onplane
What! No Wake???
Problem with these 3a's (and I am the original owner of a set) is voicing. That is (as you have mentioned these are East Coast speakers) there is a significant "roll off" of high frequencies. Attached is AR's published frequency curve for the 3a's with the pots full ON.
The "muffled sound" on these was so bad, I rarely listened to them. That changed nine years ago, when I by-passed both pots and bi-amped. By passing the tweeter pot gets you an additional 1 to 2 dB, so you are going in the right direction. Unfortunately, it's still not enough. To get more, I added a padding resistor (2 ohms 25 watts) to the mid driver xover. This brings the tweeter and mid in balance, but puts the mid way behind the woofer. In short, this makes the 3a's more bass heavy - East Coast.
That's where passive bi-amping comes into play. By having separate amps, one devoted solely to the power hungry woofers and another midpower amp for the high frequency drivers, I can adjust "voice" by applying more power to the respective halves. In short, if I want West Coast speakers, I just apply more power to the high frequency side. More important, however, I can easily bring the mids/tweeters back into ideal balance with the woofers.
As I said earlier, I did this 9 years ago and today I listen to my bi-amp 3a's almost daily.
Regards,
Jerry
The "muffled sound" on these was so bad, I rarely listened to them. That changed nine years ago, when I by-passed both pots and bi-amped. By passing the tweeter pot gets you an additional 1 to 2 dB, so you are going in the right direction. Unfortunately, it's still not enough. To get more, I added a padding resistor (2 ohms 25 watts) to the mid driver xover. This brings the tweeter and mid in balance, but puts the mid way behind the woofer. In short, this makes the 3a's more bass heavy - East Coast.
That's where passive bi-amping comes into play. By having separate amps, one devoted solely to the power hungry woofers and another midpower amp for the high frequency drivers, I can adjust "voice" by applying more power to the respective halves. In short, if I want West Coast speakers, I just apply more power to the high frequency side. More important, however, I can easily bring the mids/tweeters back into ideal balance with the woofers.
As I said earlier, I did this 9 years ago and today I listen to my bi-amp 3a's almost daily.
Regards,
Jerry