Question to AI owners

fredv

Just bought an AI L1 and wonder how are the speaker cables supposedly to be connected. This pre's output is phase inverted. Should I reverse the polarities of both speakers? Also, what are your opinions with tube rolling with AI pre?

Thanks!!!

george daniel

I just reversed mine @ the amp. I just put in some EI elites,smooth mid and highs,,so far I've had the sovteks,b-boys,and just for fun,, some groove tubes.What do you have in now? Congratulations on your new aquisition.

fredv

Hi George,

The L1 comes with Sovtek's. Even with that, the L1 already sounds very good. For comparision, I simply replaced the AR SP6-C1 with the L1 and left everything in the food chain the same. This is based on 30 minutes and a few songs that I listen very often. It is more neutral and transparent than the AR. Mid is noticeably more fluid, and the AR is having pretty good tubes at the line stage - 2xGE 3-mica black plate 5751, 1xAmperex malformed PQ 6922. I am very impressed by the L1. I have a few BB, Philips Jan 6922, Philips 7DJ8 in the bin to roll; however, you can tell me which ones are not worth to waste time :-)

Edit: a pair of GE 6DJ* as well :-)

Cheers,

madmax

I used my 3A with the speaker wires as marked, but only because I have SDA's which you cannot swap the polarity. The stuff I read for conventional speakers said to reverse the speaker wires or if you are doing vinyl you can swap the cartridge output.
madmax

fredv

Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the post. I totally forgot the swapping of polarity at the speakers conflict with the SDA!!

For the sake of curiosity, I tried both normal and inverted polarity at the speakers and found the inverted phase sound a little richer at the mid to id-low range. I also found the L1 was a little noisy while there is no input. The hiss is somewhat high, I wonder it has anything to do with the tubes or unmatch impedances between L1 and the amp?

Cheers,

madmax

Never any hiss with the 3A and I'm pretty sure the L1 should not have any either. At least not unless you turn the volume control all the way up. Do you have it set up so with the volume control at about 3/4 you are at your peak amp output?

As for the SDA's I finally figured out how to do it but it didn't seem worth the hassle. You have to remove each driver and change the phase there, tweets included. I had a dac at the time where I could flip a switch to change phase but it was such a small change in sound. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. You know that all recorded material isn't phased correctly either?
madmax

fredv

Yup, the Sovtek's are the culprit. The pair of GE were even worse. The GE's were dead quiet in the GTA SEP-1 SE but doesn't stand a blow in the L1!! Dropped in a pair of Amperex BB, the L1 is dead quiet. Wow, many people said the AI was very picky on tubes, I experienced the first day I owned it!!!

Chuck, you just taught me a second lesson today :-) The AR DAC-1 has an invert switch, but I never figured out when to use it as it didn't seem to make any different to me. Now I am going to flip it a few times to see whether I can hear anything :-)