Apogee Full range

[Ron Resnick]

Marc, you like unique and quirky and you like to support small designers. Look at Miro's work:

http://www.soulsonicspeakers.com/products.html

. . . tall full-range ribbon and huge woofers. I looked at this seriously for a while.

 

[Brian Beck]

Look at Bohne. An Apogee like ribbon with huge cones.

Except that a 300mm (11.8”) ribbon cannot confer the all-important advantages of a line source that the bigger Apogees have.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, w my room, max ht of spkrs is 5-5.5', so Duettas or Scintillas only
. . .

You could try Graz-ribboned with your amplifiers. If they didn't have enough oomph then Aesthetix Atlas (less expensive option) or Lamm hybrids (more expensive option) certainly would do the trick. NAT Magma News also like would do the trick.

. . . w the strides I'm making on Zus/subs integration, marrying true room saturation on lower mids, bass and sub bass, and full agility higher up, the dilemma as always w Apogees is to ensure I can replicate the same and then go beyond.

I agree completely - that is a big risk. That is why Steve quite possibly should never change his speakers. Another speaker might fail to be better in some ways and inferior in no ways to his current speaker in his current system, and he would have gone through all that aggravation and cost simply to be at a different point on the same indifference curve.

This is a slight misuse of this economics term but when you are already very happy with your system it is difficult to make a change and achieve a Pareto optimal outcome (making at least one sonic attribute better off without making any sonic attribute worse off).

 

[Ron Resnick]

Except that a 300mm (11.8”) ribbon cannot confer the all-important advantages of a line source that the bigger Apogees have.

+1

 

[christoph]

Marc, you like unique and quirky and you like to support small designers. Look at Miro's work:

http://www.soulsonicspeakers.com/products.html

. . . tall full-range ribbon and huge woofers. I looked at this seriously for a while.

And they sounded really good in Munich this year.
As did the Alsyvox

 

[spiritofmusic]

Brian, my issue is not so much on sitting a crazy distance back from ribbons in a 48' deep room.

It would be possible to have Apogees 3' from front wall, me at rear wall, thus sitting 43-44' from them.

Not a formula for success.

I actually sit 12-13' from my Zus, and find that works, w the spkrs 8' from front wall, and rear wall 15' behind me.

No my enquiry is whether I sit 9' from them as you do, or 12-13', or further, don't we still have the persistent issue of fully energizing that large volume.

I can't see the question of sitting near field or further away having any bearing on the need to saturate a large volume of air, w bass extension to match.

And hence the age old question of tubes v SS.

Now if you've designed a hybrid amp which grabs the Apogees and gets them to fess up in such a volume, with a good tube sensibility, and laughs at Apogee current demands and low impedance demands and low sensitivity, this would have to be of interest to the potential Apogee owner wanting total performance.

I do know Henk in NL strongly recommends a modded version of a two decades old Krell design.

But a current day equivalent w the advantage of a tube signature is more my thing.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Ron, those SoulSonic just too rich for my tastes.

Btw, I fully get the principle of swapping one well thought out and practically advantageous scenario for another one, and in effect just swapping issues and frustrations.

Certainly going Apogees would be as close in this hobby to going back to school and starting again.

 

[cjfrbw]

I know Kipdent found happiness a while ago in a 20x25 room (or so) with a 70 watt SET on the midrange/high and solid state on the bass panel on some Full Range restored speakers.

I would think Marc's space would be Diva to Full Range level because of size. Divas are supposed to be the most difficult Apogee to integrate, but a favorite of those who manage it.

 

[christoph]

I know Kipdent found happiness a while ago in a 20x25 room (or so) with a 70 watt SET on the midrange/high and solid state on the bass panel on some Full Range restored speakers.

I would think Marc's space would be Diva to Full Range level because of size. Divas are supposed to be the most difficult Apogee to integrate, but a favorite of those who manage it.

IIrc Kip has the same amps as Marc

 

[spiritofmusic]

Carl, no go on Divas or FRs.
My eaves sweep down from a central apex of 3m.

At the point where the spkrs sit, the eaves would impose on anything in excess of 1.8m.

 

[Brian Beck]

fully energizing that large volume...saturate a large volume of air

I’d be the last one to arm-twist someone into a speaker that might not work for him. There are just too many variables in room acoustics and listening preferences to make blanket predictions especially from afar. But consider this: the Eminence 12” subs in the Zu have a driven surface area of 78 sq. in. and an excursion max (Xmax) of about 1/2”. The FR woofers have an area of about 1000 sq. in. Their excursion is not spec’d but it would be less than 1/2”. Call it 1/4” just for sake of argument and benefit of the doubt. So the air volume that could be moved by the FR woofer is still 6.4 times more than even a beefy 12” woofer. The Apogees are dipoles and the Zu’s not. So it’s a bit of an apples and pears comparison, but maybe this mental exercise offers some hope of being able to “energize your volume” - so long as you’ve got the unflappable power, as you say.

You can adjust the distance of the panels from the wall behind, and the listening distance. If you stay in the range of distances we discussed you will hear the main direct wavefront with little attenuation, get bass reinforcement from the wall behind, and then all other reflections will occur later and with lower amplitude than in a smaller room. That might be a best case scenario - or not to your liking; who knows? I wish I could try out a space like that with big Apogees. In a way maybe I already am with my partial back and side walls unfolding into a large living room and adjacent open spaces. I might have a comparable total volume situation. But YMMV...

 

[Brian Beck]

I just saw your ceiling limitations. Tough situation!

 

[cjfrbw]

Hmm, guess that is lower in height than I thought from the pictures of the room. I think I would rather have a Duetta with tubes on the midrange driver, hybrid SS on bass panel, and the added supertweeter over Scintilla.

I spent quite a bit of audio meditation time years ago trying to conceive of a viable way to mate Scintilla with tubes somehow. I couldn't come up with anything with active crossover that didn't involve some kind of impedance matching transformer ( so-called magic gone?) on the midrange/tweeter with a SS or hybrid SS on the bass panel. It seemed like too much of a long run for a short slide.

The Scintilla seems all about getting that one ohm impedance in the passive crossover with a high current monster amp to get the effect. Otherwise, other Apogees seem like better choices.

Although I ''kind of liked" the effect of 1 ohm/SS on Scintillas I heard, I didn't really think it was good enough to sacrifice other options. I think the effect was largely due to the pure aluminum ribbon elements, an effect that I think that can more than adequately be duplicated with a nice ribbon/and/or good HF tweeter.

Studio Grands would be nice, but they would have to be sans bass modules (height). Also, Studio Grands have the double sided mylar bass (also magic sound, like the Apogee Stage) that unfortunately suffers from unobtanium replacement parts and impedance drift because of inadequate washing with the acid etch technology used to produce them.

 

[christoph]

Hmm, guess that is lower in height than I thought from the pictures of the room. I think I would rather have a Duetta with tubes on the midrange driver, hybrid SS on bass panel, and the added supertweeter over Scintilla.

I spent quite a bit of audio meditation time years ago trying to conceive of a viable way to mate Scintilla with tubes somehow. I couldn't come up with anything with active crossover that didn't involve some kind of impedance matching transformer ( so-called magic gone?) on the midrange/tweeter with a SS or hybrid SS on the bass panel. It seemed like too much of a long run for a short slide.

The Scintilla seems all about getting that one ohm impedance in the passive crossover with a high current monster amp to get the effect. Otherwise, other Apogees seem like better choices.

Although I ''kind of liked" the effect of 1 ohm/SS on Scintillas I heard, I didn't really think it was good enough to sacrifice other options. I think the effect was largely due to the pure aluminum ribbon elements, an effect that I think that can more than adequately be duplicated with a nice ribbon/and/or good HF tweeter.

Studio Grands would be nice, but they would have to be sans bass modules (height). Also, Studio Grands have the double sided mylar bass (also magic sound, like the Apogee Stage) that unfortunately suffers from unobtanium replacement parts and impedance drift because of inadequate washing with the acid etch technology used to produce them.

A pair of Lamm M 1.1 drive the 1 ohm Scintillas wonderfully. I know this from own experience

Studio Grands are already rare beasts but Studio Ribbon Arrays seem to be rare as hens teeth. At least I have never ever come across a pair of SRAs in my long life as an Apogee devotee while I do own a pair of SGs

 

[spiritofmusic]

Actually my descending eaves have added a lot to acoustic calm.

But indeed, they preclude spkrs higher than Duettas or Scintillas.

Re Duettas, I was always under the impression they weren't bi amped, but Carl is talking two lots of amps.

I'd still be intrigued by Brian's hybrid powerhouse.

 

[Barry2013]

Marc your continuing search for what to you would be a suitable and better replacement for your existing speakers sometimes feels a bit like the search for the Holy Grail, but you are the person who has to be satisfied with any different speakers.
In the context of your desire for room saturating sound and inevitable budget considerations have you considered changing the room with a partition reducing the length of the listening area. It's not a difficult or expensive option and may be a more fruitful avenue to explore.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Barry, my system is OT for this one, it's just that Brian describes an amp approach that would be up my street, hence my interest.

Yes, the room partition idea is a good one.

 

[cjfrbw]

Stages weren't too hard to reversibly disconnect the passive crossovers and run the ribbons independently with external active crossover. Just pay attention to carefully marking the polarities and the points of connection for re-assembly. I'm sure the Duettas couldn't be much harder.

With my Analysis Epsilon, which are generally Duetta sized, I add the foil tweeter array and subs to give the four way active. It also means that the amps to the midrange ribbon and tweeters can have just moderate, direct power, without the power sucking passive crossover.

Yes, Christoph has that great palace of planar delights.

 

[Barry2013]

Barry, my system is OT for this one, it's just that Brian describes an amp approach that would be up my street, hence my interest.

Yes, the room partition idea is a good one.

Mea culpa but glad the suggestion is helpful.

 

[iansr]

It’s a mistake think all Apogees are amp killers. The Duetta and the Diva don’t have the horrendous impedance curves of the Scintilla. They are inefficient but that is easily sorted by bi-amping.