t j
Active Member
Do anyone know what band this is with the empty cabinets? That looks like Brian May...
Most CRANKABLE Speakers
- Thread starter t j
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t j
Active Member
Who's the band here?
t j
Active Member
OK dude, How about some suggestions. My amp is a vintage Pioneer SX-1250, and I have a 20 x 20 space. How would you set it up?
t j
Active Member
So, just the amp and speakers? I How would you boost the power of a 100+ watt amp? get these geniuses telling me this and that about that and this.
t j
Active Member
In another thread people wouldn't shut up about how my SX-1250 had MORE than enough power and that it's pointless to add amps. That's why I started the speaker thread...How would you set up my vintage Pioneer if you started from scratch?https://www.parts-express.com/Search.aspx?keyword=crown drivecore&sitesearch=true
or something like this...
DSC_9702 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
hewlew1
Active Member
Im a little late to this party but I will tell you what I run in one of my systems. I have a16x24 living room and in each corner is a CV D9 which I have owned since new thats about 32 years. In the beginning I was blowing fuses so I called Cerwin Vega tech dept. The guy asked me what I was playing them on I replied Carver M 500 T amps. His reply was they have plenty of clean power go ahead and up the fuse to 3 and 1/2 amp slo-blow and you wont have anymore trouble. I never have and to top it off I now have 4 M500T amps each one bridged into a single D9 at 700 watts or so per channel for rock and roll this combo is hard to beat.
damacman
Resident Psycho
I don't think I'll ever fully understand why audio folk look down on a guy that wants his shit loud, linear, and clean. When I was in my 20s my life revolved around just that. Numerous house parties with music at club levels led me to purchase quality gear - namely McIntosh and Altec. Even to this day, few things provide a mental rush like playing music at levels where it hits you in the chest.
As much as I enjoy Jennifer Warnes voice and the effort put forth to capture it in its purest form, playing Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People at ARE YOU INSANE levels is equally as satisfying in my house. It is as much an art to assemble a system capable of linear frequency response and club level output at about 50% of the amplifier power available that can play all night long as it is to assemble a system that puts Miles Davis in the room. I have both.
OP - the simplest way for you to achieve your goals with the Pioneer receiver that you already have would be to add cone coverage. Series-paralleling four speakers of the same kind and impedance on each of the left and right channels would be the simplest. This allows you to reduce the overall power to each speaker, spread that power across a bunch more voice coils (preventing speaker damage) and increasing overall output from the additional cone coverage (doubling it twice yields 6dB). Educate yourself about the phenomenon of mutual coupling and study the concept of a line array and how it is employed in professional sound reinforcement. Set your speakers up accordingly.
And most importantly - HAVE FUN!
As much as I enjoy Jennifer Warnes voice and the effort put forth to capture it in its purest form, playing Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People at ARE YOU INSANE levels is equally as satisfying in my house. It is as much an art to assemble a system capable of linear frequency response and club level output at about 50% of the amplifier power available that can play all night long as it is to assemble a system that puts Miles Davis in the room. I have both.
OP - the simplest way for you to achieve your goals with the Pioneer receiver that you already have would be to add cone coverage. Series-paralleling four speakers of the same kind and impedance on each of the left and right channels would be the simplest. This allows you to reduce the overall power to each speaker, spread that power across a bunch more voice coils (preventing speaker damage) and increasing overall output from the additional cone coverage (doubling it twice yields 6dB). Educate yourself about the phenomenon of mutual coupling and study the concept of a line array and how it is employed in professional sound reinforcement. Set your speakers up accordingly.
And most importantly - HAVE FUN!
I run 5A fastblo's in my D9s. I also changed out the horrible bullet horns w/ some soft dome Heppler Dhoms, huge difference in SQ now. I also rolled and brushed the interiors with Rhino liner type stuff and added more cross bracing. Each speaker also got 35lbs of sand in the bottom (bagged). They now weigh a little over 140lbs a piece
I was going to recommend D9s also because I listen to a lot of Metal and they can take a lot of what the WOPL1000 puts out
jazzmans
Super Member
Your Kappas are fantastic, fabulous sounding speakers, although being the middle of the road for the Kappa series, they will NOT go nearly as loud as you like. Millersound can repair the polydome. Are they .1 (ported and trapezoidal) or original (non-ported and simple rectangles) I'd suggest a few things,
1. use the Kappas as your sound quality reference.
2. buy a pro amplifier, they can be had for pennies on the dollar and will drive whatever speakers you end up with, there's a number of great suggestions here.
3. you are an ideal candidate for a subwoofer (or two, or three! more is always better)
oh, and don't overcrank the Kappas, they are fantastic speakers.
I power my Infinity speakers with 350 wpc pro amps.(note the plural) In my case, I use thirty year old Carver Pro amps, but Crown makes fantastic inexpensive amps that likely blow my old carvers out of the water.
That's way more common then you know now, with modern line arrays, No halfstack can compare.
Slayer uses fake front cabinets with pyro installed into them.
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The SX-1250 is a really nice receiver, but it is still a receiver. I have two customers that have ears similar to mine and wanted to feel the music, but wanted good clean sound too! We spent a lot of time trying different combinations and ended up in both cases with Kenwood Basic M1A and Celestion Ditton 44 Speakers. A Yamaha M-40 has enough current too. But you might want to save yourself time and money by going straight to Pro Amps as suggested. They would let you experiment with speakers without wondering if the amp is an issue.
jazzmans
Super Member
It may not seem that way, but we are trying to help you T.J.
The reason for needing 3x the power is it requires doubling of power for a perceived increase in volume, and the power increase is logarithmic(feck spelling)
http://www.ecoustics.com/articles/secrets-amplifier-speaker-power-requirements/
As audio/video hobbyists, most of us grew up thinking that if we have an amplifier with 50 watts of rated output power into 8-ohm speakers, and that combination produces reasonably clean and loud music, then by doubling the amplifier power to 100 watts per channel, the system would then play twice as loud. Many readers likely still believe that. Not so.
Although it's not the easiest thing to comprehend, doubling the amplifier power does not double the loudness. In the above example, the sound from the speakers would not be "twice as loud"; it would only be "a little louder," an increase of 3 decibels. How loud is that? Hearing tests with large groups of people have revealed that a one-decibel (1 dB) change in loudness is approximately the smallest audible step that the average listener can detect, so an increase of 3 dB most listeners term "slightly louder."
So why doesn't that 100-watt amplifier always sound twice as loud? Because the acoustic decibel–the decibel (dB) being the unit of measurement used worldwide to quantify the acoustic loudness of sound–has a peculiar relationship to amplifier power output measured in electrical watts. That relationship is called "logarithmic." If that word gives you an instant headache (nightmares of high-school math), then here's a simpler explanation:
If a sound gets louder by 3 decibels or "slightly louder," it takes twice as much electrical power from your receiver or amp to produce that modest increase. Therefore, a 100-watt amplifier will produce sound only slightly louder than a 50-watt amplifier.
So far, so good. But what if it's party time, and you're listening to music "very loud," a level defined as about 90 dB Sound Pressure Level (SPL), and your speakers are gobbling up swings of 15 to 20 watts per channel on those musical peaks.
Drink in hand, you advance to the volume control on your receiver thinking, "I'll just crank this up to make the music twice as loud," and you turn up the volume control until there's a 10 dB increase in the sound level. Now your party-time goal of "twice as loud" will make huge electrical demands on your nice little multi-channel receiver or power amp. The receiver must deliver ten times as much power to double the subjective loudness. Between 6 dB and 10 dB is double the volume level, where 6 dB is four times the power and 10 dB is 10 times the power. In the aforementioned example, the amp must produce 150 to 200 watts per channel for those peaks in loudness. Therefore, every 10-dB increase in acoustic loudness–from 80 dB to 90 dB, or 90 dB to 100 dB–requires ten times as much electrical power in watts.
That's all very well if you have a monster amplifier or multi-channel A/V receiver with huge reserves of power output (most of us don't). If not, watch out. Your receiver or amp may "clip" or distort (or both), which will put a clamp on the output of the amp. When you push your amplifier into overload or "clipping," several things may happen. First, the top and bottom of the waveforms (representing the audio signals) are clipped off, generating distortion. Next, the amplifier's protection circuits are activated, removing those portions of the signal that are causing the overload, generating distortion. And finally, the amplifier's power supply may fluctuate according to the demands of the music signals.
The reason for needing 3x the power is it requires doubling of power for a perceived increase in volume, and the power increase is logarithmic(feck spelling)
http://www.ecoustics.com/articles/secrets-amplifier-speaker-power-requirements/
As audio/video hobbyists, most of us grew up thinking that if we have an amplifier with 50 watts of rated output power into 8-ohm speakers, and that combination produces reasonably clean and loud music, then by doubling the amplifier power to 100 watts per channel, the system would then play twice as loud. Many readers likely still believe that. Not so.
Although it's not the easiest thing to comprehend, doubling the amplifier power does not double the loudness. In the above example, the sound from the speakers would not be "twice as loud"; it would only be "a little louder," an increase of 3 decibels. How loud is that? Hearing tests with large groups of people have revealed that a one-decibel (1 dB) change in loudness is approximately the smallest audible step that the average listener can detect, so an increase of 3 dB most listeners term "slightly louder."
So why doesn't that 100-watt amplifier always sound twice as loud? Because the acoustic decibel–the decibel (dB) being the unit of measurement used worldwide to quantify the acoustic loudness of sound–has a peculiar relationship to amplifier power output measured in electrical watts. That relationship is called "logarithmic." If that word gives you an instant headache (nightmares of high-school math), then here's a simpler explanation:
If a sound gets louder by 3 decibels or "slightly louder," it takes twice as much electrical power from your receiver or amp to produce that modest increase. Therefore, a 100-watt amplifier will produce sound only slightly louder than a 50-watt amplifier.
So far, so good. But what if it's party time, and you're listening to music "very loud," a level defined as about 90 dB Sound Pressure Level (SPL), and your speakers are gobbling up swings of 15 to 20 watts per channel on those musical peaks.
Drink in hand, you advance to the volume control on your receiver thinking, "I'll just crank this up to make the music twice as loud," and you turn up the volume control until there's a 10 dB increase in the sound level. Now your party-time goal of "twice as loud" will make huge electrical demands on your nice little multi-channel receiver or power amp. The receiver must deliver ten times as much power to double the subjective loudness. Between 6 dB and 10 dB is double the volume level, where 6 dB is four times the power and 10 dB is 10 times the power. In the aforementioned example, the amp must produce 150 to 200 watts per channel for those peaks in loudness. Therefore, every 10-dB increase in acoustic loudness–from 80 dB to 90 dB, or 90 dB to 100 dB–requires ten times as much electrical power in watts.
That's all very well if you have a monster amplifier or multi-channel A/V receiver with huge reserves of power output (most of us don't). If not, watch out. Your receiver or amp may "clip" or distort (or both), which will put a clamp on the output of the amp. When you push your amplifier into overload or "clipping," several things may happen. First, the top and bottom of the waveforms (representing the audio signals) are clipped off, generating distortion. Next, the amplifier's protection circuits are activated, removing those portions of the signal that are causing the overload, generating distortion. And finally, the amplifier's power supply may fluctuate according to the demands of the music signals.
RandyFloyd76
Well-Known Member
These are the best vintage "rock" speakers for my money. Speakerlab 7's, Super 7's and to a lessor degree 6's. Thump your chest bass with a good sound stage and clarity. A good pair around here can still be found in the $400 range.
xero-D-hero
Super Member
That's because many folks just dont quite understand this sorta thing fully...
They're too busy looking at the sensitivity specs and thinking that's telling them everything they need to know.
Well it does'nt tell them everything they need to know,it just tells them where the starting line is.
For this type of useage one should be looking at the max SPL output (@ a specified distance) to gauge any given speakers "maximum loudness".
And then one can look into the amount of power required to reach the max SPL from that given speaker.
Problem is most consumer oriented speaker co.s dont supply that kinda information.
Purely used as an example here: (sorta like jazzmans post above)
Lets say one has a JBL M2 monitor and wants something significantly "louder",then obviously they're gonna need something pretty stout.
That's because the M2 max SPL is 117 db continuous @ 1m.
So lets say you're looking at some ATC monitors,well it's gonna take something like the SCM300ASLT to handily best the M2.
Those are 121 db max SPL continuous @ 1m.
Now we can look at the amplification used for each of those.
The M2 recommends using a Crown I-tech 5000HD which puts out like > 1kw of power (so lots of "overhead" for transients/peaks and such).
The ATC uses their own P4 amps that are rated @ roughly 850w each (fyi: these require 2 of those tri-amped P4 amps).
The sensitivity spec typically tells you what a given speakers output is with 1w @ 1m.
But to get from that 1w @ 1m db to the max SPL db often requires a BIG jump up in power.
So you can see why everyone here is saying a BUNCH more power is needed to acheive those sorta serious max SPL's.
So the SX-1250's 160wpc is just a drop in the bucket for this sorta useage.
That M2 sensitivity rating is 92db @ 1w @ 1m.
So using that general "rule of thumb" of 2x the watts = +3db louder formula.
2w = 95db
4w = 98db
8w = 101db
16w = 104db
32w = 107db
64w = 110db
128w = 113db
256w = 116db
So you can see it's an exponential sorta situation here,right.
So generally speaking 300wpc or so would be the absolute minimum needed to get anywhere close to the max SPL for those M2 speakers.
And that does'nt address the overhead required for peaks/transients which is why JBL recommends that Crown amp with > 1kwpc.
That's because the peak SPL is actually up around 123db @ 1m.
So lets keep the math above going...
512w = 119db.
1024w = 122db
Ahhh yes now it's getting a bit clearer,is'nt it ?
Also folks here tend to understand that pushing gear really hard like this requires a robust power supply,lots of reserve power & ample cooling.
And things like that are often somewhat compromised in components like a typical vintage receiver.
Also none of this addresses various differences in the speakers given make-up.
Some speakers just NEED more wpc to "come to life" than others do,and often you wont find any spec that tells you that.
Often that is only understood via the benefit of hind-sight -or- the experience of others who've BTDT.
So yeah it would be wise to use the pre-out on that SX-1250 to feed a higher wpc amp if you're seriously chasing max SPL.
FWIW ~ HTH
Bret P.
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Gibsonian
Super Member
Maybe time to put some of the good advice to work here? All talk won't get this done.
Pro audio amp possibly? If you have the coin I'd recommend a WOPL1000. Will best nearly all if not all pro audio amps for SQ and will be sufficient power (>500 w/ch 8 ohms and around 780 w/ch into 4 ohms) for your needs.
Most crankable speakers? D9's are great for that on a budget. If you have more funds try something with dual 15's, say the JBL 4435, or the CV XLS215. The dual 15's will take it to another level.
Pro audio amp possibly? If you have the coin I'd recommend a WOPL1000. Will best nearly all if not all pro audio amps for SQ and will be sufficient power (>500 w/ch 8 ohms and around 780 w/ch into 4 ohms) for your needs.
Most crankable speakers? D9's are great for that on a budget. If you have more funds try something with dual 15's, say the JBL 4435, or the CV XLS215. The dual 15's will take it to another level.
Well a lot of us that wanted, and had, loud and clean extreme volume levels now have hearing problems. I wish somebody would have told me 35 years ago not to stand next to the speakers at endless concerts or to have the car stereo cranked and the same with the home stereo......spls over 85db are harmful, period. I dont think that people look down on other posters that want extreme spls, I think many posters, like me, just think it is rather silly to set out to damage one's hearing. Now do you have a right to damage your own hearing? You bet! But the OP getting so pissy about some good and reasonable advice is rather um...........pissy.
Yes, there are all types of listeners on AK....from the guy with a flea watt amp that listens to jazz to the heavy metal fan with a several hundred watt amp. Is one type of listener better than another? Nope, but a little good advice offered nicely is never a bad thing IMO. Nobody had to take it of course.
http://dangerousdecibels.org/education/information-center/decibel-exposure-time-guidelines/
damacman
Resident Psycho
I am not among that group ... and I was 20 years in the car audio industry.
Gibsonian
Super Member
The charts below allow for 4 or more hours of exposure at over 85 dB continuous SPL, so think you might be exaggerating a little on this statement. NIOSH and OHSA standard allow for an hour at 106 dB continuous SPL level.
So think there can be safe listening at high levels, and knowing the facts is good to minimize your risk.
Music is far from continuous, (would suck if it was, and the closer it is to continuous the less I like it) and mostly folks are talking peaks or close to it when they discuss SPL's.
So for realistic and effortless forays into the higher SPL realms, headroom and freedom from clipping and compression of any type are quite satisfying and have their applications.
You can rationalize all you want, but listening at loud levels over years will damage your hearing, period. The chart I posted has this comment; "For every 3 dBAs over 85dBA, the permissible exposure time before possible damage can occur is cut in half" which is indicated. The OP seems like he wants to get to Rock Concert levels of spl and at that level, 110db, exposure is listed (depending on the chart) at less than 2 minutes before possible damage.
The point is, years of loud music will take its toll. I loved every single second of growing up at loud concerts like ZZ Top at Mountain Air 86 (the loudest outdoor concert I have ever been to) and all of the time spent at AC/DC concerts and Beach Boys and Rush and on and on BUT, I now have hearing problems. I wish the young me would have listened to the people telling me all of the loud music was a bad idea, but when one is young, advice is rarely taken.
