way more complicated and expensive than most people are willing to go through. (I actually wrote the DSP software myself.) If you're really ambitious and want the best quality, you could do what I did and do a completely custom design and build. Mine uses an Acoustic Elegance TD12M woofer paired with the DNA-360 and SEOS-15 and fully-active crossover. Acoustic Elegance woofers could be said to be among the best in the world. They are very efficient and have excellent build quality and exceedingly low distortion. The lack of dust cap eliminates this common source of resonance, and the inductance of pretty much all their woofers is vanishingly low. My cabinets are tuned to about 45 Hz, and these work just fine as full-range at low playback levels, but play more cleanly at high levels using subs since the TD12M doesn't have a lot of excursion for deep bass. My sensitivity on these is maybe closer to 98 dB/2.83V with only 4 ohm impedance, but that's still plenty, especially considering that I'm not inflating my ratings like most commercial companies do.  |
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Post by sme on Aug 9, 2016 18:27:56 GMT -5
I can say with out doubt I did own the XPA 2 gen 1, clean output very powerful I ran 4 ohm speakers so the output was 500 watts into each channel and could not get that amp to red line. My Son has that amp now in a much bigger living room and he can't get it to clip out. So pick just about any speaker you like cause your XPA 2 gen 2 will handle anything you can put it through. Emo built that amp it has specs as close as you can get to monoblocks..best of luck in your hunt for speakers nice to know uh that your amp is not the weak link happy hunting smooth man I can dig it... Need help clipping your XPA2? Try these: www.danleysoundlabs.com/tom-danleys-mic-recordings/Don't be fooled by how soft everything sounds. You have to turn up the volume way up to reproduce these properly. With high enough playback level and a capable system, these sound very realistic. But note that most systems won't have what it takes. Start low and venture to higher playback levels only with great care. DISCLAIMER: Not responsible for damage to speakers, subs, or other equipment. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2016 19:29:54 GMT -5
^^^^^^^^
Bro, that's loud!..oh note taken on disclaimer...lol.
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Post by leonski on Aug 10, 2016 2:50:54 GMT -5
Why in heavens name would you need or WANT to mate a 250 watt amp with 99db sensitive speakers? Something like the PASS XA30.5 will be 30 watts in 'A' and about 6db of headroom to redline, in A/B. I doubt you'll EVER get the meter to flicker at all with such sensitive speakers.
To the OP:
Forget ANY and ALL recommendations for speakers unless you have some basis for likeing them. What drew you to your ORIGINAL set of speakers? What do you value in a presentation? What have you heard? What do you WANT to hear?
Tell the audience more about what you LIKE and Dislike in a speaker, and something about your musical values.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2016 9:04:25 GMT -5
Why settle for 'big' speakers when you could go for truly "monstrous"? Maybe you're looking for the VMPS SuperTower III. They come up for sale on the used market every now and then when their owners' wives threaten to bury them in the speakers if they don't get rid of them. They have an interesting bass system with a 15", a 12", and two 10" drivers loaded into a common air volume, tuned by a down-firing, slot-loaded 15" passive radiator. Yeah, that ought to be just enough speaker for the XPA-2.  |
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Post by leonski on Aug 13, 2016 11:49:44 GMT -5
Stereophile calls out the Sensitivity for the IIa/R model variation as 100db 1 watt / 1 meter. This is a VERY high value and even in the (intended) fairly to very large room, 100 a side should pretty much get the job done.
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Post by sme on Aug 14, 2016 15:51:21 GMT -5
It better be high sensitivity for that many drivers. Nevertheless, I can tell just by looking at that thing that it's probably not going to sound good. With all the different types of drivers and crossovers involved, I would expect the polar response to be a disaster. The only way this could work and sound half-decent is if each driver had its own passive circuit, or ideally, its own active processing and amp channel. This would make the speaker exceedingly expensive, especially in the active form.
Otherwise, the result is likely to be a mess of lobing and comb filtering. No matter what the on-axis frequency response is adjusted to, there is likely to be poor imaging, poor off-axis performance, upper mid harshness and/or weakness, and tonal unbalance in the reflected sound field field. I'm sure the bass performance is impressive and makes the speaker sound a lot better than it otherwise would, but that's pointless when one can get superior performance using subwoofers anyway.
It does appear my comments are consistent with the Stereophile review as well. I'm also skeptical that the Tekton speakers can deliver especially good sound, given their tweeter array, but as I understand it, they are designed with separate circuits on each driver to reduce the amount of interference. There will still be some power response irregularity, but they probably don't sound half bad. On the other hand, it's still going to be hard to beat the sound quality of a well-optimized two-way or three-way with a horn-loaded high frequency section. The dispersion characteristics of controlled-directivity style horns like the SEOS are ideal for matching with a piston mid/woofer and can provide far better off-axis response than is possible using crossovers to cone and dome tweeters.
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Post by leonski on Aug 15, 2016 12:09:39 GMT -5
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Post by adaboy on Aug 15, 2016 12:49:16 GMT -5
It better be high sensitivity for that many drivers. Nevertheless, I can tell just by looking at that thing that it's probably not going to sound good. With all the different types of drivers and crossovers involved, I would expect the polar response to be a disaster. The only way this could work and sound half-decent is if each driver had its own passive circuit, or ideally, its own active processing and amp channel. This would make the speaker exceedingly expensive, especially in the active form. Otherwise, the result is likely to be a mess of lobing and comb filtering. No matter what the on-axis frequency response is adjusted to, there is likely to be poor imaging, poor off-axis performance, upper mid harshness and/or weakness, and tonal unbalance in the reflected sound field field. I'm sure the bass performance is impressive and makes the speaker sound a lot better than it otherwise would, but that's pointless when one can get superior performance using subwoofers anyway. It does appear my comments are consistent with the Stereophile review as well. I'm also skeptical that the Tekton speakers can deliver especially good sound, given their tweeter array, but as I understand it, they are designed with separate circuits on each driver to reduce the amount of interference. There will still be some power response irregularity, but they probably don't sound half bad. On the other hand, it's still going to be hard to beat the sound quality of a well-optimized two-way or three-way with a horn-loaded high frequency section. The dispersion characteristics of controlled-directivity style horns like the SEOS are ideal for matching with a piston mid/woofer and can provide far better off-axis response than is possible using crossovers to cone and dome tweeters. I would implore you to try them out. You will be thoroughly surprised by them. When I first looked at the design I thought this seems odd... Man I was so wrong. Listen to them I think you will be in for a treat. |
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Post by leonski on Aug 15, 2016 17:21:51 GMT -5
RoryB is technically correct. Between what MUST be a nightmare crossover for driver matching for timbre and level to the various polar / lobin+comb filtering aspects, this is TO ME, an iffy design. going 'active' with line level crossovers CAN help this kind of situation as well as FIR filters. The last? Finite Impulse Response filters have several VERY desireable characteristics. They are VERY VERY difficult to impliment in the analogue domain but somewhat easier using DSP of sufficient 'horsepower'. Trying to work the math is a nightmare, so usually 'calculators' are used. Several are available online. dspguru.com/dsp/faqs/fir/basicsThese are 'Linear Phase' usually and can help integrating multiple driver systems when a conventional crossover wil just make a mess of it. I am PERSONALLY used to the coherence of a planar driver and have thus become sensitive to multi-driver systems which don't 'cut it' for me. |
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Post by jake1tut on Aug 29, 2016 15:23:44 GMT -5
Thank you all for your perspectives and suggestions. I did purchase the set of Pendragons, but I will likely play with some DIY in the near future and all the links are greatly appreciated.
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