bonzo wrote:An observation in regard to “muscle” amp. When listening to music I almost always listen in the room where the gear is. I’ve noticed something familiar when I am outside the listening room. So very similar to my experience with Aktiv 212s with 4200s, the music seemed/ felt “louder” outside of the room. I believe these wonderful amps provide the same experience. Outside of my listening room I’m constantly surprised at how “loud” the music is throughout the house. Like Aktiv, because these amps are so musical, and distortion (not sure if correct term) barely exists, it doesn’t feel loud until outside the room. I hope I’ve been able to make my point and haven’t confused the group
bonzo wrote:Ozzy,
I’m quite intrigued by your post about Totem speakers. I’d love to hear your thoughts/experience comparing these speakers to 242s, for example, or any other Linn speakers. No crossover for the bass is interesting and a bit unclear to me. If not active, how can there Not be a passive crossover. I anxiously await your response. Ty, Jon
I thought I'd give a shot to both of these. We tend to be accustomed to rate loudness of things by how much distortion we hear rather than how many decibels are actually being put out. A more distorted sound rates as louder. Because of this you might find that two amps getting close to clipping will have one sounding louder than the other even at the same measured decibel level because that amp is distorting more. Put the other way the better amp can be playing quite loud without you thinking it is loud. It only becomes obvious how loud it is when you try to have a conversation with somebody, get a phone call or, as above, go into another room.
On the Totem speakers with no crossover to the bass driver, this is not uncommon. It was actually used a fair bit on early acoustic suspension designs and has been considered by some as a mark of a good design. (Rega has also used it in a few models so maybe not a surprise that Ozzy likes both them and the Totems.) Basically it is accomplished by designing the bass driver so that it has a relatively smooth natural rolloff at the top of its range and then designing a tweeter to match. In the simplest versions the tweeter is designed to have the same efficiency as the bass/mid driver and only a single capacitor is necessary to block low frequencies from getting to the tweeter and blowing it up. Rega and others have been known to change the winding of the voice coil on a bass driver to give a specific inductance so they get the right blend with other drivers without extra crossover components. Of course, this only works with two way, or possibly 2.5 way speakers. Going to three way is going to require more complex crossovers - one reason there are so many two-way speakers out there.