H's diyed setup

It was a rare treat indeed, an opportunity to
listen to a pair of vintage speakers. I've to
thank H's generosity for the listening session,
& also the refreshing drink upon arrival, as the
afternoon was a rather dry and very hot weather
that we are experiencing now in the Klang
Valley.

The speakers were placed in the living hall
area, the sight of the speakers were very
eye catching and ever attractive, but never
imposing that some audiophiles may think
otherwise. The lighting from the garden
next to the listening area provided the
diffused lighting that provided the right
speaker with shades of hue, form and
shape! A beautiful sight to behold, and
kept my eyes on it for a full minute!




Basically it's a 288-8L compression driver (sensitivity
of 119db/m 30w) attached to a Jabo exponential horn
sitting on top of large speaker cabinets designed after
the altec 828 cabinet, that house a Altec Lansing driver,
the Voice of Theatre driver, the altec woofer 416-8c
with a 99db/m compression driver in each cabinet
enclosures. The Altec n501-8b cross-over placed
externally on top of the speaker cabinets.




The horn tweeters at the moment placed temporarily
on a foam packaging as the purpose build stand has
not arrived in time for the listening session. The
external cross-over placed on top of cabinet for now.



This boxed unit of cross-over enabled the tweeters to be
tuned & integrated with the main woofer driver unit!
As it has the user friendly adjustable knobs to fine tuned
to match the tweeters with the woofer drivers!


The rack of amplification equipments and CD source
placed next to the left speakers with a 10" active Klipsch
subwoofer (in picture) for conducting some fact finding
experimentations.



The flared design of the cabinets and driver placement
within the cabinet together with the horn tweeters have
enabled the sound to be projected over a wide angle
and listeners will find listening at almost any place
in the listening area will be equally listenable with
a tonal balance quite acceptable. However, me being
the stereotyped audiophile still choose to listen at
a position which is equal distant from each speaker
cabinets!


Other learned audiophiles who were with me at the
listening session tended to agree with me on the
wide sound dispersion! They too agreed on the
beguiling tonality and the effortless sound from
the combined source, amplifications & drivers!


Most part of the listen session we listened to
mainstream jazz which showcased the sound,
and especially one is doing some work on the
computer, the music would do good
accompaniments or entertainments if one
wants to call it that. Very comfortable sound
to listen all day long, with no fatigue whatsoever!

Anyway, I tried out Mussorgski's Picture at an
Exhibition: The Great Gate Of Kiev from Crystal
Cable's Selection of their Arabesque album.
Rendition was on a grand scale and effortless,
and enjoyable. I tried Suzanne Vega's Luca,
the system is not so suitable for this genre of
music, the pace has got to be much faster
with added slam to be enjoyable. However,
the system could shine with Santana's hits!!!!
Now that's something to think about!!!



A short experiment was conducted during the listening
session with the 10" Klipsch subwoofer switched on.
There were slightly more body to the whole sound picture.



The main rig: diyed valve monobloc amplifiers, a WE91a
300b configuration based on Joe Roberts schematics
in Sound Practices Magazine. Tubes are Jan Philips 6j7,
Shuguang treasures 300z, RCA 5u4g rectifiers, Audio
Note resistors & Mundorf silver gold oil coupling
capacitors, Oligato film oil PSU capacitors, Sophia
Electric OPT, Prometheus Audio power transformers
& inductors.


Pic taken: Olympus 4/3 system, e620, 14-42mm f3.5-4.5