Description

This is the Living Room system, We are working on a separate room to fit the bigger horns in.

The system is playing the New Smaller model speakers Miracoli.  The main difference is that the Upper Bass horn goes down to 140 hz, and the Bass is done by a Sealed cabinet with a pair of Servo Controlled 8" subwoofers, both shooting sideways in opposing fashion, this creates the illusion of a pinpoint center bass coming from the horns.  Bass is also time aligned with the rest of the horns but since it is amplified by its own subamp, phase correction is always needed.

This opposing subwoofer cabinet configuration cancels out each other vibration quite effectively.

I am using the wonderful MicroZOTL amps everybody has been raving about. They put out One full Watt!  On 106 dB horns this is enough to get huge dynamics and enough output to drive you out of the room!   I have two amps and am Triamplifying, One Stereo MicroZOTL per side plus of course both mono subamps on each of the speakers.  At the moment I am not using a preamp, I go from the source directly to the MicroZOTL on each side. Volume matching is complicated but we will have a Resistor loaded Volume control to match everything pretty soon.

The amps have incredible speed and dynamics with the horns, but mainly a wonderful tone, not tubey but just musical, I have to say that silver cable helps them to bring out all the detail that seemed to be clogging inside the tubes, changing the cables from Cu to Cu/Ag was fascinating, the tone is even better and the soundstage exploded, with none of the usual scratchynes of Cu/Ag cables.


About the Horns

The most important part of a horn system is the Musical range frequencies, from 200hz. I wanted to have a horn with high efficiency for this range to balance out a compresson driver in the midrange. Compression drivers are so transparent and dynamic that it is very hard to use them in a system, their strenghts turn out to be their weakness, Intead of having a clear crisp midrange, they can be overwhelimg without the proper balance.

This two horns are the heart of the system, adding a tweeter and a subwoofer seems, simple enough, yet it is what took us longer to perfect.  



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Room Details

Dimensions: 21’ × 17’  Large
Ceiling: 10’


Components Toggle details

    • Ampex 350
    Great tone massive tape transport upgraded Flux Magnetics two track heads
    • cello King Cello
    Wonderful little Tape preamp, luckily it also does wonders for the Denon 103
    • Garrard 301
    A classic that really sounds good. My own plinth and separate 20 pound arm pod.
    • Forsell Air Reference
    The first few notes I knew it was a keeper. It makes me work harder at setting my Turntable.
    • Audiotechnica 1010
    Nice arm
    • Enlightened Audio Design DSP-7000 mkIII
    This DAC really matches very good with the Forsell transport. Modified.
    • MicroZOTL LTA OTL Tube amplifier 1 watt
    OTL integrated Stereo amplifier using David Berning´s ZOTL technology, separate Linear power supplies putting our ONE full Watt per channel: For these horns they are perfect.  It simplifies Triamplifying with one stereo amp per side, keeping separate power supplies for each side helping to instrument separation.
    The Preamp output is used to run the Servocontrol Subwoofer amps.
    • Several: several
    I am working my way through several cables trying to fidn the perfect match for our system.  I will have results soon I expect.
    • AC conditioning Unit in developement. AC conditioner passive.
    helps
    • Computer Downloads PC unit

Comments 22

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Hi, what a fascinating and unique system! I had the Forsell Air transport and found the sound to be the most analog of any digital front end. I'm especially interested in your speakers - would you mind replying with a brief description of how you integrate the individual horn / drivers? Specifically the type of crossover used? When I began assembling my horns, I was under the misunderstanding that it would be a relatively simple process of buying good sounding horns and drivers. What I learned instead was that the parts are just the price of entry. The magic comes alive in 'how' everything is integrated through the crossover.

skushino