1.2 TL Crossover Upgrade Gone Very Wrong!

hearingimpared

I think!!!

Jesse and I did the upgrade June 3rd. I had the rig running for 10 days straight with classical music set at volume control 8:30 to burn-in the caps and resistors.

I'm a little freaked out because there is some very inconsistant behavior going on. I'll play records like JATP & DSOTM . . .it sounds very very good. I play the new Beatles White LP and the sound is extraordinarily shrill and unnaturally bright. I played Led Zepplin I though V CDs the week before I did the upgrade at a very loud volume and it sounded excellent. Now I play it at a reasonable level and it literally hurts my ears.

I played an MFSL of the Doobies and it sounded natural and produced a live like sound.

I'm telling you when that shrillness and overly bright sound kicks in it is absolutely awful and painful. I brought my wife in to take a listen without telling her that I suspected something was wrong and she heard it right away identified the sound the same way I did and then (I didn't need to hear this) she told me I effed up my speakers.

Any ideas???

joeparaski

delete

joeparaski

you effed up you speakers :rolleyes:

Sorry, no clue. Well maybe one....Jesse sabotaged them with a time-delay thingy that just kicked in.

Joe

hearingimpared

joeparaski wrote: »

you effed up you speakers :rolleyes:

Sorry, no clue.

Joe

Panic setting in!!!

WilliamM2

Both speakers? If it's only one, I would suspect a bad cap or resister. If it's both, it seems unlikely you would get two bad ones.

I'm sure Jesse knows what he is doing, and a crossover upgrade is very simple, seems unlikely he "effed" them up.

hearingimpared

WilliamM2 wrote: »

Both speakers? If it's only one, I would suspect a bad cap or resister. If it's both, it seems unlikely you would get two bad ones.

I'm sure Jesse knows what he is doing, and a crossover upgrade is very simple, seems unlikely he "effed" them up.

He does and I don't think we screwed them up. It is definitely both speakers.
I'm just not sure what's what here. I think I need another pair of ears on them to get some ideas.

hearingimpared

Lasareath wrote: »

Joe, Thank god I waited, I was going to buy the sonicaps on friday. I am ready to make mine sound awesome with the new upgrade but if your not happy I'm not doing mine.

Maybe you should try just one at a time like William suggested, maybe it is just one bad cap.

Now you got me scared, I might have to find a second pair of crossovers and upgrade those, that way I can swap them out and listen to the original and the new ones and make a better decision.

Maybe I should bring mine down to your house and we can compare the sound?

Sal

Sal this is a tried and true method we have going here. I don't think it was screwed up, I think something just isn't right that's all. I think you should order your caps and resistors and not let this change our plans.

Hell it may not even be the speakers, maybe the Parasound is acting up??? It could be anything at this point.

Frank Z

Turn in all your Polk speakers and get your new cutesy Bose cubes at the exit door.

F1nut

Sounds to me like you're finding out what a good recording can sound like and how many bad recordings are really out there.

Seriously, I don't know. Give it some more time.

hearingimpared

F1nut wrote: »

Sounds to me like you're finding out what a good recording can sound like and how many bad recordings are really out there.

Seriously, I don't know. Give it some more time.

Okeydokey.

F1nut

Call me tomorrow.

Deadof_knight

Tell me its not true , have you listened to these recordings before . you need to go back and listen to your ( reference material) a recording you know that sounds good in the past before and after the upgrade

BlueMDPicker

Did you change any other components, IC's, cartridge, etc during the period? If so, I would take everything back to pre-upgrade configuration and try that.

I also noticed you had a PR issue you've been dealing with. Are the cabinets as "air tight" as they were before the rattle fix?

Good luck! Hope you find the gremlin.

hearingimpared

BlueMDPicker wrote: »

Did you change any other components, IC's, cartridge, etc during the period? If so, I would take everything back to pre-upgrade configuration and try that.

I also noticed you had a PR issue you've been dealing with. Are the cabinets as "air tight" as they were before the rattle fix?

Good luck! Hope you find the gremlin.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA This is funny because the xovers are the first tweak that I did without other tweaks involved. So yes this is the only thing that I did and nothing else was changed. Usually like a nut ball, I do two or three tweaks at a time and confuse the issue.

The problem with the cabinet has been resolved albeit temporarily and there is no air leak. I really think that they need to break in more.

On one hand making these bigguns more accurate will expose bad recordings on the other hand, and this is why I think they need to break in more, when I play a bad recording such as the Beatles White Album, side one sounded like pure ****, side two sounded better but with wisps of the bad sound through it.

I am running Led Zepplin, "Whole Lotta Love" in a loop at a moderate level to let them continue to burn-in. This is the recording that sounded great before I did the upgrade and now is shrill and overly bright. I think when this starts sounding good, I will know I am on the right track with the burn-in possibility.

heiney9

In my experience break-in is key. And yes they are going to sound different, they should sound better and poor recordings are going to stick out like a red headed step child.

Good luck and patience my dear grasshopper

H9

heiney9

hearingimpared wrote: »

I am running Led Zepplin, "Whole Lotta Love" in a loop at a moderate level to let them continue to burn-in. This is the recording that sounded great before I did the upgrade and now is shrill and overly bright. I think when this starts sounding good, I will know I am on the right track with the burn-in possibility.

I take it the Zep is from cd. To be brutally honest I don't care for all the remastered Zep material. It's not horrible but it is a bit bright and edgey on some tracks. Perhaps with the better components in the x-over you are now hearing this; just a thought.

H9

hearingimpared

heiney9 wrote: »

In my experience break-in is key. And yes they are going to sound different, they should sound better and poor recordings are going to stick out like a red headed step child.

Good luck and patience my dear grasshopper

H9

Master, I thought that 10 days of around the clock (240 hours) burn-in would be enough, but I guess I was wrong.

heiney9

hearingimpared wrote: »

Master, I thought that 10 days of around the clock (240 hours) burn-in would be enough, but I guess I was wrong.

Well that certainly should be enough. I honestly don't know what to tell you other than maybe some of the recordings you are playing are starting to show their true colors. Maybe it's another component, but that would be a long shot that one piece would take a dump right after you upgraded the x-overs.

Maybe it's time to sell them and buy some Bose cubes














Did I just say that last part out loud??

H9

hearingimpared

heiney9 wrote: »

I take it the Zep is from cd. To be brutally honest I don't care for all the remastered Zep material. It's not horrible but it is a bit bright and edgey on some tracks. Perhaps with the better components in the x-over you are now hearing this; just a thought.

H9

Yes it is from a CD from the "Complete Studio Collection" box set. What you say makes perfect sense because of the following and my wife reminded me of this last night;

When we were over Antny's New Years Eve, he played a couple of cuts from this collection through his, I think Luxman, tube CDP, VTL pre, Carver asskicker amps, and Carver Amazings. It sounded just like what I am hearing now on my rig. We both thought that maybe Antny did have his rig set-up and dialed in properly and we wrote off the bad sound to that. It seems maybe his rig was so good and accurate that it exposed a bad CD for what it was.

Now, before I did the upgrade I listened to that exact box set the first five LZ alubums and it sounded awesome. Now it sounds bad so I can only come up with two possibilities; 1. the caps need a little more break-in time, 2. the speakers have become so accurate with all the tweaks and upgrades I've done to them that they have become very accurate and are simply portraying the source uncolored. I sincerely hope it is number one.:(

hearingimpared

heiney9 wrote: »

Maybe it's time to sell them and buy some Bose cubes H9

I would rather shove needles into my ears followed by hot wax than sell these masterpieces.:eek:

heiney9

hearingimpared wrote: »

I would rather shove needles into my ears followed by hot wax then sell these masterpieces.:eek:

Well that might help with your current situation. Maybe they will sound better then <JK>

amulford

Give it a little time... To tell you the truth, I don't like the remastered box set. I think they sound like ****, but I love the music. Try some on vinyl and see what you get.

It might be the accuracy thing...

DarqueKnight

I experienced the same thing when I upgraded my 1.2TL's and again when I upgraded my amps. Some recordings that were average or marginal became unlistenable.

If your well-recorded reference recordings are sounding better than before the upgrade and only a few not-so-well-recorded recordings are sounding bad, then I would say yoiu are just being "punished" for increasing the resolution of your rig.

hearingimpared

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I experienced the same thing when I upgraded my 1.2TL's and again when I upgraded my amps. Some recordings that were average or marginal became unlistenable.

If your well-recorded reference recordings are sounding better than before the upgrade and only a few not-so-well-recorded recordings are sounding bad, then I would say yoiu are just being "punished" for increasing the resolution of your rig.

Come to think of it, if this is true, I can use MIT cables with the switches to roll off the shrillness of the not so good recordings, no?

DarqueKnight

I don't know. Maybe. The impedance mismatch might temper the shrillness but might also introduce some other ugliness into the sound. I'll defer to some of the MIT experts here.

DarqueKnight

hearingimpared wrote: »

I play the new Beatles White LP and the sound is extraordinarily shrill and unnaturally bright.

I am not a Beatles fan, but I recalled reading some bad reviews of the sound quality of the White LP. Here's a link from Audio Asylum:

Beatles White LP Sound Quality Comments At Audio Asylum

hearingimpared

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I am not a Beatles fan, but I recalled reading some bad reviews of the sound quality of the White LP. Here's a link from Audio Asylum:

Beatles White LP Sound Quality Comments At Audio Asylum

Well that definitely makes me feel better or maybe not, I paid $50 for this new White LP release!!!

DK have you experienced this shrill, unnatural brightness I speak of?

DarqueKnight

I don't recall having any recordings that I would say were "shrill", which to me means thin and hollow sounding to the point of being nearly as irritating as the sound made by scraping fingernails across a chalkboard.

I had a Phil Collins "No Jacket Required" LP that I thought was unnaturally bright to the point of being unlistenable.

hearingimpared

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I don't recall having any recordings that I would say were "shrill", which to me means thin and hollow sounding to the point of being nearly as irritating as the sound made by scraping fingernails across a chalkboard.

Yes that is it but more, harsh & grainey sounding, distorted. It literally hurts my ears.

F1nut

I can use MIT cables with the switches to roll off the shrillness of the not so good recordings, no?

They don't work like that.

hearingimpared

Well I let the crossovers burn in another 90 hours which puts almost 340 on them and I must say I am a bit embarrassed for panicking :eek: so easily!:o They just took longer to break in than originally thought. As a matter of fact they could probably use 50 to 60 more hours to be right on.

I also did quite a bit of troubleshooting with Jesse and Ben's help which by the way they kept me from pulling my hair out of my head.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the upgrade. The 1.2 TLs sound awesome. My wife and I have been listening to Steely Dan, the Beatles, and Led Zepplin for the past three hours and I can say unequivocally that doing the upgrade to the crossovers is the best thing I've done so far to my rig.

The music that sounded so harsh and shrill has toned down to the point of being very easy to listen to. Better recordings are incredible.

I'm going to start another thread on the whole upgrade process and a review.

Preliminary impressions are:

Incredible Bass response;

More accurate production of instruments;

Detail, detail, detail, inner detail, WOW;

Deeper soundstage;

More defined soundstage.

I'm a happy camper.:D