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Post by John on Mar 28, 2015 18:07:46 GMT
I arranged a visit to hear Craig Open Baffles. Thank you so much for your Kindness Craig.
The LX521 are very well made Craig did all the wood cutting. His system is very Open and Musical loads of Attack and the bass goes down very low. I actually prefer than to my Open Baffles they have a bit more bass extension and he was getting a bit more detail. The speakers excel in that live vibe they do both intimacy and attack well, but will show up flaws in recordings. Certainly one of the finest speakers I have ever heard regardless of price.
We talked about his system and both agree attending to the phonostage would bring his front end up and perhaps beyond his digital System. At the moment Craig digital system certainly has the edge.
Craig also talked about adding subwoofers to go even lower, to be honest unless watching films I really would not feel need myself.
You have to admire the effort Craig has put into building his system, he certainly has a reference system that compete with the very best.
For me its still a expensive route to undertake, when I can I probably get the Hawthorne AMT 700 drivers as my next speaker upgrade. But very impressed with this approach
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 28, 2015 18:12:52 GMT
Sounds like you had a good day John - food for thought for the future?
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Post by John on Mar 28, 2015 18:24:31 GMT
For me it shows how good active can be. The sound was totally effortless via CD. It makes me question going totally active again
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2015 19:02:33 GMT
Thank you for the kind words John. Whenever you embark on a major and very expensive build like this, you always wonder whether it cuts muster with anyone other than the guy with hundreds of hours investment and buckets of money in the things.
So it was certainly a relief that you liked what you heard!
But I am sure I agree with you entirely about the phono stage. Both the power amps (all 8 channels worth) and the phono stage are Douglas Self designs. Whereas the Blameless power amps really sing, I don't think he got it right with the phono stage. It is a hybrid, with paralleled bipolars at the input, capacitor (!!) coupled to the cartridge. It has to be because the base of the bipolars is not at ground potential. RIAA is done inside the feedback loop, and there are several op amps too. Overall the design is showing its age. It is also very prone indeed to hum pick up from any transformers in a fairly wide vicinity, which speaks for loose circuit board layout.
I've had a pending project to build an all-FET design, designed by Erno Borbely and Sigurd Ruschkowski. I've got the PCBs for a fully balanced input ('cos a cartridge is balanced - it actually knows nothing about earth at its output terminals), and balanced or single ended output. What is really interesting is that it operates in current mode. So the (moving coil) cartridge supplies current into a dead short (and the current is amplified) and not voltage across a load resistor (100 ohms say). The only hold up is procuring matched sets of obsolete FETs!
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Post by Sovereign on Mar 28, 2015 22:22:07 GMT
This thread is ripe for some pictures
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2015 8:26:37 GMT
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Post by ChrisB on Mar 29, 2015 9:20:18 GMT
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