Aadams

We are still on topic. Does anyone here have experience with this box? Is it good for the application under discussion?

With the NHT unit I choose, I suspect crossing at 100 to 120Hz would be ideal. That is, assuming the NHT bookshelf does a decent job in the 100 to 200Hz range. Now bear in mind, it is "rated" down to 85Hz. I have no experience with current sealed 4.5” speakers and it may be that NHT can do what others cannot but, on the chance they are normal, here is what I have discovered in trying to do the same thing around a year ago with powered subs and satellites. If our target is the sound of an AR12” full range speaker, then keep in mind we are asking a 4.5” speaker to produce music below 200hz with same expectation of performance as a 12” AR woofer. The AR 12” was never crossed lower than 200hz by AR. Even in their premium 4 way systems the woofers were crossed at 200hz when they could have let the 8” speaker cover the entire human voice range to around 100hz. If a pair of NHT 4.5” can sound like a pair of AR 12” between 200hz and 85 hz then I am on board. My experience however has been a 5.25” cannot sound like AR 12” in the mid bass range except for things like solo viola, violin, human voice and acoustic guitar. I recall you having AR3s and TSW910s so I feel certain the music to which you listen is not that limited. Whatever satellite you choose, can be compared to your AR woofers in the 85-200hz range by choosing a recording appropriate for the purpose, before you go deeper into the project. YMMV but this is what I have discovered in a similar effort. If you want to mimic the AR sound for “eyes closed listening”, using a powered sub: -The easiest and simplest place to crossover is just above the 3db down point of a proven full range satellite that has roughly the equivalent of a 10” bass unit. -The next good place is 200hz or above; -The middle ground between 70hz and 200hz is a difficult area and offers a lot of frustration and ittle chance for happiness that could be as easily and more satisfactorily achieved at 200hz or above; -If you cross very low, you get max freedom in sub placement but; -Because this is a music system, if you cross above 100hz and especially above 160hz, you must keep the satellites very close and perhaps vertically aligned with the subs or you will get some unwanted special effects from the music. If this were an AV surround system a lot this wouldn’t matter for my purposes but for “eyes closed listening” it does. Edit: I forgot to add, to finish the job you will almost certainly need an equalizer. Aadams

The SVS is a nice unit. Even though it extends to 260hz It appears the only way you can cross it over above 160hz is to use the LFE circuitry in an AV amp/receiver. My old 5.1 will cut LFE as high as 200hz and front satellites starting at 200hz down. I have never seen a stereo amp with this kind of built in capability. Adams

The news still hasn't spread much beyond engineering circles IMO. I have seen this opinion asserted in this forum in way-back threads but can't recall it being tied to AES research. Still, good to hear. Anyway, the OP wants to use new product rather than old, what approach do you suggest? Note: I changed to 200-12000 above because 6" ported mini speakers begin to differentiate below 200hz in my experience. Adams

Evidence from an expert supporting my own experience that from around 200 to 12000hz any reasonably linear full range speaker can be equalized to have the character of another speaker. They are never identical but can sometimes be very close. I congratulate myself. Aadams

Simple and direct with a stamp of authority lent by the sophistication of a portmanteau word. Adams

Exactly! Was watching Hans Zimmer in Prague concert recently where even the orchestral instruments were wired and digitized and wondering if my little system was really conveying the power of those immense line arrays as heard by the live audience.

First what does the * stand for? Second you are correct. He gets paid either way and his opinion does not matter to his paymaster so long as he gets clicks. Adams

Onplane This is your thread and we have not heard from you. Now that a few of us have tossed out ideas, what are your thoughts at this point? Adams

I guess I read correctly the first time. I could not handle that much complexity but my confusion led me to discover that some 9.2 amps will support 3 LR stereo pairs simultaneously. It turns out a few 5.1 receivers will do everything required and drive two pair down to 4 ohms but to drive 3 or 4 stereo pairs in an array you will need another power amp, which for me is OK. Aadams

I agree again. At first I thought you meant tuning a surround set up but, instead using all channels as either stereo L or R or Sub would drive an array, crossover the subs, high cut the satellites, permit some equalization and appear to be an all in one box solution. If you want more headroom then connect a 2 ohm capable amp from the LR pre-outs. The subs mentioned by the OP plus a good quality 7.1 or 9.1 would be about the price of an AR3a pair in 1972 dollars. The satellites can be purchased new or used and aren't that costly. Thank you genek, this looks like it hits all the criteria I laid out for a solution i.e. tidy, cost effective, musical, wide-dymanic range, repeatable implementation of a subwoofer with a satellite stack. Adams

Agree. To help focus this discussion I am including a photo. I know for sure this works and should work using any linear mini two way. The difficult part is integration of the bass units. If someone can arrive at a tidy, cost effective, musical, wide-dymanic range, repeatable implementation of a subwoofer with a satellite stack it will be a great step forward IMO.

I have been hoping someone would do all of the heavy lifting to find a solution of reasonable cost and complexity using subs and satellites, so I could ride their coat tails. The simplest way I know to do this is to use a sub with a high pass filter but, few subs have this feature and they are of the more expensive variety. Two of these subs will cost in the 4 to 5k range which to me is over the mark considering ……….well, several things. The next simplest solution is to begin with a good AV receiver using its crossover features to create cutoff filters-------a low pass filter for the subs and high pass filter for the satellites. At this point you either decide to use speakers A and B on the AV unit to power two satellite pairs or use the pre-outs to an equalizer to an external amp that will drive two satellite arrays. You still must work out the octave to octave balance at the transition between subs and satellites, but this is practically doable at not too great a cost. Aadams

Replicating the musicality of an AR12 inch system with subs and sats is a pretty high bar. Integrating the Sats to the Subs is not as easy as it seems. If you raise the crossover point of the sub to a frequency that is well above the 3db down point of the sat you will double the output of some mid and high bass frequencies and create an octave to octave imbalance. In your example of a 200hz crossover it would mean the sats and the sub would be covering frequencies between 85hz to 200hz. Using the subs in question, the only way to trim out the imbalance is to use an equalizer, which seems simple enough except whenever you change the sub volume controls or crossover point it forces an equalizer change and still doesn't shutdown the sats below 200hz. To avoid this complexity you could simply lower the crossover point to just above the 3db down point of the satellite but the problem with this simple approach is these small speakers sound like crap in the mid bass area and below which is why 200hz is a great idea. To replicate the AR power response you will need a left/right satellite array. The wiring will get complicated unless you connect through a speaker selector switch, or a second amplifier to which you will also connect the equalizer. Adding an equalizer and an amp will give you at least 2 more volume controls per side giving you even more ways to create an imbalance but it will also allow you to silence the sats below the crossover point and have cleaner sound. If you are going to use only one satellite per side an alternative would be to use a larger satellite that actually sounds good in the mid bass area so you can lower the crossover point to 60 or so and maybe keep the whole system simple. I could be wrong and may have left something out, it is 2am, but I think I summarized the problem pretty well. Adams

Acquiring a vintage receiver or integrated you can trust to reliably to drive 4 AR3as will probably cost as much as 3 Crown XLS 1002s that each crank out 550w per channel at 2 ohms. Maybe a Macintosh Integrated or receiver will do this. Their layout gives this impression, they have protection circuitry but they will not come close to the wattage of a digital power amp and even used will cost more than the smallest QSC or Crown and almost certainly have zero warranty.

Which modern loudspeakers? It seems like it requires a highly experienced and trained ear or an ear with perfect pitch for a listener to hear timber differences between professional grade instruments that have identical shape but of different materials. I know the performer can hear the difference but could a listener consistently choose between them in a double blind test---- In your opinion?

The system is still operating. My, months ago, statement that tuning was at an end was premature. I have tamed the overemphasis of deep bass and more importantly have discovered center balance is not obviously simple to achieve when systems are merged in this way with equalizers and power amps. The BA CR65s have 4 gain controls that can affect left right balance while the AR58s have three. What I have learned is identical index points for left and right knobs on the same unit of equipment are not necessarily the same. Just because settings look equal doesn’t mean they are equal. I think folks who bi-amp or tri-amp speakers even with identical power amps may sometimes face the same problem without knowing it. When the LR center balance of the upper speakers differs greatly from the lower speakers it is obvious, but when they are very close to centered yet not aligned it is not easy to detect nor easy to correct by listening without a mono signal. Correcting that last little bit of difference to align the center points makes a huge difference in the sound. My mistake was to assume all the gain controls were working identically and balance the left and right speakers as a group when I should have been centering each system separately before they were all engaged to play music. My acceptance of the close but not correct setting for so long was, I think, because I was still thinking that the problem was with speaker placement or angles or perhaps this was just a bad idea. Happily, the system is improved and for now the beast is tamer and easy to live with. In my 11 steps above I covered vertical balancing of the separate systems but I ignored horizontal, left/right, because it seemed so obvious, but it is not. I have attached an illustration that may help.

I am not a physicist but 75 watts sustained over any time period is equal to the energy of around a constant 10 horsepower in the same period. A small tweeter voice coil that could handle that much energy would glow like a small electric stove or perhaps a light bulb. Your speaker could double as a food warmer or space heater. Adams

Transmaster you seem to have an ear for timbre and are one of only three I have seen mention it on the forum. Is there a loudspeaker from which you personally have heard the difference between precious metal flutes or a Strad vs Guanari vs "good modern" or even violin and viola in their shared range? My prejudices say no for loudspeakers but possibly yes for headphones and even then only if the instruments are solo and meticulously recorded. What is your experience?. There is no passion here just a question. Aadams

Any feel for power response vs the original 3a tweeter?

I had a long post ready to go about more listening but I decided to sum it up in much shorter post. This hybrid evolved from an existing AR58 setup which can be restored at the push of a button so rather than focusing on Hybrid vs AR9 comparisons, I have spent a good bit of time listening to the original 58s system vs the Hybrid. I was questioning whether my enthusiasm was still grounded. It is. While the 58 has the AR dome drivers, its weakness, as with all big three-ways, is the 12 inch woofer having to carry the critical human voice octaves. The big difference between this hybrid stack and the 58s is the octave and a half between 200 and 700hz has been shifted to the 5 inch BA drivers and the difference clearly favors the Hybrid. This also accounts for why I think the Hybrid sounds more like an AR9. AR removed middle C (262hz) from the woofer beginning with the AR9 and all of their top systems were this way until the end.

There is an excellent bi-amping primer beginning on page 31 of the AR 9 reference manual in the library. Hits all of he big issues of bi-amping for those who insist on bi-amping nines, or anything else.

At the risk of hijacking my own thread I decided to address your post re tone controls in general and spectral balance on LSTs. First , before your antennae and wings begin to buzz, you can stand down because I agree with you, which must mean we are correct? When I first began listening to records I loved tone controls. After I began to spend real money I began to think tone controls really didn’t improve anything. Then, once I discovered the “straight wire with gain” cult, I became a purist that said tone controls were taboo and just another noise source, as long as one had good equipment and a proper listening environment. For me, this led to so much frustration that I quit the hobby for over a decade and just attended concerts. I only picked it up again one day when I was using a computer with headphones and discovered a software equalizer. Short version is I am back and I still don’t use tone controls but I love equalizers. In summary, we should have been using equalizers from the time they became practical and affordable. Adams

http://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/comb-filtering AR Surround I had to read about comb filtering to answer your question. I would say that my term "lobing" was comb filtering. I noticed the problem disappeared when I changed the speaker angle from 90 degrees to 45 degrees. I also raised the crossover/transition frequency from a center on 125hz to a 250hz center, which may have had some effect. RE: 2 Satellites: The effect of using 2 CR65s was Ok but the BAs do not have the power response of the AR drivers and when I would rise from sitting in the listening spot I would notice a drop off in volume. This problem was solved by adding a third CR65. From my experience this approach does not work if you let all speakers run full range with zero equalization. I am speculating here but the LST spectral balance control seems to have been a built in equalizer with 5 different settings where AR engineers carefully balanced the output of the eight dome drivers with the woofer output. This is one reason why for this hybrid setup you need two equalizers and biamping. I will listen more closely for the comb filtering effect and report back. FM The different brand of speakers is not really a problem. You can use the equalizers to timbre match and get the sound to the point where a instrument on a BA sounds like the same instrument on an AR. In my instructions above on timbre matching I recommend using a human voice because most of us are better at recognizing specific voices than specific instruments but either will do IMO. The BA mids and tweets are still more detailed than my ARs but I can live with either and my other ARs are setup and on autopilot compared to this hybrid system that I am still not sure about with all of its angles and switches and knobs. Yes the two equalizers are 10 band RS units. They cost more to ship than to purchase and they work well enough. The equalizers are being used as gain controls as well as sound-shaping and timbre matching. I am not sure a Parametric equalizer would allow me to do that. 1/3 octave units might be of benefit but would also add complexity. I have to live with this config longer before deciding. Adams

I don't know what a Wilson TOTL Monster is but I will take it as a compliment. With regard to the LSTs, there is no way two of these Hybrids will equal the air moving ability of stacked LSTs but it could match the ability of an LST pair given the same room volume. Each hybrid stack has 9 drivers biamped. The BAs,which carry most of the musical, load are driven by a 500l watt/ch Crown. The 58s, which really only carry the bass, have 100 watts per side and the room is small . I don't know if you have read all of the posts in this thread as well as the ones that originated in the BA section but I understand your skepticism. We are about the same age and have been in this hobby for about the same time but this is not new. What I have done has been done before. It is not ground breaking in execution certainly. This is nothing more than an AR3 with a stack of AR3ts on top. It is in fact something similar to stacked LSTs with 16 blown tweeters and Jantzen electrostatics on top. All I have done is used two equalizers as outboard crossovers to create a transition point between two already proven and well regarded speaker systems. The groundbreaking part, if any, is the equipment to do this is now for sale dirt cheap waiting for someone to seize the opportunity. Before I powered up the third BA speaker my incremental investment was equivalent to $50 in 1975. You couldn't buy an equalizer for that price back then let alone 6 high performance wide range miniature two ways with drivers way more rugged than the comparatively dainty AR Domes in the AR3t or LST. When I wired the 3rd BA, I needed a more capable amp so I spent another 1975 equivalent $50. I now have a total of $100 additional 1975 dollars expended to build out this system with equipment that couldn't be purchased for any amount of money back in 1975. And If I had spent thousands of dollars to accomplish the same thing it would not be newsworthy. The news is, the price to upgrade from AR 58s sound to something much better is negligible. I am not going to spend time on credentials but I do know how live music from large string and wind ensembles is supposed to sound and I know that occasionally a recording played on a full range system, with some listener imagination, can be pretty convincing. When I say this Hybrid Monster sounds better in some ways than an AR9, I know it is true because the two systems are sitting very close to each other in my house fed simultaneously by the same program source. The smooth effortless extended bass of the AR 9 is not challenged by any single driver AR 12 inch but the full range of an orchestra can be convincingly represented on any competent system given a good balance of scale and proportion between the room and a music system with full range capability. All I can say is, it works and in the beginning I was as shocked as you are Lastly, I am honored that a thread I initiated attracted the attention of your acerbic wit. It is always good to have the opinion of an expert.