We moved and have now finally have a set up I am happy with.  Big changes and even new model horns.  I tried to keep most of my sources the same to have a handle on how my system is sounding with respect of my older room.  As I settle in I will be upgrading sources too.

sadurniacoustics October 09, 2016 04:10

HI Daveyf,
Well I still have my EAD dac of course, I have not tried it head to head against a better DAC or against DSD files, but from memory I still think it stands its ground nicely, driven by the Forsell. Very few dacs have impressed me, but the ones that did, really leave the EAD in the dust.
MSB is just amazing, but also the Empirical Audio, with a different taste to it.
Funny thing: my favorite tracks even with the Uber DACs and servers are always WAV....

sadurniacoustics May 26, 2015 23:04

Hello Dmarkov,
Yes SET amps can vary greatly! At 110 dB we are inmune to wattage, so very interesting finds can be made. Given the low wattage I found a 45 SET amp with the driver and 45 tube regulated, not expensive and sounds amazing! But one of my Favorites is still some expensive Audio note.
Which is your favorite SET amp?

Just had the pleasure to try a very good server and DAC: wow. It is not the tape with all the organic load it carries, but some details I thought were hard to beat even by the tape!

sadurniacoustics May 26, 2015 22:57

A new review of our horns

http://dagogo.com/sadurni-acoustics-staccato-speakers-review-part-i-setup

sadurniacoustics March 29, 2015 16:03

Hello Skushino,

Well the horn integration is indeed complicated. Horns seem to have a mind of their own when it comes to Xovers, and no matter what level xover you put, they just do what they are designed to do.
Horns have a good response for a given range, past that range the response drops pretty fast, so you could say they have their own integrated Xover, given their design frequency cut off. After that you can just tune the sound of the horn with an electrical Xover.
When we decided the Upper bass horn sounding properly,we measured the response a built several horns of different sizes, from 300 hz up to 700 hz and tested all of them with just a simple Xover at speaker level, first order. Once we had the horn size that integrated the best, we played around with a first order Xover just to tune the response to our taste, getting a nice integration with the channel below it as with the tweeter on top.
Being able to time align every driver-horn combination by itself helps a lot also.

Love my Forsell BTW.

sadurniacoustics November 28, 2013 20:06

I heard a lot of good things about the Cantilever mods, but I hear ESCCO is sort of packed with work.
I have the aluminum body ready to recieve the 103, but havent got the guts yet to "cut it out"

I am just beggining to get some horns rolling out to reviewers and reps. When I have soemthing ready I will let you know. NYC and Chicago are on the list.

sadurniacoustics November 04, 2013 04:17

About First Watt, my reference preamp for a while was the B1, a stepped attenuator was a big upgrade.
I tried F3 and F5 amps first in full range and then multiamped with a SET amp for the mids and highs, much better but phase missalignments are a real problem if you use different amps.
I heard a lot of good things about the SITT amps, would love to try them out.

sadurniacoustics November 02, 2013 21:52

Drajreynolds, Interesting questions. It is most important to have everything time aligned, physically and acoustically If possible, the speakers leave the possibility to slide the drivers back and forth a bit for this, though it takes patience and a little knowledge to do it.
I am using an Active xover for lower bass from around 100 hz down to 25hz (high passed). Yes there is a provision for EQ and my listening room has a resonance at 50hz. SO I tried using the EQ to fix it, it does nothing if you try to be conservative, If you go crazy and turn the knob all the way it kills bass, dynamics and tone: all gone. Complicated thing this EQ.
I connect Bass Xovers at speaker lever so the SET amp is pushing down to 25 hz, if you use only one amp (plus the bass amp). Now if you want to use 2 amps or say one stereo per side, I like using a low pass from 800hz down so the Upper bass horn is run by one amp, and this same amp runs the bass Active Xovers (and bass amp, of course); And another amp to run midrange and tweeters.
I have tried active Xovers, digital Xovers, Passive line level Xovers and speaker level Xovers, and the one that offers a lower insertion loss IME is the speaker level XOver. If you multiamp I would recommend to leave the speaker level XOvers do the hard work and add a simple 1st order PLLXO, to loosen the work of the amps.
The nice thing about multiamping is the transparency achieved and the possibility to do volume micro adjustments that really blow things up. Once you time align acoustically, set volumes perfectly with an RTA and readjust by ear, it gets scary how good it can sound.

sadurniacoustics November 02, 2013 21:45

Charles, I love my Forsell, I cannot listen to digital without it. I am waiting for a server to compete with it.

sadurniacoustics November 02, 2013 21:24

Hello Charles1dad,
Love that Coincident preamp, I was about to get one a few years back.
Small fractions of a Watt, I probably could run the speakers with a preamp! jajajja
Kidding aside, I have been looking into getting rid of most amplifying stages as possible, so a preamp and a spud amp will do, most tubes for a spud amp are preamp tubes!
Of course there are now DACs that can put out 3 huge watts, maybe that could work... but thats not analog!

sadurniacoustics November 02, 2013 04:38

Islandmandan, You got a nice system.
One of my Favorite amps was the EAR 861 Push Pull, beautiful, rich, full sound, but missing just that bit of dynamics against a low powered SET, now Low power SETs are so easy to make and can sound so interesting they open a whole world of posibilities. I tried multiamping with mixed results, hard to do but if you can nail it down... wow!

I have tried MM on my horns but they tend to sound too frontal. I loved the Signet TK10ml in a friends system so much, I had to get it, but in my system, its just not the same.

sadurniacoustics November 02, 2013 04:30