AR9

[heland]

After a reasonably unsuccessful rebuild of my AR92s I was in the market for new speakers when ,for the first time,im in Australia,i saw a pair of AR9s for sale...needless to say i bought them...all surrounds replaced within the last twelve months.one capacitor replaced,internal wiring upgraded and new binding posts...not cheap ..who cares sound wonderful!!

Obviously can improve some things,im runnung Adcom gfa555 amp and pre,reasonable wire and a cambridge audio cd player.

My question is this will i find much improvement by changing components on a budget.

regards Andrew

[rrcrain]

After a reasonably unsuccessful rebuild of my AR92s I was in the market for new speakers when ,for the first time,im in Australia,i saw a pair of AR9s for sale...needless to say i bought them...all surrounds replaced within the last twelve months.one capacitor replaced,internal wiring upgraded and new binding posts...not cheap ..who cares sound wonderful!!

Obviously can improve some things,im runnung Adcom gfa555 amp and pre,reasonable wire and a cambridge audio cd player.

My question is this will i find much improvement by changing components on a budget.

regards Andrew

OK, Here's my opinion.

The best bang for the buck will be to replace the remainder of the old electrolytic capacitors in the crossover. They are old, dried out and honestly out of spec. There's a world of deate over what kind of cap to use and which is "best" but there's an overwhelming agreement the old caps need to go. This should cost around $200 american

Next on the list is a big amp, or my preference, biamp the speakers, use two amps and a very good active crossover. The Adcom might be a bit light to drive the 4 12 inch woofers and everything else, and make the speakers sound their best.

Forget the fancy wire, it "might" make a difference and if it does, it should absolutely be the last thing on your list to do and when you have so much money in your pocket you can't stand it.

[ar_pro]

Here's another vote for replacing the upper range caps - it's important that those drivers be protected!

There have been discussions here regarding bi-amping the AR-9, and with the proper amplification, it seems to be a worthwhile project.

Personal experience with the Adcom GFA-555II has shown it to be an excellent choice for the AR-9 in bi-amp configuration. My best results came in vertical bi-amp mode (one 555 amplifier for the left speaker, and one for the right), and were only bettered by a pair of newer McIntosh amplifiers with autoformer outputs.

The 9's built-in crossover is crucial to the performance of its woofers - no electronic crossover is necessary.

[heland]

Thanks for your replies...need all the help I can get!I love my music and the system that delivers it...on the latter I know precious little..no time like the present to learn!

Is there someone out there who could make a list of what i would need...perhaps available 'down under'or source me the parts?

I think I may find my way around with a soldering iron if all that is required is to unglue/glue....i have read so much on the forum I am completely confused as to which caps etc.

As to Bi amping...why?Is it dependent on how hard you drive your speakers that would warrant more power or does it benefit low to moderate listening levels also....I run the spectrum here although being a little careful at present !

Regards Andrew

[rrcrain]

Here's another vote for replacing the upper range caps - it's important that those drivers be protected!

There have been discussions here regarding bi-amping the AR-9, and with the proper amplification, it seems to be a worthwhile project.

Personal experience with the Adcom GFA-555II has shown it to be an excellent choice for the AR-9 in bi-amp configuration. My best results came in vertical bi-amp mode (one 555 amplifier for the left speaker, and one for the right), and were only bettered by a pair of newer McIntosh amplifiers with autoformer outputs.

The 9's built-in crossover is crucial to the performance of its woofers - no electronic crossover is necessary.

The electronic crossover is definitely not needed for the speaker, BUt it does remove the bass signal to the amp driving the upper range drivers. Remember, the amp will reproduce whatever is thrown at it, and depending on the amp involved, will add to harminic distortion. If set properly so it doesn't interfere with the passive crossover, an electronic may improve overall clarity.... it did in my case.

[JKent]

Let's remember that Andrew's 1st post said "will i find much improvement by changing components on a budget"

AND he's in Australia so things like additional Adcom amps may be a little tough to come by. The Adcom 555 he has is an excellent and powerful amp. It should be more than adequate to drive the ARs. OTOH, why was just one cap replaced? Old electrolytics may go bad, so as has been suggested, replacing the remaining caps may make sense. Andrew--there is a schematic in the Library, here:

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/library..._schematic.html

Can any member advise him on what, specifically, to buy and where to get it in Australia? I have never been inside a 9, but in general my advice would be to use inexpensive film caps until you reach values that are too big and/or expensive, then go with NPEs.

But realistically, the answer to your original question is "NO". The speakers have new surrounds so they are not falling apart. Assuming that only one cap was replaced because the others tested OK, the best advice (IMHO) is to listen to music and don't fret

Kent

[heland]

Thanks very much you dedicated bunch! It is really good to know you are out there.

regards Andrew

[Diamonds&Rust]

After a reasonably unsuccessful rebuild of my AR92s I was in the market for new speakers when ,for the first time,im in Australia,i saw a pair of AR9s for sale...needless to say i bought them...all surrounds replaced within the last twelve months.one capacitor replaced,internal wiring upgraded and new binding posts...not cheap ..who cares sound wonderful!!

Obviously can improve some things,im runnung Adcom gfa555 amp and pre,reasonable wire and a cambridge audio cd player.

My question is this will i find much improvement by changing components on a budget.

regards Andrew

I don't know if you have already acted on the advice you've received. If so; good. If not I wanted to add and reinforce.

>will i find much improvement by changing components on a budget.<

In my opinion - absolutely. I've had multiple "big iron" amps on my AR9s as well as "big iron" receivers. Two late seventies Reciever Wars units worked o.k. A late 80s IC-based receiver (then-current top of the line Pioneer) worked less well to drive the speakers to their potential.

A sixty pound ESS theater amplifier (24 outputs and a mobile-home sized transformer) might not have been big on finesse, but it had enough guts to make the receivers sound anemic. It was rated at fewer watts than the biggest receiver I tried, but it had brass where it counted, which I'm guessing was a huge current reserve and capacity. I've also listened to an Adcom 555Mk II and SAE's A502 and a Sunfire Symphonic Reference and a Crown DC 300 and a Threshhold A-400. For a short time I was using a Jolida 1501RC integrated, which was satisfying, but nothing to write home about. They are currently (pun intended) being driven by a N.A.D. 372C which is doing a competent job and producing some fine sound, but not like one of those massive amps. All of those big amps were fine choices with the Sunfire, ironically the one I kept, being possibly the weakest but most "refined" sounding (also the newest, so maybe those things go together?)

I'm only now beginning to understand why maybe I like the big, heavy amplifiers. Some of it probably has to do with my perception that the bigger and heavier the amplifier is the more current it can produce. Some of it probably IS that the amplifier can produce more current at the "phase angle" and impedance that the crossovers sometimes would like to have.

The differences in all those big amplifiers is smallish. Ultimately any of them would produce a very satisfying experience. Lots of outputs, lots of power supply, lots of stability into low impedance loads, and from there we can argue forever about which might be better, why we might think that, and whether or not you can actually hear the difference or if you're imagining things.

Generally speaking the more the thing weighs the more current it is capable of delivering and that's as useful a generality as any. Modern designs have somewhat changed that, but on a budget you'll be looking at the used market.

Capacitors - the schematic is available in the library;

You'll need a 4, 6, 8, 24, 30, 40, and 80 microfarad non-polar capacitor for each "upper cabinet" and a 470 and 2500 microfarad capacitor for each "lower cabinet." You'll also probably want to replace the 6 Ohm 22 watt resistor across the parallel leg of the upper midrange.

We could, and have, talked this "why" and "what cap" thing to death. It has also been studied, scientifically and at great length, off the forum. Yes, the capacitors you choose can make a difference, but not because of some mystical super capacitor construction. The "deal" seems to be that various attributes of different capacitors change the crossover in unexpected ways. The specific places (on what driver, next to what), and interactions, of the capacitors seem to alter the crossover in mostly SMALLISH ways.

As Ken Kantor abruptly put it years ago, you might end-up with a slight hump, a dip, or a resonance. I wish he had taken the time to explain that more thoroughly back then and saved a lot of hours of research. Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have believed him without having other people doing modeling (beyond me) and measuring (outside my capabilities) and feeding it to me (I've had good teachers) at a pace I could absorb.

When you park your car in a parking spot you pull into that spot and leave a lot of room on either side of the car so passengers can exit. You **could** spend your life with a tape measure making sure that you were in the exact, perfect, center of the parking place. You **could** fuss with the optimal front-to-back measurement, too. You **could** do a probability distribution concerning the odds of either adjacent car owner's propensity to door-ding your car based on the condition of theirs and your over-all impression of the likelihood children are passengers in either of those cars.

But you don't.

You make a decision to pull-in a little this-way or that-way without thinking about it. You park. And then you go and enjoy yourself.

The capacitor debate is even, possibly, sillier than employing a slide-rule when parking at the grocery store.

So just trying to help you park in the right LOT, let's talk caps and crossovers a second.

First, using NPEs on the upper cabinets is like parking in the wrong city. No, not because NPEs are inherently inferior to NPEs in the crossovers, but because there has been no need for high quality NPE capacitors in many years. There are other reasons to use poly caps, but that's enough explanation. Use poly caps. Which ones? Let's not even go there.

Using poly caps in the upper cabinet seems to *create* a problem with crossing-over into the lower cabinet IF you leave the old woofer caps. I learned this experimentally and it has been confirmed with modeling. Whatever you do to the 80 capacitor changes the crossover area of the lower midrange to the woofers. Similarly, whatever you do to the 470 capacitor on the woofers changes the crossover to the lower midrange.

Total losses in poly caps are nearly zero. Losses in NPEs are low, but by orders of magnitude, higher. Those losses effect not only the "filter area" of the 470, but also create lumps and dips at the very bottom of the woofers' range. Just take it as read.

Fortunately, it's really pretty rare that there is anything in the extreme bottom of a signal for a bump or dip to effect and fortunately your room is going to be 100 or 1,000 times more critical than this. Don't worry about that too much.

But the transition from the woofers to the lower midrange is *very* audible and there is a *lot* of information in there. The electrical crossover point is about 125Hz while the acoustic is centered around 200Hz. That's "higher" than you think and just to beat it into the ground I repeat: There is a LOT of musical information in this area. It is *very* important to get it right.

By "right" I just mean "not wrong." Perfection is out of the question.

Perfection was out-of-the-question when the speaker was designed and assembly-line built. Perfection is not attainable. Perfection is not necessary, either. Apply the sliderule and the parking-place rule. All we need to do is "get in the ballpark."

Personally, the "ballpark" was reached when I replaced the 470 and 2500 capacitors with new NPEs. I was shocked and amazed and exstatic. Evidently the new capacitors had fewer losses, or maybe just the "right kind" of losses, and after I picked my jaw up off the floor I realized that taking care of this problem made *other* problems audible. I fixed those (some driver swaps) and I enjoyed my 9s more than I ever have. Ever. The sources are better than they were the last time the 9s worked correctly, so I really didn't know they could sound that good.

Alright, so back to brass-tacks: What do you do about that area of the crossover if you don't have and can't get a new 470uF capacitor, or you choose to spend mega-dollars on creating a 470uF poly cap by paralleling a bunch of caps together? You *should* be able to apply some *small* amount of resistance to the 80uF cap on the upper midrange that will help compensate, but I'm of no use suggesting an amount. From "experience" just make sure you replace the 470 with something new.

If you do what I did at first and just replace the upper cabinet capacitors you will be impressed with the results. You're speakers will, at first, sound a lot brighter and more detailed - because they do. If you listen carefully enough you'll pick-up on a sort of "bloat" or "chestiness" in vocals - there' a hole left one place and that makes this vocal area sound emphasized. "Big round and warm" is an AR characteristic, so you might think "that's just the way these sound" which is sort-of correct, but not really.

Do what you have to. Buy relatively inexpensive NPEs from your region's version of Madisound or Parts Express or something if you have to. I used relatively inexpensive Jensen NPEs from Northern Europe, but you don't have to do exactly what I did. Just realize that any capacitor you leave in that speaker **is** the weak link. They ALL need to be replaced.

Mega-dollar capacitors are a waste of your time and money. Their differences are no more "correct" than the differences in less expensive capacitors. Again I say - YES - you can hear the difference in capacitors - BUT the most expensive solution is NOT necessarily better AND might be worse. We want to believe that "more expensive is better," but that isn't necessarily so.

Most of us, but not all, found that adding resistance is not necessary, strictly-speaking. Remember, you will NOT put the speaker back into its "factory fresh" condition no matter what you do. It isn't possible. Don't sweat-it too much. But DO respect the design, or you will have a less pleasing result.

In that spirit, and admitting that I haven't done it yet and may never do it, the resistance on the parallel legs across the upper and lower midrange has a very audible effect and should be maintained. Also know that the SMALLER the value of the capacitor, the LARGER the value of resistor you need. You might us 7 or 8 Ohms instead of the 6 Ohm resistor by the 40uF capacitor and add .3-.5 Ohms of resistance on the 8uF (it looks like a 6 in the schematic, it is really an 8). Same thing with the 30uF - maybe .3 Ohms. You might experiment from .1 to 1 to "fine tune" the values.

So why be so "vague" about values if we've got all these models and stuff?

You'd have to measure and model *every* *single* *component* to get it "exactly right." BUT, BUT, BUT - your ROOM and speaker placement are going to make differences, too. So unless you want to model every component and then professionally measure your room... sliderule and parking spot time.

AND - one of the interesting things that modeling showed was that the drivers' behavior is very important to the *functioning* of the crossover. The drivers' behavior is affected, in big ways (measurement-wise), by the surrounds and spider's condition. Substituting a purely resistive load for the dynamic load of a driver changes things. I think the comment made to me years ago that applies here is, "Do you have any idea how hard it is to make any two brand new speakers sound just exactly alike?" Well, no, not really. But I do know how impossible it is to make two sound the same A/Bing them in a room since they can't both be in exactly the same place at the same time.

You *cannot* restore the drivers back to their brand-new condition. Not possible. But you can get close-enough. But *know* that the surround on the lower midrange and woofers and the condition of the foam under the upper midrange dome SWAMPS the subtle differences you would make doing stuff like fooling around with silver wire interally or bracing the cabinets or A/Bing capacitors until your wallet hurt and your soldering-iron failed.

I'm not saying "don't do that." What I'm saying is you will get much more satisfying improvements per unit time/money by paying attention to the "big stuff" first.

Although this is NOT perfectly predictive, if you aren't willing to spend the time and money on a "woofer tester" to be sure the Fs of the lower mid and woofers is right (you have to do some wiring to test them in the cabinets, you can't do it with the crossover in place because you don't know those numbers... nobody does), then for the love of all that's practical, don't sweat the capacitor's brand across the lower midrange. And guess what? You STILL won't know if the upper-end of the drivers are acting just exactly right. (the upper end should rely more on the acoustic suspension and less on the mechanical compliance, but you get my point... perfection isn't possible - or necessary)

Your 9s will produce some *extremely* pleasant sound and they make quite the listening experience. Don't take my comments as saying "all this stuff isn't important." It is important. I'm not suggesting you just throw something in the box and let it go. There's just a point at which all the care and expense in the world isn't going to help. It might *change* something, but you *cannot* characterize the change as an improvement.

To sum-up, then; It is silly and wastefull to spend $50,000 on a '57 Chevy to try to make it corner like a '74 Jaguar XKE. If cornering is what you want, buy a few year old Saab Turbo and you can dust either of the other two off the road.

Sounds like I'm full of crap, doesn't it? Yeah, I know. I didn't want to believe it either.

[Guest Pacer]

I recently Bi amped my AR9's and was previously running them with a 325 watt at 4 ohms tri path amp. The AR'9s would routinely throw the circuit protection switch at moderately loud volume. The 325 watt tri path is now powering the top end and an old fashioned class A amp is powering the lower end at 400 watts. The only thing limiting these speakers now is neighbor complaints! Pacer