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Interesting Stuff I Found

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I still have the Fritz Carrera 7 BE 2-way speakers in the loft, but Paul Barton's team sent me a pair of his new ALPHAseries P5's to audition and review. At 1/10th the cost of the Fritz (which were already amazing value in my mind), the P5s have really heald their own.

If you're curious to know how they sound, here are a few recordings that I made of them playing in the loft this past weekend. I just placed the mics where my head would normally go and then snapped a couple of cameraphone photos so that you can see what they look like in the room. This room is 15.5 x 10.1 ft with an 8 ft ceiling. There are no subwoofers, and the big Legacy Audio towers are not connected to anything.

Put on some nice headphones and then click on the song titles below to hear them:

Bootsman's Little House
Moon Dance  - (level is a bit low, turn up the volume)
Damp em' Up Solid - Thanks, Thomas!
Blue In Green
People

Details here: http://www.psbspeakers.com/products/alpha/Alpha-P5-Bookshelf

I'd definitely recommend them for a 2nd system and for friends and family who are just getting started with the hobby. Paul really knows his stuff! Cheers.

-- David
   678-231-0568

David, 

I've had a list of questions for Symposium laying around for awhile now so your question prompted me to call them today and end my procrastination. I described what I had and ask how to best deploy them.  Bottom line, I switched the two platforms under the amp and TT based on their advice that the TT will be better served by the increased absorption of the Ultra over the Super Plus.  Otherwise I have them deployed in an acceptable manner. Alternates could be using the rollerblocks under the amp platform spikes if the amp is otherwise well coupled to the platform.  (It has several perimeter #4 screw heads that protrude so I think some device is warranted under it and I don't have another set of couplers so they stay where they are at the moment.)  He liked my stacking of the rollerblocks on top of the FatPads under the disk drive. He also told me why their rollerblocks are superior but knew the Daruma's and didn't knock them. He also said his round coupler was an improved design over the rectangular one.  Otherwise the advice was to move them around and see what you like best, both under different components and in different positions under each component. The advice that is the most common in my research on these devices.  He also said the platforms are not vertical isolators. That's accomplished with the spring feet offered on the Segue(?) TT platform. And they could be used free standing under any platform. 

I bought a collection of power cords and interconnects from Melanie also.  I called usedcables.com a while back and ended up sending them a list of my components and cables, they got back to me with a suggested use location for each cable, I followed it rather blindly.  

While I don't doubt the differences in cables any more than the differences with the Symposium type devices,  I'm not sure I hear them so I'll take the advice, employ it and called it a day, at least for now as I'm enjoying the system immensely already.

A couple more pics of my room.  More bass absorption against the rear wall, ceiling height units on casters due to the doors and bigger than fronts; one 24"x24", one 18"x18". A couple more bolsters of 12"x16" OC too. Room is in the basement, 16' x 26' x 6'10" to the drop ceiling and 8' to the underside of the floor above. I filled the 12" cavity as full as I could with rockwool bats as bedrooms are above. I have birds and fish for roommates and the back right corner has a 5'x4' closet in it hiding plumbing lines. Ideally and if I was willing, it could be mostly eliminated for a better room shape, but that's a project!  If the closet door in the front left corner were back further from the corner I'd likely have built the front base traps bigger.  I'd still like to raise the reflection freq. and amount by replacing the cardboard on all of them with 1/8" paneling. One day.

Robbie


 




Hi David,

It is really by happenstance that I have what I have.  Back in the summer John posted that Melanie had a complete system of her dad's to sell as she was returning to England.  I bought a lot of what she had so I didn't, with research and thought, chose and buy the items, they were a good deal and better than what I had.

The stack sits on some un-branded "cast material" platform I got from her. The preamp is on the bottom of the stack and sits on a set of Symposium round couplers with a set of brass Mapleshade HeavyHats under them - as I need some additional height for my phono cable to reach the preamp.  The phono preamp is in the middle, it sits on a set of Symposium rectuangler couplers.  The OPPO sits on the top, on a set of Symposium Fat Pads which have a set of Final Daruma 3-II roller blocks on top of them.  I feel my knowledge of isolation and coupling is rather limited but with what I think I know, I coupled the two preamps together, perhaps broke the coupling under them by using the HeavyHats and think the FatPads should isolate the disk drive noise from the preamps and the rollerblocks make for better coupling between the OPPO and the FatPads. 

I bought her two Symposium platforms also.  I decided to put the lesser one under my TT and the better one under the tube amp.  I used a 2nd set of the Final Daruma 3-II's under the amp to hopefully increase it's coupling to the platform. 

As you can see I have a tile on slab floor so I don't really have footfall type issues.  Therefore I thought of using the lesser Symposium under the stack instead of the cast one and putting the TT directly on it's wood stand. Then I could have put the cast platform under the Dennon and do away with the cutting board currently under it.  The lesser Symposium platform would make up for the HeavyHats height too so I could do away with them setting things up like this. Maybe one day I'll change it around.

Since it all came at once I haven't experimented with making up all the possible combinations searching for better or best.  I'm not sure my speakers are revealing enough to even hear what I suspect would be subtle differences. 

Wish you were close, I'd love to hear your Focus SE's.  I liked what I heard when Legacy demoed at a meeting a few months back.

Robbie





Hi Robert,

Nice system. I'm very curious about your amp stands and isolation devices...especially between stacked components. Please say a bit more about these...how you decided to go this way and what differences it made, etc.

Thanks for sharing...looking forward to seeing more.

-- David
Here's my dual system room, one music, one HT although they share the OPPO and the HT feeds into them music system so I can listen to it's tuner.  The floor to ceiling cardboard corners are really 12"x 16" columns of cut up 2" sheets of OC 705 as bass traps. 
Robbie

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Let's use this thread to share photos and videos of our listening rooms. Here's a video that I created this weekend (video quality is not great...smartphone camera), but if you watch with decent headphones, it may give you a sense of my little space out here in California.

As you can see, I'm in the process of switching from the huge Legacy Audio FOCUS SE towers to more appropriately sized Fritz Carrera BE monitors, which I can't recommend strongly enough. Incredible quality of parts and design. Series crossovers with no caps in the tweeter circuit. The most amazing integration you'll ever hear in a 7" 2-way.

https://youtu.be/9vGRAPsvFeQ

-- David
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