Akurate 242's

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ledcam
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Akurate 242's

Post by ledcam »

The friend I posted about below decided against the Keltiks offered by his dealer and has bought a pair of ex-dem 242's - about 6 months old so not the current spec.

By shopping on ebay and adding to his own collelction of amps he will have 2 C4200's and a 2250 to drive the 242's aktivly. His dealer will do the install. One comment intrigued me - the dealer intend putting the 2250 on the super tweeters.

Comments/experiences anyone?
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Re: Akurate 242's

Post by Music Lover »

ledcam wrote:Comments/experiences anyone?
change dealer 8)
It's all about musical understanding!
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Post by poppop »

Seconded!

Steve.
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Post by lejonklou »

Are you guys sure about this?

I have not tried this exact combination of power amps, but in a system with a pair of 242's, I had one amp that was better than the others (the opposite of ledcam's friend's situation where there's one amp that is worse than the others).

Now this was a while back, so I am uncertain of the details, but I tried swapping the amps around and did not come to the conclusion that the supertweeter benefitted the most from the best sounding amp. Instead it ended up driving the tweeter.

Now that one amp is worse, where would you put it? Without trying it in real life, I'm not 100% convinced it should go to the bass.
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Post by poppop »

Fredrik,

Having flipantly fired in with "seconded" Ill try and explain.
As always this is based on personal experience and may of course be different for others.

When I had 242's with a poorer source admittedly than I now own, I started with them passive with 1 x 4200. Being the bass freak I am, I then decided to go partially active with the 4200 on the bass. Leaving the array passive with a 2200.( none of this recomended by Linn of course!) To be fair none of this was a great move and was not as I had expected. I then acquired a 6100 which of course got the array active and things got better. The final purchase was another 4200.

Suffice to say that no matter how I then configured the system the old mantra "Best to worst" seemed to apply. I even went back to trying the bass passive with a 4200 leaving the array active, and truth to tell Im not totally sure I heard a great difference in bass performance? Always the best amps on the array seemed to produce the best result - for me!

The reason I finally sold my 242's was like all Linn speakers(the newer ones anyway) I found them just too "dry"?? However, given my improved source/pre and learning from past mistakes, I have a very great desire to try the 242's again, on the bass with a 4200 and the arrays initially passive with solos.

Steve.
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Post by lejonklou »

Thanks for the detailed report, Steve. I agree that the pod is really important for the final result but contrary to your partially aktiv experiments I have always had a preference for homogenic amplification on aktiv speakers... Perhaps that's why I don't instinctively know where to put that 2250.

I understand what you mean with the "dry" comment. I have not heard the new 242's with improved bass yet, but people say it's a significant step forward. I hope they're right.
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Post by ledcam »

I asked my friend why he wasn't going for the new models and he said it was a couple of things really - the price for the ex-dems was very attractive, they were in great condition being only 6 months old and rarely used in the shop and perhaps most tellingly the dealer was of the opinion that while the new 242's were definitely better than the older model the gap in sound quality was not nearly so big in aktiv guise - in passive form the difference according to the dealer is big.
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Post by Music Lover »

lejonklou wrote:Are you guys sure about this?
I tried this a few times in the old days on "three element" speaker designs and the best amp ended up on treble.
The new 3/4k-array speakers may be different, but here it goes...

Tried this last year on a 4k-array speaker and yes - best amp on super tweeter.
NOTE, I used 2* C4200 but you can rank the channels as they are slightly different.

Just to be sure tried again yesterday and obtained same result.


A few months back I tried using the best amp on the bass and the least good (worst isn't appropriate on a Linn amp) on the ST without touching the amps for Mid&T and WOW that was strange :roll:
Better bass but the tune and flow were messed up.

Have to admit that I never tried moving around the amps on my old active Akurate due to the inbuilt chakra cards but I'm quite surpriced reading about your findings.
Sure that better amp was "better" and not under performing?
It's all about musical understanding!
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Post by Azazello »

Considering the total cost of that playback, I can't understand why he don't just get another Akurate amp?
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quinwiring a must!

Post by warrengday »

When I got my 242s I had 3 Klouts and some K600 (having just moved from an aktiv pair of AV5140s).

I initially set up with one Klout (hoping it would be enough and thus I could sell 2 klouts to help pay for the upgrade). One klout was enough.

However, I played with biamping and triamping to find out what it was like.

People had raved about how multiamping 242s was transformational.

However, this was not my experience, biamping 242 gave the same improvement in performance as biamping Keilidhs.

Recently I moved to quinwiring my 242s with some extra K400.

WOW.

I see what people are raving about, it isn't multiamping, its the multiwiring aspect of it.

THIS IS THE SECOND BIGGEST UPGRADE (t.kable) IN TERMS OF BANG-PER-BUCK I've ever made.
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