West coast gathering!

danger boy

I had a wonderful weekend in Boise. Got to meet warviper, his wife and two daughters. Lovely family.

I'll post some pics tonight after work.

stay tuned.

danger boy

here is Cuong (warvipers) 2 channel set up. it's built around the (sda) 1C's.

this is my (Danger Boy's) first ever exposure to any SDA's, ever. I've led a sheltered life. what can i say?? ha ha ha

Anyway. We listened to some music without the CAL tube DAC. I was immediately impressed with the SDA effect of the 1C's. (i'm easily impressed)

I was curiouis what the sound would be like if we disconnected the SDA cable. Hmmmm? Interesting. First it sounded pretty flat. No soundstage. To me they didn't even sound like they were in stereo. It sounded like a left and right mono signal only. We quickly reconnected the cable again.

We then hooked up the CAL DAC and continued to listen to more music. Everything from some mellow lounge music to some Black Eyed Peas, to Evanescence, to John Mellencamp.. etc.

The 1C's are hooked up via signal cables, to a B&K preamp running to I think a Sunfire amp, with plenty of power behind it.

After listening to several different types of music.. I was sad to learn that the 1C's appear to lack decent bass. Yes they can handle some bass.. with ease. But not if you leave your treble and bass knobs at 0 or flat. Treble was nice. Bass was somewhat lacking. This of course was not because of a lack of power.. the Sunfire i think was around 300wpc. Plenty of headroom.

Once we upped the bass a few clicks on the B&K preamp.. to me, they appeared to come to life quite a bit.

I'll let warviper correct or add to anything in here he likes.

on to more pics

danger boy

nice shot of the left 1C ...

danger boy

here is Al (danger boy) on the left and Cuong (warviper) on the right.

Discussing the finer points of good beer. lol
not really.

This was the begining of the 2 channel listening.

I thought it was fair that I post a pic so you all would believe me that I was actually there.

Small gathering. warviper, danger boy and DB's roommate Rich. (Rich is taking the pics)

danger boy

warviper looking thru his collection of CD's

danger boy

here is danger boy on the left and warviper on the right. forgot to attach in earlier post.

danger boy

after to many beers.. ha ha ha.

we had to have a seat.. and hook up the monitor 7b's. to the Sunfire amp.

surprising how nice the monitor 7's sound still. The 7's made the trip from Spokane to Boise with ease.. about 400+ miles.

FYI: Banana plugs help make connections much easier with my stubby fingers.

danger boy

the four of us... warviper , his wife, DB and Rich. this time we let Rich eat and not have to take any more pics.

to wrap up our wonderful visit.. we finished it off with a trip to the Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

(try the prime rib. it's excellent)!!

danger boy

we did watch a movie and listen to about half of Hell Freezes Over by the Eagles in DTS.

I'll let warviper tell you about his HT set up... and how he liked the SVS.

We hooked up my SVS 20-39PCi. The SVS also made the trip from Spokane to Boise and back again unharmed. ha ha ha.

F1nut

Looks like everybody had a good time and good to finally put a face to Warviper, his lovely wife and DB's roommate, I've seen you before Al.

The 1C's should have plenty of bass as they are rated down to 15Hz and 35Hz at -3dB, so I'd have to say it was something other than the speakers. For starters, I'm sure spikes would help on that carpet.

Thanks for sharing the gathering with us and hopefully this will inspire more West Coast Polkfests!

Shizelbs

I'm glad to hear you all had a good time. At the same time, however, screw you all for not having to work on the weekends. I am jealous and pissed I was not there. Go to hell.:mad:

danger boy

I can't say why the 1C's seemed to lack bass... but they did. especially when we moved them away from the back wall.

That was my only experience with any SDA's. I'd need to "borrow" a pair for someone in here for closer inspection.

When we upped the bass on the pre.. the bass became mid level bass thumpy. and not hitting very low at all. It seemed unnatural sounding when we did this.

So I can't say why it sounded that way to my ears. I'm not a bass head by any means. but two channel music sounds best to me if there is some bass to it. At a flat level on the trebble and bass.. the bass was nearly gone.

What would spikes do for the sound?

We listened to the 1C's standing and sitting on the floor.. it didn't seem to make any difference to my ears..

F1nut

The SDA's need to be close to the back wall to produce decent bass, it's just part of the design. The spikes will anchor the cabinet to a solid mass (the sub-flooring), in turn helping solidify the bass. They are other factors involved including the source, cables and room acoustics.

warviper

I noticed that too about the Sdas that the bass was lacking but to me it was because I was so use to boomy bass from other speakers that the sdas natural sounding bass was lacking. It kinda grows on you and when you hear other speakers you get hit in the face with how muddy and booomy they appear to be. Thats why Im gonna leave it at flat on the tone control and and find other fixes for it. The B&k preamp does not do the Sdas any favors in the bass department either it seems to be sucking a little of the bass out some how compared to the Adcom Passive unit that I had hooked up prior to the B&K.

All for now but more to come latter.:D

dorokusai

Fantastic, nice to see another face, Warviper, added to the list. I saw a pic of that crazy Al a long time ago

Sounds like it was a cool get together. Monitor 7's...sweet.

Al - If you are hearing bass issues, you are a slave to the SVS It could be a number of factors, but only WV knows the particulars. I think the windows behind the speakers may be contributing to the flattening of the bass, due to it not being a true surface. Glass as far as I know, tends to ring or simply reflect to another surface or area...one of which could be outdoors.

I have ran into a "too much" bass issue a couple times given the material, and my listening volume. It has never...ever...been boomy, always tight, placement is 2" from the wall, and the setup is not SDA "recommended".

The "too much bass" experience is due to the fact that one of my 8 mid/bass drivers was tapping, in other words being overdriven. It may be that it is, or will be the first driver to expire at some point. I have "Warm" tubes coupled with an Amp that is known to be really heavy in the bass region....so needless to say, I'm cool in that respect.

I really think that it's 75% gear driven for SDA placement, as the three best setups I have heard, non-standard placement essentially, have been Russman, F1Nut and Myself. None of these setups are "ideal" yet ALL of them sound beyond normal. The SDA is going to do what it does regardless of the room in my experience, within reason.

I guess it depends on how much you subscribe to reflection, room gain, blah blah. I subscribe to the idea, but often there is not alot one is able to do about placement of mains, and you make the best decision possible. I believe in room issues, but I'll be damned if the aformentioned setups aren't stellar regardless of that fact, especially F1Nut's.

As a side note, the common theme in all the best SDA's I have heard?...Tubes. Tube Pre, Tube Integrated and Tube Pre.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Sound & Vision Magazine!

I-SIG

Originally posted by danger boy
After listening to several different types of music.. I was sad to learn that the 1C's appear to lack decent bass. Yes they can handle some bass.. with ease. But not if you leave your treble and bass knobs at 0 or flat. Treble was nice. Bass was somewhat lacking. This of course was not because of a lack of power.. the Sunfire i think was around 300wpc. Plenty of headroom.

Once we upped the bass a few clicks on the B&K preamp.. to me, they appeared to come to life quite a bit.

Interesting. My 1C's dig down pretty well to about 25Hz. I wonder how much help my "tubish" Audio Alchemy DLC preamp adds, not to mention a rather beastly Parasound...

FWIW, I run mine about 6-7" from the back wall and have at least 2 ft. on the outside of each speaker. Hmmm...I think I'll create a System Showcase tonight! See how my rinky-dink set-up compares to the other SDAnuts around here.

Wes
(my bass comments come from before I added the SVS)

warviper

Now first off is much thanx to Al and his freind Rich for makeing the long trip.

SVS:

The Svs that all brought over looked big and bad. It easily double the size of ieather of my subs. The sound that it produces is clean and strong, not over powering. I think that my dual setup has more volume to it but there seems to be a verry strained sound no where near the smooth sound that the svs makes. I was impressed considering the fact that the svs retails for about 600 and my deftech was almost 900 and the klipsh was about a grand. Some one had it right in there signature, "If I had only known what to buy". Ohh well luckily this is one of lifes problems that can be fixed.



Tube Dac:

Sniff...... man I miss that little black box. Like with most things I find with audio I find that when I first heard it I did not notice that much of a change but noe that it is gone I definitly feel it now that it is gone. The vocals were so much clearer and vibrant. The clarity was spot on and the percision was something that I truely miss.


Monitor 7s:

Well Im just gonna say it, when i first saw the 7s I thought old speakers old sound. I have a pair of speakers in the garage that look similar to the 7s being that they are about 20 years old. That is all that they have in common, the 7s were wonderfull. We hooked it up to the sunfire 300wpc and they sounded almost as good as the 1cs in the mid and high range but they do trail off in the low range. Lol not knocking the 7s they are a about a quarter the size of the 1cs so they do verry admrible job. So bottom line is if you have an opprotunity to purchase a pair you should do it because they are keepers.

To be continued......