UK Hifi Show

[Peter Empson]

Hi All,
Sorry I've not been around here a bit more recently, but work commitments have been taking up almost all of my spare time.
I hope to put that right in the near future, but in the mean time I though UK Vitavoxfans would be interested in knowing that we'll be using a pair of Vitavox CN191 corner horns in our room at the Heathrow Hifi show on the 2nd and 3rd of April 2005.
It should be a great event (more details here: Heathrow Hifi Show ) and if you can make it then it'd be great to be able to put some more names to faces.
Best regards,
Peter.

[Romy the Cat]

Hey, Peter.

Have a great time in there and lets show to the Morons what S2+151 can do and to drive the Vitavox prices unit a pair of CN191 will cost more then Wilson Alexandria. Then I will retire and begin to trade my stock of Vitavox :-)

It is kind of tricky to get ?interesting? sound from corner horns but if the room is correct then it might be absolutely wonderful. I have to report that the best upper bass that I even heard was from a pair of CN191. Perhaps from that time my definition of ?best upper bass? slightly migrated toward less ?impressive upper bass? but still what the proper CN191 can do (if the room is correct) should be quite an experience for your room?s visitors. I hope you will be lucky and the CN191 would be working there at its real capacity and I wish you had people in there that would be able to understand and appreciate what they hear.

My I ask you a question? If you have them then you certainly played with them. So, were you able whale you use the CN191 to remove the presentation from the wall? If yes, then can you share how did you do it?

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

[lizgary]

Hello Peter,i look forward to meeting you at the show,Gary

[Peter Empson]

Hi Romy,
Sorry for the long delay replying. The show has taken an awful lot more work than I'd expected.
I'll post again when I've fully recovered - we only finished setting up at midnight last night, I then drove home to get 4 hours sleep before returning to the show again today :-(

But after a bit of tweaking we're getting a nice sound - good bass extension and good vocal performance too. Quite a few visitors seemed to agree as well. Not bad for a speaker designed in 1949!

I'm not looking forward to the get out tomorrow afternoon though, we've got a lot of equipment to box and load including three big pairs of speakers to move (System 191's, Octave Audio Reproduction Autographs and Corner GRF's!).






More pics and info to come in a few days.
Best regards,
Peter.

[Romy the Cat]

So, Peter, was you able to remove sound of this wall between the speakers and to make the presentation more like ?in room? instead of ?behind the wall??

The Cat

[SA660]

I missed the show, I was in France.
I hope you enjoyed it as it look like a lot of physical work to set this up.
How would you compare the CN191 and the Thunderbolt?
Do you really need the JBL 2405 on top of the CN191.
What is the price for the pair?

Thanks,

[Peter Empson]

What an enjoyable weekend! It was very tiring but well worthwhile.

This was my first exposure to the System 191's so there was quite a steep learning curve when we came to setting them up - much more than I'd expected in my naivety (that is considering my basic familiarity with the components that made the system up).

Instead of the standard single cell horns we used my RH330's 4 cells. I wanted to use these to ensure a wide sweet spot for such a large room (6 x 10 metres) and with so many potential seating positions (we had 16 chairs and plenty of standing space).

Initial running on the Friday night was promising but the sound wasn't projecting as well as it should have and it sounded rather 'off' - not helped by the fact that due to lack of familiarity to the particular DAC we were using we ended up with two left channels - thanks for spotting it so quickly Graham!

We left the electronics to warm up overnight (some items had only turned up at the last minute and we're still running in). A quick dash back home at midnight got us on average about 4-5 hours of kip before an early start Saturday morning to have a tweaking session before the show opened.

The first thing I wanted to try was angling the mid horns at much less than the standard 45 degrees that the cabinet was designed for and this made a tremendous difference, and it gave us almost complete freedom of listening positions throughout the room, with the sound improving slightly in terms of image focus on the third row of seats back.

Imaging was not as precise as many show visitors were perhaps used to, partly due to the speakers corner position, partly due to their rather wide spacing and I also suspect partly due to the hoods impact which I'm sure caused various internal reflections. However impact and scale were of of course in the league that you'd expect.

The difference of adding these decorative hoods on top of the speaker (that covers the mid driver and horn) was substantial, changing almost every aspect of the speakers performance. The metal grille and surrounding surfaces did seem to knock back the HF response somewhat and I ended up running the CN458 crossovers with 0dB attenuation to restore presence and also to balance a little of the lower mid/bass muddle we were getting. I initially suspected that this might be cabinet resonance (and I'm sure some of it was, lets face it there are a lot of panels in the design and
it does date back to 1949, even if Mike does manage to build them much more rigidly than originals). However standing right in front of the
speaker the effect was massively reduced, leading me to suspect it was the rather soft walls of the hotel room that were adding a fair bit to proceedings.

I added my JBL 2405's on top (which were hastily resprayed and put in suitable housings for the show) and ended up with them rolling in quite low
on a first order X-over. A bit of experimentation meant using a 3.3uF cap, although a higher value would have been nice to try, but I chickened out as I didn't want to risk toasting their diaphragms without a spare pair. I ended up with appox 5dB of attenuation to get them fairly close to the right level, with perhaps a touch more being beneficial, but as every crossover modification meant moving these massive beasts out from the corners and lifting the beautifully
finished hoods on and off I decided that we were close enough. In hindsight I should have bought a laptop and measured the response rather than doing it by ear.

Mike had specially made a pair of false plywood walls to attach to the sides of the bass horns so we were much less dependant on the room than we would have been - a real blessing as the presence of large skirting and some power sockets would have caused us grief otherwise.

Overall the sound was completely effortless, and unstrained meaning the volume level kept creeping
up, probably rather higher than intended, but never unpleasently so (until the last half hour or so of the show when we had some fun with some seriously antisocial material ;-)

The bass extension was very good, with all the dynamics expected but with much more power on fundamentals than I imagined. In hindsight I really regret not bringing along a good Bach organ recital or two to put them through their paces.

Mid and treble were quite superb in my opinion considering the room, with voices perhaps sounding a little larger than life but palpable, and at times with real goosebump factor.

The speakers and system dramatically improved throughout the two days of use and were still getting better when we came to pack up. In fact if it wasn't for the need to get them loaded back onto the van so that everyone could start their journeys home I'd probably still be rifling through my record collection on them :-)

So as you can probably tell, I fell in love with these speakers over the weekend and can't think of many other commercially available systems I'd be so happy to live with, which is quite remarkable given the designs age.

I was curious to see how the public would react to such a 'different' design, but we received a lot of best sound at the show comments which really made it all worthwhile and somewhat restored my faith in the UK high end scene (which I'd felt had been become very narrow minded, brand led and technology concious of late).

I'd like to take this oppurtunity to thank Mike for loaning us the speakers for the show, for his support throughout and also for travelling no small distance at antisociable hours to get the speakers to and from the show.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 05, 2005 05:52 PM: Message edited by: Peter Empson ]</font>

[Peter Empson]

Originally posted by Richard Debarbouille:
How would you compare the CN191 and the Thunderbolt?
Do you really need the JBL 2405 on top of the CN191.
What is the price for the pair?

Thanks,

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hi Richard, Romy and all,
I'm itching to listen to my system whilst the 191's are still fresh in my mind, but I've got to put the crossovers back together first so it will be tomorrow at the earliest (I left them at the shop by mistake and really dont want to drive there today on my day off!).
However (and not that it answers your question) I'd say that in the mid the S2 definately has superior texture and colour compared to the S5, although I do feel its much easier to get the crossover to the tweeter closer to seamless on the S5's due to its superior high frequency response allowing the change over to happen at a much less intrusive frequency.
But none of this will really surprise anyone I suspect.

My bass horns use a similar profile to the Thunderbolt, but are not the same as they are my own (shallower) design. But the comparative difference is that mine sound much 'faster' (I hate that term, but it is descriptive), both in apparent time delay to the mid but also superior for upper bass impact and defintion.
An example of where upper bass slam is important was Basement Jaxx's Romeo and it sounded a little messy and confused in comparison, whereas at home it certainly doesn't.
However I'm sure that the difference in rooms was playing a large part in this, so I can't be at all certain of the speakers influence.

Bass extension is something else altogether, mine are curtailed but acceptable, but the 191's were quite exceptional. A particular example that I'm sure both Mike and Guy can back me up on was the wonderful first track on Joni Mitchell's 'Don Juan's reckless daughter' which was astounding, with great power, texture and depth. This quality extended all the way into the male vocal region too.
In fact its this bass texture which seemed quite special as I believe the room itself was having a major negative impact on what the 191's where achieving there (and it sounds like this ties in with Romy's experience too).

The sound was more relaxed and I suppose more 'old fashioned' on the 191's but this different take on the presentation is just that, you couldn't accuse either of being right or wrong.

The 2405's were definately necessary in my opinion, particulalry as we couldn't rely on people acclimitising to the rolled off balance on a quick visit when they'd just come from another room. Most people assumed they were super tweeters so I guess the crossover point wasn't obvious or intrusive.

I do prefer the imaging I get here (in a much smaller room), which is more precise in terms of width and the way it projects further from the boxes, but this is a compromise I guess you get from having the 191's wedged across the corners. I'd have liked to try some absorbtion and reflection on the walls and lining the top hood with felt (internally and on top to catch tweeter reflections) but as it was we were pushed for time with us just reinstating the speakers after one last crossover change as the first visiors of the day came in on Saturday morning.

The price of the speakers varies depending on specification chosen, but ones similar to those shown would be approximately 25,000GBP, although we calculated that price to include some nice cabling and tweeters to complete the package.
Mike told me that it takes at least 5 solid weeks of work to build the cabinets, obviously plus a lot more for the drive units so you can see where the money goes, and the finish and build quailty was naturally quite superb.
Best regards,
Peter.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 04, 2005 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Peter Empson ]</font>

[vyju]

PETER
Did you compare between te Tannoy corner speakers and te Vitavox speakers?
RAJIV

[Peter Empson]

Hi Rajiv,
I'm afraid we didn't, although I'd have liked to give the Reroduction Autographs a run but there really wasn't the time, so they were just used as static demonstrators.
Here's some pics of them and some others of the room.
Best regards,
Peter.








<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 05, 2005 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Peter Empson ]</font>