In Reply to: Re: Sound Labs posted by Roy on July 2, 2002 at 01:34:39:
Kevin understands this stuff much better than I do. But none other than Dr. West himself has advised strongly against driving the toroid straight through without the preceding hi-pass filter. I think it has something to do with the "leakage inductance" of the toroid and the fact that wihout the filter the amp may see a very low impedance across the primary side of the toroid. Also, re the statement you quoted, WITH the caps in circuit any DC that comes from your amp will be blocked from the toroid. Without the x-over network, the toroid will see the DC. Putting DC into the audio transformer is a BAD thing. But I leave it to others to add details. Don't do it. As for the "low quality" capacitors in the hi-pass filter, (i) they really aren't so bad compared to many/most other commercial products and (ii) replace them with better ones, if you wish. (I confess that I did that, using MIT PPFX-S caps, and got a big improvement in sound. I am going to try polystyrenes in the M1s.) As far as using an Audio Research amp with an Atma-sphere amp to bi-amp the spkrs, all I can say is try it. There are guys who use transistor amps on the bottom half and tubes on top, so your proposal is less radical. My conundrum would be where to use the AR amp, since IMO the Atma amps have both better bass AND better treble vs most AR amps I have heard, which admittedly is not a wide selection.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Sound Labs - Lew 06:55:49 07/02/02 (7)
- Re: Sound Labs - Roy 13:39:52 07/02/02 (6)
- Re: Sound Labs - Lew 14:20:13 07/02/02 (5)
- Re: Sound Labs - Roy 16:13:56 07/02/02 (4)
- Re: Sound Labs - Lew 07:41:54 07/03/02 (3)
- Re: Sound Labs - Roy 16:48:25 07/03/02 (2)
- Re: Sound Labs - Lew 07:01:06 07/05/02 (1)
- Re:Sound Labs - Roy 15:08:05 07/05/02 (0)