A pair of 22 year old SL3's and a lot of Schiit...

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Yeah, I need to get around to doing that. Right now I just crack open the door and that works.

I plan on selling the house in a year or two, so I'm thinking I probably shouldn't rig up too much. After selling homes in the past I've learned how picky people can be.

I wouldn't exactly consider adding a little bit of weather stripping as "rigging".

It's a shame no one has invented see-through Dynomat for windows. LOL
 
I wouldn't exactly consider adding a little bit of weather stripping as "rigging".

It's a shame no one has invented see-through Dynomat for windows. LOL
Haven't had problems with windows thankfully! Just that door, furniture, wall hangings, and objects resting on surfaces like the mantle. I used foam on picture frames and furniture.
 
Playing around with some "new" NOS tubes that just showed up, as well as the 6SN7 tube adapters to use them in the Freya+...

Raytheon/Baldwin 12AU7's on the left, GE 6CG7 on the right. I also have a pair of GE 6FQ7's, which are identical to the 6CG7, but the 6CG7 utilizes a shield between the two plates.

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Been a couple of stressful weeks around here with an ill kitty and super busy with work, so I haven't really sat and listened to the system, but last night and tonight I have for a few hours. Here's what I posted in another forum last night...



Swapped the 6FQ7's with the 6CG7's and vice versa. These two pairs of tubes sounds virtually identical. This also means that both pairs of tubes sound excellent. The only thing I think I might hear different between them is that the 6CG7's might possibly have a slightly quieter/darker background, but that's really splitting hairs.

Listening at levels of around 75 dB to 80 dB all evening long, and one thing I can definitely say about these tubes, they have a very intimate presentation. You get a private performance with a really good "picture" of the venue in which the performance was recorded. A wide, deep, vast landscape of sound. Even at these low volumes, you still get that percussive, tactile impact of dynamics. I'm not referring to bass here either, but rather that of say a snare drum, musical wood blocks and the like.

Treble detail such as triangles, cymbals, top register of a piano or guitar have a natural decay and shimmer to them that gives you that "you are there" feeling. Tambourines and bongos have that fleshy sound. Bass has real texture, tonality and detail.

I have to say, I think that these little tubes alone may just be my new "reference" tubes. I think these are doing the impossible task of out-performing my original go-to reference tube combo of the RCA 6F8G and Raytheon/Baldwin 6SN7GTB... The Raytheon/Baldwin which has been a true "gold standard" of mine for literally 20+ years!

I'm both extremely pleased and extremely shocked at these results to be honest!
 
Did a thing today... Been itching for a while for some DIY action, and I've had these sitting at the other house for a few years now doing nothing. Figured I'd get them fired back up and actually finish them off properly.

Here's the quick and dirty. And please excuse the mess at the moment in the room. There's been a lot going on in this room today. LOL

The dbx Driverack Venu 360 still had all of the crossover and level settings, as well as the old EQ settings for the old room. Just ran the "Auto EQ". Sounding better than I imagined it would, especially since they just replaced the Martin Logan's. In fact, these are doing extremely good right now.

The little silver amps are the Nuprime STA 9's that I used to own and sold to one of my brothers a while back. The Emotiva is powering the Audio Nirvana fullrange drivers, the top STA 9 is powering the Eminence woofers, the bottom STA 9 is only there to send a signal to the JL subs.

More to come!

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Chops, I like your custom sound treatments. They look like you can adjust them easily by removing the black centers. I guess you could even custom tune them further by where they have their ears pointed! Look like some happy cats. I have two but one is getting old (15) and it is starting to show. But, they are addictive in that they love interacting with people. My old one is part cat and part dog. He has a lot of dog mannerisms.
 
Been tweaking speaker positioning more, adjusting levels, crossover points and such. Really getting these dialed in. The result of all that work was that the AutoEQ in the dbx Venu 360 had to implement a lot less in order to make corrections.

Afterwards, I played my reference songs from Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight, I Don't Care Anymore, and Genesis - Mama. Songs/albums that I have lived and breathed for the past 30+ years. Also Carley Simon -Coming Around Again and Sting - Why Should I Cry For You and When The Angels Fall.


Especially while playing the Phil Collins and Genesis tracks, tonight was the first time in a very long time that my system made me get chills down my spine and actually start laughing to myself because how damn good it sounded! The last time this happened was when I was running HUGE open baffles back in the early 2000's with Usher Audio 15" drivers and Altec Voice Of The Theater 511B horns and 908-8b drivers. And this system is more refined than that system was, and much smaller by comparison!


Sheer dynamic swing, purely effortless slam, in-the-room vocals and drums, stage width and depth galore! And the naturalness and realistic presentation of it all... And this is STILL with the flimsy temp baffles and only one bass driver per side. I still have six more of these Eminence Acoustinator N2012 drivers to install (three per channel).


This is the RTA on the dbx Venu 360 after all the tweaking and running AutoEQ again, now with a lot less processing needed.

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