thazeldean

Hello all,
I am new to the site. I purchased a pair of CLX Art's (Dark Cherry) last year having owned Apogee Centaur Majors for 20 years. I am really enjoying the Martin Logans. I also added a Descent i Sub and am tossing up whether to buy a second. Can anyone help? Does it make a difference having two subs? I live in Queensland, Australia and am also enjoying the current strength of our dollar which is the only reason I can afford such luxuries. The CLX's are about the same price here as in the US now whereas when they first arrived I was quoted $40,000 a pair. I tossed up between the CLX's and the Magnepan 20.1's but in the end the CLX's won out for me in the critical midband. I am very sensitive to excess sibilance and found the Martin Logans to be much better in this respect than the Magnepans I heard, but of course this could have been partnerng electronics. I am a fan of vinyl having grown up in the 70's and not wanting to throw all my records on the dump when CD's were introduced I kept them. I am now finding it rewarding replacing all the albums I collected over the years with new ones while they are being re-released. Keep up the good work all those providers.

Welcome. I'm not qualified to answer your question as you are playing in the big leagues as far as I'm concerned. I't is generally speaking advantageous to use 2 identical subwoofers as it tends to not excite a rooms "nodes" so to speak. Smoother response and approximately 20% increase in ultimate volume is the result. Welcome.

Thanks for the welcome message Rick it is appreciated.

Welcome T

I think most here would lean toward the "two subs are better than one" philosophy. Two well positioned subs that are properly dialed in will help to even out the LF response in your room by minimizing nulls and peaks. There is a fair amount of discussion in this forum on the subject so the search function may yield good info for you.

The CLX model is certainly a stunning transducer - good choice

When you have a chance, please post your system details (with pics) in our Member Systems section.

Cheers

Welcome. I use one sub with my CLX set up with excellent results in a treated room. Most would agree that two subs placed properly and dialed in would be better.

Hi Todd, thanks for the advice. I must admit that I spent two nights reading the saga of your CLX delivery issues. Whilst amusing for me I can well understand your frustration. I was lucky, all my stuff arrived safe and sound within six weeks of the order and none was damaged at all. I had some issues with the blue lights not working in one speaker but when I spoke to the Australian distributor, he gave me permission to open the crossover box in the base and I found one of the plugs had not been connected. The speakers have been a joy to use ever since.

I will post my system and some picks as soon as possible.

Glad you enjoyed the thread It was a wild ride with a ton of sidebars, that's for sure. And the Odyssey continues as well.

And very glad to hear that your experience was a less frought with craziness than mine.

They are spectacular speakers, are they not? No they won't crack any foundations wrt the lowest octave, but man they are damn close to magical throughout the rest of the range.

Cheers

Hi and welcome,

I have just gone through the same dilemmas as you!

When I demoed the CLX I had a single sub (Descent I), which sounded excellent.

However I decided that since I had invested in the CLX's I might as well go for dual subs, knowing what the benefits should be.

They were installed last week. Sitting down to listen, remembering they were knew out of the box, wow, what a difference!

Now, I am running them RCA so using the CLX filter whereas before I was running balanced into the LFE, but the difference is significant. To be honest I couldn't be happier with my decision!

Let us know what you decide
M.

Hi Marck, Todd and Ron,

Thanks for the advice. I will certainly purchase a second sub in the future but for the present I have just purchased a pair of Bob Carver Black Beauties. I also have the McCormack DNA 2 which Kris Jeter is upgrading for me. Yes he still does them if you ask him nicely. In Australia unless you live in Sydney or Melbourne it is almost impossible to audition anything. I had to make two trips to listen to the Magnepans and the CLX's which involved a flight each time. The dealers are 1,000 miles away. I saw an ad for the Black Beauties and decided to give them a go without a listen first. They have been in my system for a couple of weeks and I am still coming to terms with the sound, being used to solid state for the past 35 years. Initial impressions are very favourable but I have the luxury of being able to swap back to solid state if I feel the need. I figured that 300 Watts of tube power should be enough and I have to admit that it seems to be. The midrange is a delight and the rest of the frequency spectrum seems to be all there but different from solid state. I can't explain it yet but I am sure that eventually I will be able to pass on more information.
Again to all thanks for the welcome and interest.

thazeldean said:

Hi Marck, Todd and Ron,

Thanks for the advice. I will certainly purchase a second sub in the future but for the present I have just purchased a pair of Bob Carver Black Beauties. I also have the McCormack DNA 2 which Kris Jeter is upgrading for me. Yes he still does them if you ask him nicely. In Australia unless you live in Sydney or Melbourne it is almost impossible to audition anything. I had to make two trips to listen to the Magnepans and the CLX's which involved a flight each time. The dealers are 1,000 miles away. I saw an ad for the Black Beauties and decided to give them a go without a listen first. They have been in my system for a couple of weeks and I am still coming to terms with the sound, being used to solid state for the past 35 years. Initial impressions are very favourable but I have the luxury of being able to swap back to solid state if I feel the need. I figured that 300 Watts of tube power should be enough and I have to admit that it seems to be. The midrange is a delight and the rest of the frequency spectrum seems to be all there but different from solid state. I can't explain it yet but I am sure that eventually I will be able to pass on more information.
Again to all thanks for the welcome and interest.

Click to expand...

Gosh those Carver designed tube amps must sound stunning! Very much look forward to your impressions as you "adjust" and speaking of adjusting, also interested to hear what you think of any differences between the "vintage" and "contemporary" feedback settings.

Cheers

My belief is that two subs, correctly placed and set up, will outperform one sub by giving you more even bass response throughout the room. In fact, four subs will give you the most even response possible. There is no additional benefit to be gained by going over four though. I suspect one sub and proper bass trapping through acoustic treatment will vastly outperform two subs without acoustic treatment. Two subs with proper bass trapping through acoustic treatment will give you bass response to die for.

I will keep you updated with my impressions of the Black Beauties. So far it has been very positive. As well as the contempory/vintage switch you can also alter the bias to tune the sound so they are pretty flexible in that department. The DNA 2 is no slouch of an amp either but it was time for a change. The DNA 2 now has the job of driving the Apogees for the rears of the 5.1 system.

thazeldean said:

I will keep you updated with my impressions of the Black Beauties. So far it has been very positive. As well as the contempory/vintage switch you can also alter the bias to tune the sound so they are pretty flexible in that department. The DNA 2 is no slouch of an amp either but it was time for a change. The DNA 2 now has the job of driving the Apogees for the rears of the 5.1 system.

Click to expand...

You must have some fairly low serial number units, yes? Did you get the black, or more rare red chassis?

Another thing, how's the self-noise on those amps? If you stop or pause your source and put your ear up to the HF panel of the CLX, any white noise to speak of? Finally (and sorry for the slew of off-topic questions), is there any physical noise signature at all from the Carver's when up and running? That is, in a completely quiet room, with no music playing, but with the amps fully on and warmed up, can you hear any transformer noise, low level hum, or any other physical noise from the chassis themselves? I ask because I have a perversely low tolerance for any ambient room noise. To me, ambient noise becomes exceedingly noticable (and offensive) between tracks. I want my listening environment to be vacuum-of-space quiet in order to extract every last ounce of SNR and from my system (some of this SNR-phobia is admittedly psychological... but some of it's real too).

Thanks

Hi Todd,

I work away from home alot and will not be back for a couple of days. I haven't noticed what you are asking about from the Black Beauties but haven't had them for long. Mine are black chassis but the finish has a gold speck through it which is nice. I thought the 180 watt models were the only ones available with the cherry red finish. When I get home I will check it out and let you know. I am not sure of the serial numbers but I assume they would be rather low. I see you use Primaluna's. How are they? I guess we all have things that our ears are sensitive to more than others. As I said earlier I am very sensitive to excess sibilance. With some systems I have heard they are highly resolving but this comes with excess sibilance and a sort of electronic haze that seems to overlay everything. I once heard it described as someone spitting on you while they sing and that just about expresses what it sounds like. I can forgive alot of things about a system as long as it gets the human voice right which I think alot of systems don't. I heard some Magnepans back in the eighties in a store in Brisbane and they had this in spades but at the time I couldn't afford them. Young family etc. The Apogees can tend to emphasise sibilance a bit with the wrong partnering electronics but they have been great speakers and I have never regreted getting them. The CLX's are much more natural in this area. To give you an idea of how things have changed, my brother got me the Apogees when he spent a couple of years in your country. At the time they cost me $3,500US. They were then available in Australia for $13,000 (not much difference) and again I could have never afforded them for that price so I was lucky that he went to the US. I listen to mainly vinyl so tend to forgive a bit of surface noise. The new Analogue Productions records are the best I have heard so far for being quiet. I brought Tea for the Tillerman album and it is exceptional. I am now waiting for the other Cat Stevens albums to be released and I will buy them. I think this may be an Indian Summer for vinyl records with alot of middle aged persons such as myself replacing alot of albums from their youth. You know mid life crisis. I can only do this because I am still with my first wife who just turned 50 and I can't afford to trade her in on two 25 year olds. So from both our viewpoints it is better to be buying new albums and not younger partners!!! At the moment my turntable is out of action because I have sent my Graham Phantom back to Bob to have it upgraded to Supreme and have the mount changed from SME to custom so I can't listen to music for a few weeks.

Regards,

Tony.

Hi Marck,

Thanks for the advice. Could you explain further how you have the Descent's wired. I run an RCA from my surround processor which I only use when watching TV or Blue Ray. I run my processor through the preamp for the front two channels so that I don't have to swap cables on the power amps when I want to change from music to TV. When listening to two channel music be it vinyl or CD, I run an additional speaker cable from each of the monoblocs and attach both cables to the speaker input of the Descent i so it sums both channels into the sub. I have the CLX filter on the sub. I find that in my room, I have to turn the sub down about 6db when listening to the vinyl because it seems to set up a resonance with the arm cartridge combination. I have ordered a Townshend Seismic Sink to try and alleviate this issue and am hoping it will work because on some music I feel the need for some more bass. Yeah I know!!!

Your wiring system may be alot better than mine so I may want to change.

Sure.

I am running RCA out of my preamp, for left and right directly into the subs. I am lucky that I have two main outputs (RCA and balanced). I do not run any other cables, so a fairly simple set-up. I dont use my system for AV it is purely 2 channel.

Utilising the CLX crossover in the sub definitely seems to be the way to go. My subs are hardly on - volume on 3. However the impact is rather significant. I now have the benefits of a full range panel as well as that bass power It is rather outstanding!

Note, I have used good cables for my subwoofer connections - Transparent Ultra RCA's (configured specifically for the subs by Transparent) and Reference Power Link (RPL) power cables.

I hope you sort out the resonance issue!
Rgds
Marc.

Welcome to another Antipodean,

My 5c worth comes from bringing a pair of Gradient subs back from Finland many years ago to use with Quads. The integration of 2 subs with crossovers makes the main speaker 'breathe' and deliver more detail better, particularly around the ambient information on the recording from the venue. It has been awhile but these were my lasting impressions from this exercise.

The Descent, as I am sure you are finding, is quiet special, unlike any sub I have ever had with it's ability to integrate musically with control and speed but without bloating the sound. I am amazed how it performs on live music material in my Home Theatre.

Whilst you are buying your second sub, you might want to think about diamond retipping your wife! Like records, they tend to get a bit scratchy when the original diamond gets worn out with the years.

Hope your turntable improvements bring happiness to the fold soon.

The pics must be next when the break in is finished.

Fjeff

PS: which dealer did you buy from? I feel the need to investigate from NZ!

Hi Fjeff,

The Martin Logan dealer in Australia is Audio Connection. www.audioconnection.com.au Look in the trade ins and specials page. There are several Logans including a very well priced ex demo model CLX's. They are black and I wnated the wood finish or I would have bought them myself.

They have been for sale there for a long time so they may be open to offers.

Tony.

Hi Todd,

You were correct about the serial numbers - I have numbers 9 and 10 which were probably the first two configured in 240 volt but I can't be sure.

I have turned the amps on but have no source component at the moment so can't check on the white noise properly for you. I did turn on the phono stage and the preamp and test it but I feel the outcome is a little unfair as the phono cable is hanging out of the back of the phono stage on the floor and thus susceptible to pick up noise. I touched it and the sound wasn't pretty. Lucky I had the volume turned down. Even with this disadvantage, I could not hear any noise in the listening position which is 3.5 metres from the speakers and the preamp at 3/4 volume, which I never get to when listening as it is above my pain threshold. With the preamp at 1/2 volume which is probably the maximum I get to there was some slight noise which could be heard up to about 6 inches from the speaker. At more moderate levels there was essentially no noise. In fact I had to touch the plug of the phono stage to ensure that I had the preamp on the correct input for this test as before that there was essentially no noise. Probably not a good test as I may have got some body oil into the phono plug and this may have affected the outcome.

As for the Black Beauties, I can hear hum from one of the transformers on one of the amps if I put my ear directly onto the casework. Once I move it away about two inches it is inaudible. All the other transformers are essentially quiet even with my ear on the casework so I would never hear it in the listening seat. I had not tried this before so I found that particularly impressive.

Hope this answers your question. I will check the speaker noise again when my tonearm returns from Bob Graham and let you know. I will also post some photos and description on the site but am waiting for everything to be in place first.

Incidentally the phono stage is the Manley Steelhead and the preamp is the Allnic L-4000 with the upgraded transformers. Thank goodness for Audiogon.

Tony.

tsv_1 said:

You must have some fairly low serial number units, yes? Did you get the black, or more rare red chassis?

Another thing, how's the self-noise on those amps? If you stop or pause your source and put your ear up to the HF panel of the CLX, any white noise to speak of? Finally (and sorry for the slew of off-topic questions), is there any physical noise signature at all from the Carver's when up and running? That is, in a completely quiet room, with no music playing, but with the amps fully on and warmed up, can you hear any transformer noise, low level hum, or any other physical noise from the chassis themselves? I ask because I have a perversely low tolerance for any ambient room noise. To me, ambient noise becomes exceedingly noticable (and offensive) between tracks. I want my listening environment to be vacuum-of-space quiet in order to extract every last ounce of SNR and from my system (some of this SNR-phobia is admittedly psychological... but some of it's real too).

Thanks

Click to expand...

thazeldean said:

Hi Todd,

You were correct about the serial numbers - I have numbers 9 and 10 which were probably the first two configured in 240 volt but I can't be sure.

I have turned the amps on but have no source component at the moment so can't check on the white noise properly for you. I did turn on the phono stage and the preamp and test it but I feel the outcome is a little unfair as the phono cable is hanging out of the back of the phono stage on the floor and thus susceptible to pick up noise. I touched it and the sound wasn't pretty. Lucky I had the volume turned down. Even with this disadvantage, I could not hear any noise in the listening position which is 3.5 metres from the speakers and the preamp at 3/4 volume, which I never get to when listening as it is above my pain threshold. With the preamp at 1/2 volume which is probably the maximum I get to there was some slight noise which could be heard up to about 6 inches from the speaker. At more moderate levels there was essentially no noise. In fact I had to touch the plug of the phono stage to ensure that I had the preamp on the correct input for this test as before that there was essentially no noise. Probably not a good test as I may have got some body oil into the phono plug and this may have affected the outcome.

As for the Black Beauties, I can hear hum from one of the transformers on one of the amps if I put my ear directly onto the casework. Once I move it away about two inches it is inaudible. All the other transformers are essentially quiet even with my ear on the casework so I would never hear it in the listening seat. I had not tried this before so I found that particularly impressive.

Hope this answers your question. I will check the speaker noise again when my tonearm returns from Bob Graham and let you know. I will also post some photos and description on the site but am waiting for everything to be in place first.

Incidentally the phono stage is the Manley Steelhead and the preamp is the Allnic L-4000 with the upgraded transformers. Thank goodness for Audiogon.

Tony.

Click to expand...

Thanks Tony for taking the time and trouble to address my questions.