Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site


In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Compression drivers and the “clean signal”.
Post Subject: To drive S2 (a comperession driver) with a litle Solid State.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 7/15/2007
 cv wrote:
Here's a crazy thought... have you every tried driving the S2 directly from the Placette?! I know the 6E5p does some unique things but I wonder if it might be educational.
The placette has a 7 ohm Zout right? Don't forget that that doesn't translate into current delivery so best stick to low volume...

I did try it a few months back. With a high output front-end driving Placette and the Vitavox directly coupled to the Placette the Vitavox was able to develop a relatively mid volume (not to high though). However, altogether the sound was horrible, it was even further than horrible it was astonishingly revolting – it was pretty much the frequency-fluctuating noise.

Sure, the Placette that did not mean to develop enough currant necessary to drive the Vitavox. During those times I spoke with Guy Hammel, exploring opportunity to bias Placette harder and putting the output transistors on larger radiators. Guy was very willing to go to any directions I would like to, thanks him for that. But eventually, after many considerations, I turned skeptical to the idea of changing my Placette and recognized that it should be built a new, different type of amp to do the duty. I decided do not trouble troubles and let it be as is. If I had another Placette buffers then I might experiment with it, letting it to drive more current, but I did not want to destroy or to compromise what I currently had. Also, there is no assurance that if Placette we'll be driving more current than it would be at transparent/neutral as the current Placette is.

Actually doing is these experiments I come across to a very interesting observation, the observation that I have no explanation. At that time I was truing to drive S2 with anything that outputs voltage.  I told in the past that I have SL-600 monitors (which sound superbly with Lamm M1.1) given by 22W Denon mini-system. They do not sound interesting but it is acceptable enough to listen the “Prairie Home Companion”. How big my surprise was when during those experiments suddenly discovered that SL-600 might yield a surprisingly wonderful sound when crappy Denon headphone outputs drived one stage 6E5P, and then via a transformer the SL-600 monitors. So the 6E5P just overrided the SS buffer... I am not kidding the sound was hugely different than the Denon's own, it was truly brow-raising. Surely it was not possible to drive it laud because as soon I overload 6E5P’ grid with voltage (it has only 3.4V of bias) then found dive into a very severe distortions. However, with low voltage on grid the 2.5W 6E5P’s stage did against those sub 50-sensitive loudspeaker some phenomenal sonic pyrotechnics those sub. If someone would tell me about it I would never believe.

I do not know. Perhaps I have developed an addiction to 6E5P.  I have no motivations so far to sign into a rehabilitation facility. Now I have to live with it. :-)

Romy the caT

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site