Three boxes from Greece - Tune Audio

Just received these three boxes.
Probably contain statues from Ancient Greece…

 

Subscribed. Looking forward to seeing the final set up of the room.

 

My 70-80W Nat SE2SE 211s should work a treat. Have a fantastically solid and fleshy midband/upper bass that potentially dry and skeletal sounding Animas would naturally benefit from. My view is based on three occasions w these spkrs, twice w SS ie Modwright and FirstWatt, and once w big tubes.

 

Just received these three boxes.

Congratulations! I hope you'll be as happy with your Animas as I continue to be with mine.

But let me share the most important finding of mine, during the last 3 years or so...

My own measurements (with the internal crossover bypassed) suggest the following horn sensitivities for the Anima:

- mid horn ~ 109dB/W
- treble horn ~ 107dB/W
- bass horn ~ 102dB/W down to about 60Hz or so, and then falling off rapidly thereafter

This is why there are adjustments on the back of the Animas to attenuate down the mid and treble to match the lower sensitivity bass. Generally, I've had to set the mid to about 9 o'clock and the treble to about 12 o'clock to achieve a reasonable balance, and indeed this was the case when both Ked and Marc made their respective visits. The resulting sound can be very good, but the downside for getting a more balanced sound is a reduction in the overall senstivity of the speaker to about 102dB/W. The mid and treble horns will still require very little wattage, most of the power going to the bass. And there's still the rapid fall-off below 60Hz or so.

With ~ 102dB/W overall senstivity, I've found that it's pretty much impossible to get good, taut and tuneful bass with low powered amps. I've driven my Animas fully with my Thoress 300B amps (~8W or so), and the sound is good, but the bass simply doesn't cut it. It's there, but isn't in any way musical to my ears. There's just no drive, no texture, and the timing is non-existent.

Recently, I've started using DSP in Roon to adjust the levels between the drivers. Here's the equalisation curve that gives me an nice even sound across the spectrum at the listening position (with the Anima's rear attenuators set to max (zero attenuation), so essentially by-passed):



As you can see, quite a bit of equalisation is required between the drivers, especially the bass driver.

With this DSP, driving the Animas fully with my 25 watt class-A SS sounds wonderful. BUT...

Bi-amping, with my 25W class-A SS driving the mid and treble horns, and a 200W SS driving the bass, the Animas sound sublime, and rock with all genres of music. A truly full range sound. So much so that I'd put them up against any other speaker I've heard at the Munich show.

If I had the inclination, I'd go for tri-amping, with the Thoress 300Bs driving the mids, but I can't bring myself to go through all the effort... when the sound is already so good.

You may want to take a more minimalist approach with a single 'nice' amp driving the whole speaker. In which case my advice would be to assume an overall 102dB/W sensitivity, and to use a reasonably powerful amp. And just accept that you'll never get much in the way of the lowest octave.

The Animas are truly wonderful speakers, but will require a bit of work to get the absolute best out of.

Good luck, and well done on a great choice!

Cheers,
Mani.

 

Very interesting, Mani, would love to hear that biamped version

 

Very interesting, Mani, would love to hear that biamped version

As soon as the lockdown eases up, you'll be welcome.

Mani.