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Bad China amps with great reviews?

Oh yeah. Lots of cheap chi-fi stuff get a golfing panther somewhere else. With measurements that sneakily avoids to reveal all the shortcomings but focusses instead on the golden SINAD value of which the product is engineered to excel in to get praise.
 
Gigantic said:
I don't necessarily disagree,
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I'm also not a fan of those big Klipsch horn speakers either. I was gifted a pair of these huge Chorus II speakers and after trying them out for a few days, they just don't work in my listening area at all. Besides being WAY too big for my house, they had limited bass/low end balance/EQ and seemed shouty. Their smaller RP600M on the other hand sound great to me with no need for a sub the way I have them setup in my small house.

To get any lower in freq range below 40hz would require much larger speakers that simply won't fit in my small house, and when I tried a sub to fill in 20-40hz as tested with REW, I just didn't see a sonic improvement worth having it taking up space in the room, hence my comment above that clearly upset a few people.... YMMV of course

I'm happy for you folks that have larger/more expensive houses than I own, and/or can afford a dedicated listening room. Many people can't/don't and I would venture to guess that the majority of the public doesn't. If you do have the sort of space required to setup some large floor standing speakers than reach down below 40hz and you feel that is the only true HiFi, well great. I do feel my reviews still apply for a majority of people and don't feel focusing on sonic performance between 20-40hz is something I will ever do.
 
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StepheK said:
I'm also not a fan of those big Klipsch horn speakers either. I was gifted a pair of these huge Chorus II speakers and after trying them out for a few days, they just don't work in my listening area at all. Besides being WAY too big for my house, they had limited bass/low end balance/EQ and seemed shouty. Their smaller RP600M on the other hand sound great to me with no need for a sub the way I have them setup in my small house.

To get any lower in freq range below 40hz would require much larger speakers that simply won't fit in my small house, and when I tried a sub to fill in 20-40hz as tested with REW, I just didn't see a sonic improvement worth having it taking up space in the room, hence my comment above that clearly upset a few people.... YMMV of course

I'm happy for you folks that have larger/more expensive houses than I own, and/or can afford a dedicated listening room. Many people can't/don't and I would venture to guess than the majority of the public doesn't. If you do have the sort of space required to setup some large floor standing speakers than reach down below 40hz and you feel that is the only true HiFi, well great. I do feel my reviews still apply for a majority of people and don't feel focusing on sonic performance between 20-40hz is something I will ever do.
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I would also add the most LPs, my preferred media, have very little information below 40hz.
 
StepheK said:
I'm also not a fan of those big Klipsch horn speakers either. I was gifted a pair of these huge Chorus II speakers and after trying them out for a few days, they just don't work in my listening area at all. Besides being WAY too big for my house, they had limited bass/low end balance/EQ and seemed shouty. Their smaller RP600M on the other hand sound great to me with no need for a sub the way I have them setup in my small house.

To get any lower in freq range below 40hz would require much larger speakers that simply won't fit in my small house, and when I tried a sub to fill in 20-40hz as tested with REW, I just didn't see a sonic improvement worth having it taking up space in the room, hence my comment above that clearly upset a few people.... YMMV of course

I'm happy for you folks that have larger/more expensive houses than I own, and/or can afford a dedicated listening room. Many people can't/don't and I would venture to guess than the majority of the public doesn't. If you do have the sort of space required to setup some large floor standing speakers than reach down below 40hz and you feel that is the only true HiFi, well great. I do feel my reviews still apply for a majority of people and don't feel focusing on sonic performance between 20-40hz is something I will ever do.
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I had a nice pair of Warfadale W-90's. The 124lb ones with dual 12" woofers tuned differently from each other, a top array with two each mids and tweeters, and sand filled baffles. They sounded great in my big open area garage. But in my living room they were just too big. I wasn't impressed with the bass at all, until I walked down the hall away from them and heard plenty of bass. So they didn't stick around long.
 
opnly bafld said:
I don't think the OP is referring to fake reviews, but rather popular youtubers and whatnot with a very large number of followers that review these products and give them glowing reviews.
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But are these "influencers" getting paid or free products to influence?

Isn't that a conflict of interest?

Then again, old-school magazine reviewers had similar odd relationships with the manufacturers.

It's hard to know which media to trust. :idea:
 
StepheK said:
I'm happy for you folks that have larger/more expensive houses than I own, and/or can afford a dedicated listening room. Many people can't/don't and I would venture to guess that the majority of the public doesn't. If you do have the sort of space required to setup some large floor standing speakers than reach down below 40hz and you feel that is the only true HiFi, well great. I do feel my reviews still apply for a majority of people and don't feel focusing on sonic performance between 20-40hz is something I will ever do.
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FWIW, I live in a 1200sf inner city condo. My house is decidedly not large and my listening space is the same general area as my kitchen, dining area and living room. I learned to enjoy horns by playing around with increasingly larger waveguides with 2” drivers. When I finally heard a pair of LaScala, I was captivated by the clarity of the mid bass and knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less. At the time, I was working on re-engineering the Chorus layout to play down to at least 30Hz, because that was as big as I was comfortable with in my space; however, once I heard the LaScala, I had to have them and figured the work that I’d done to reengineer the chorus I’d planned on building, might be applicable to the LS clones I wanted to build. I succeeded beyond my wildest imagination. That said, i don’t believe it’s the only way, but for me, i wanted horns and I didn’t want a subwoofer in my 2 channel system (I still have a small one in my home theater rig). Also, like you, @StepheK, I fell down the diy rabbit hole, only mine led to speakers, not valve amps, but that’s probably the next hole I’ll fall down.
 
Gigantic said:
I don't necessarily disagree, I had a pair of 1971 H700 Heresy that I was thoroughly unimpressed with until I did the Super Heresy mods to them, making them roughly equivalent to the Heresy IV, giving them a significant amount of bass extension. Even then, I was somewhat dissatisfied, as they still needed subwoofers. That inspired me to play around with more horn speakers and I ultimately built a pair of Forte clones with a passive radiator, better tweeters and a bigger mid horn with a 2" driver. When I heard a 70's vintage pair LaScala for the first time, I was torn: there was no way I could live with speakers that big that still needed a subwoofer, the mid horn was shouty and the treble was sibilant, yet there remained something compelling about them, a clarity from the overall lack of distortion in the mid bass and midrange. I figured that from what I had learned from my previous experiments, I might be able to make them better, so I set about re-engineering them and built a new pair from scratch, selecting an 10x18" mid horn with a 2" driver, better tweeter horn and a woofer with much better specs than the OEM Klipsch driver. I enlarged the upper horn enclosure by 90%, sealed it, coupled it to the woofer doghouse enclosure and mounted a 15" passive radiator to the rear of the upper chamber. I then Tri-amped it with a DSP active crossover for parametric EQ and time alignment: the end result is a speaker that plays +/- 3db from 23Hz to 20Khz, with a linear phase response and time alignment, no subwoofers required and none of the shoutiness associated with vintage horn speakers, for less than the going rate of a pair of well-used vintage LaScala.
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Many of these speaker cabinets were made from solid wood or plywood. In my experience, the wood and build quality can affect the overall sound more than cabinets made from MDF or particle board.

After you listen to enough of these vintage cabinets, you can tell the good ones (with good harmonics and overtones) from the bad ones. Even with the same speaker components and crossovers, the cab makes a difference. It's just like good vintage wooden instruments from bad ones. :)
 
Mr Boochie said:
Many of these speaker cabinets were made from solid wood or plywood. In my experience, the wood and build quality can affect the overall sound more than cabinets made from MDF or particle board.

After you listen to enough of these vintage cabinets, you can tell the good ones (with good harmonics and overtones) from the bad ones. Even with the same speaker components and crossovers, the cab makes a difference. It's just like good vintage wooden instruments from bad ones. :)
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The H700 Heresy decorators were made of 5/8” plywood. Even after the Super H mods, while sounding markedly better, were still “boxy” and resonant sounding. Ultimately, I restored them to stock, flipped them at a considerable profit and made another pair from 18mm Baltic Birch, which were much better.
 
Gigantic said:
The H700 Heresy decorators were made of 5/8” plywood. Even after the Super H mods, while sounding markedly better, were still “boxy” and resonant sounding. Ultimately, I restored them to stock, flipped them at a considerable profit and made another pair from 18mm Baltic Birch, which were much better.
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In general, I like the sound of solid wood over plywood. Swamp, Adirondack ash, plus mahogany are some favorites. I think my Martin has a Sitka spruce soundboard, which I hear they don't use too much anymore (the same goes for Brazilian rosewood). However, the spruce sound is more delicate and has more pleasant harmonics than most modern acoustic guitars. That is why many vintage guitars sound so much better than modern ones. Many new guitars do not have as acoustically pleasant wood.

That's from an instrument point of view. But in a perfect world, people should build speaker cabs with the same resonance and harmonic goals in mind --- at least construction-wise.
 
eiraved said:
Low prices do attract the ignorant buyer...
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Instead of calling them(us) ignorant, how about uninformed(seems nicer somehow)...:thumbsup:

Thank you @StepheK for your reviews, even if I don't understand most of it..
btw, I have a pair of Chorus (1's) speakers and agree they are very large and very 'bright' ..
I'm gonna hang onto em, and will eventually experiment with some way to get more low end out of em..

Transparent comment:

I buy chi-fi things now and then, because they're inexpensive, and I can play with them without wasting ton's of money until I get to a point that I feel comfortable buying something 'not inexpensive' to play with(learn)..
 
Swokie63 said:
Instead of calling them(us) ignorant, how about uninformed(seems nicer somehow)...:thumbsup:

Thank you @StepheK for your reviews, even if I don't understand most of it..
btw, I have a pair of Chorus (1's) speakers and agree they are very large and very 'bright' ..
I'm gonna hang onto em, and will eventually experiment with some way to get more low end out of em..

Transparent comment:

I buy chi-fi things now and then, because they're inexpensive, and I can play with them without wasting ton's of money until I get to a point that I feel comfortable buying something 'not inexpensive' to play with(learn)..
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That is fine. Learning within a budget is how most of us knuckleheads got started.

We tend to forget that. ;)
 
Mr Boochie said:
In general, I like the sound of solid wood over plywood. Swamp, Adirondack ash, plus mahogany are some favorites. I think my Martin has a Sitka spruce soundboard, which I hear they don't use too much anymore (the same goes for Brazilian rosewood). However, the spruce sound is more delicate and has more pleasant harmonics than most modern acoustic guitars. That is why many vintage guitars sound so much better than modern ones. Many new guitars do not have as acoustically pleasant wood.

That's from an instrument point of view. But in a perfect world, people should build speaker cabs with the same resonance and harmonic goals in mind --- at least construction-wise.
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I am probably overwhelming myself by trying to learn more than one aspect at a time..
I bought some 'knock down' cabinets from PE several months ago, nearfield bookshelf/desktop style(still sitting unused)..
Just recently bought some drivers to use with them( Morel 4" 'woofers' and Morel tweeters)..
Also bought some Ash wood veneer..
I asked a question recently in the speakers forum about veneer and resonance..
I'm gonna use the veneer inside and out(Norman Labs), I'm now reading up on crossovers to help me decide on the best for my 'experiment'..
Then I'll figure out what I'll use to drive them..

After I decide where I'll use them, and then decide on the stain for them to fit aesthetically..
‍
 
Swokie63 said:
I am probably overwhelming myself by trying to learn more than one aspect at a time..
I bought some 'knock down' cabinets from PE several months ago, nearfield bookshelf/desktop style(still sitting unused)..
Just recently bought some drivers to use with them( Morel 4" 'woofers' and Morel tweeters)..
Also bought some Ash wood veneer..
I asked a question recently in the speakers forum about veneer and resonance..
I'm gonna use the veneer inside and out(Norman Labs), I'm now reading up on crossovers to help me decide on the best for my 'experiment'..
Then I'll figure out what I'll use to drive them..

After I decide where I'll use them, and then decide on the stain for them to fit aesthetically..
‍
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Hardwood veneer over MDF? That is fine. Just build a sturdy box. :thumbsup:
 
I think the boxes are just designed to be screwed and glued, but I am 'mentally' planning to use biscuits to join the pieces.. and some bracing inside..
Access to inside only thru the somewhat small woofer opening..
A couple challenges;
I'm not a cabinet maker..
The front plate(baffle) has rounded outer edges..
Hope the veneer is flexible enough..
I'm not going to use grills, the drivers will be flush mounted and visible..

I just took some Paradigm Titans v2 apart to refoam the woofers, the crossover surprised me..
Very simple, an inductor and a capacitor..
Don't know the values, but I expected more..
 
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