Sonic Bliss with biamped SL3s

[raanan]

Hi All,I have had CLSIIAs in my living room for the past 17 years.I knew that I would never be able to get a high quality high power/current amp for it.Used QUAD 405 initially,then a Moscode 600.
Recently was able to pick up a pair of SL3s,which resided in my bedroom.Today I moved them to my living room.The living room is a smallish medium 20 square meters.
The Moscode drives the lows,the panels are driven by a pair of EL37 run triode 12 watt TL12.1 clones.
Based on my continued struggles with the CLSs,I would not have thought it possible for 12 watt amps to drive panels-but-I am in heaven.Obviously the SL3 panels are much much easier to drive than CLSs.
Raanan

 

[roberto]

Hi All,I have had CLSIIAs in my living room for the past 17 years.I knew that I would never be able to get a high quality high power/current amp for it.Used QUAD 405 initially,then a Moscode 600.
Recently was able to pick up a pair of SL3s,which resided in my bedroom.Today I moved them to my living room.The living room is a smallish medium 20 square meters.
The Moscode drives the lows,the panels are driven by a pair of EL37 run triode 12 watt TL12.1 clones.
Based on my continued struggles with the CLSs,I would not have thought it possible for 12 watt amps to drive panels-but-I am in heaven.Obviously the SL3 panels are much much easier to drive than CLSs.
Raanan

Hola Raanan. yes, they are. First you have to think in low frequency. Your CLSIIas are capable to reproduce with incredible realism a bass player, due to the fast speed of the diaphragm. Using you own room to "tune" tha bass, the scenario and stage of the CLSIIas are almost untoucheable. The sensitivity of your CLSIIas are about 84 to 85 dBs/2.83V/m. I know that the specs says a little better than this, but the tests never show a better sensitivity. Now, what you did with your SL-3s is good too. You are using a separate amplifier to drive the bass section and another amplifier to drive the panels. Better also, if you can adjust the level of the bass amp. This way you can place the right amount of power to the woofers, and listen the wonderfull clear sound of the panel. Trust your ears and start with single instruments first, then two or three, and then more...this way you can set the level and their position better. As you can listen, the positions of the SL-3s might be different than the CLSIIas. Try to toe-in 1/3 of the panel facing your seat. Hope this can help...trust your ears and happy listening,
Pura vida,
Roberto.

 

[raanan]

Thanks,Roberto

I am now connecting the SL3s woofers through an electronic crossover(at 250) that gives me control over the level of the bass output ,and it is really much better,as before I had too much bass(a 300 WPC amp on the bass,and 12 watt monoblocks on the panels)-so the sound is better.Have you had any experience with disabling the internal crossover in the SL3?
Raanan

 

[DTB300]

I am now connecting the SL3s woofers through an electronic crossover(at 250) that gives me control over the level of the bass output ,and it is really much better

Is it a Marchand?

 

[raanan]

Ev-ex24

Is it a Marchand?

One day-hopefully.



I had a Bryston 10B,which did NOT sound good with my CLSs when I was adding a sub.
I now have an EV EX24,which I consider very good sounding.
I am trying to find a way around the fact that it has a 4th order crossover rather than the second order in the SL3s passive cross.
I cut at 500,which adds a bit of bloom-not too much,to compensate for the steeper slope.
Raanan

 

[roberto]

I am now connecting the SL3s woofers through an electronic crossover(at 250) that gives me control over the level of the bass output ,and it is really much better,as before I had too much bass(a 300 WPC amp on the bass,and 12 watt monoblocks on the panels)-so the sound is better.Have you had any experience with disabling the internal crossover in the SL3?
Raanan

Hola Raanan. No, I have not. But look inside of the electronics of your CLS. There, you will find a tone shape control for the stat panels. What I'm trying to say is that you need this tone shape control. ML knows that there are crazy guys like we are, and we are trying to get the best sound possible. If the task to do this would be simple, they will allow a possible configuration for this purpose, and they have not...better you talk to Jim Power at ML about this. Happy listening,
Pura vida,
Roberto.

 

[JonFo]

To truly actively bi-amp, my take is you need to totally bypass the internal x-over networks as much as possible. For the bass, it’s pretty simple, just disconnect the woofer from the internal x-over and wire it straight to the bass input binding posts (disconnecting the post to x-over wires).

In a Sequel or SL3, unless you have a good speaker processor (like the Driverack 260), you might still want to keep the passive x-over, as it’s doing some frequency response corrections.
Although I’d worry about the X-over slope sums between the active external x-over and the passive. That would have to be figured out.

See a very complete discussion of the Sequel II (predecessor to SL3) xover in this thread: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=56347
It has FR plots, schematics, the whole nine yards.

BTW- Just my personal opinion, but I’d use a good solid state amp for the woofer, much better control.