trisal philemon reamonah
Hetty Calin
This design was fairly complicated, with a lot of internal structure. Thankfully my computer model made measuring the parts a breeze (print the speaker's plans). After cutting all the parts from good quality 1/2 inch MDF board I began assembly.
Most home theater systems consist of a subwoofer & a bunch of small satellite speakers. The trouble with these systems is that the small speakers are unable to produce bass so they rely on the subwoofer for this. They sound great & this is fine until you add surround sound to the mix.
The problem with most surround sound systems that use small satellite speakers is they employ subwoofers that produce sound well up into the directional frequencies. They need to have the subwoofer do this to compensate for the no bass small speakers. This results in a diminished 3D sound stage & a subwoofer you can locate blindfolded.
To avoid needing my subwoofer to play anything close to directional bass-midrange I wanted a speaker capable of producing its own bass. A mid sized ported speaker using two woofers was the answer. The Mid-Tweeter-Mid (MTM) design has become quite popular. With two woofers & a tweeter these speakers can produce excellent fullrange sound without having to work too hard when the bass starts pumping. So I did some research & came across the following design by a guy in the Netherlands.
This cool looking DYI design had me hooked from the moment I saw it. I instantly fell in love with the cool angular faceplate. The ingenious double slotted port built around the tweeter enclosure was a big selling point also. She had the ported MTM layout that I wanted too.
There where a few problems however. Both the tweeter & two woofers were Seas models. VERY nice drivers but a little out of my price range. Also these high quality low impedance drivers when wired together result in a pretty serious load for an amplifier to handle. I would not be able to turn up the volume much using these. My amp just wouldn't take it. Also the design called for some fairly fancy electronics that went way over my head. Still I liked the design & wasn't willing to give up on it yet.
Their A/V-3 speaker, although an attractive design, didn't compare to Tony Gee's Proteus as far as pure looks goes. At least that's my opinion. So I decided to see if I could make the A/V-3's drivers & electronics work with the nifty Proteus enclosure design.
The only complication with this approach is that the A/V-3's electronics are tuned for the A/V-3's enclosure design. The Proteus has its drivers spaced further apart & also has the two woofers sitting an inch or so ahead of the tweeter. Minor differences but they do effect the sound slightly. How slightly I was to find out later on.
Using my computer's 3D software & my audio programs I reworked the Proteus to work with the GR Research hardware. The ports were tuned to 47.18 Hz with an internal volume of 1.487 square feet. This was the predicted curve for the woofers.
Sound and beauty! The Proteus Multimedia Speaker System offers balanced sound and attractive design. With an output of 140 watts P.M.P.O. Proteus is suitable for music and PC sound reproduction. The sound can be regulated. The headphone plug offers a good alternative to a direct computer connection. The attractive graphite metal box makes this speaker system stand out from common systems.
The gel can help in two ways. First, damping cables eliminates microphonics which smears the signal. The most critical place for fluid damping would be the tone arm cable. Realize that all interconnects have capacitance, and vibration will induce a signal because of the capacitance. In reality, cables can act like ribbon microphones. In the case of the Proteus Provectus speaker cables, there are independent plus and minus runs, possibly eliminating capacitance (and inductance) from the equation. The key would be careful running of the cables. Experimentation can yield interesting results with parallel runs.
In all fairness, the other ribbon had already been replaced and Magnepan flatly tells you that they are going to die eventually. The point is that the series resistance of the cables was so much lower than my other unnamed boutique cable, that it let the amp push a lot more current through. Thus, the weak ribbon was finished off. The amps were heavily modified Heath W6M which can do 140 watts peak. The ultra-low resistance of the Proteus Provectus allowed the amps to push a lot more current than my other cables which had a similar gauge. I would guess that the all-copper construction and the excellent termination techniques mean this 9 AWG wire has less series resistance than an equivalent gauge cable of ordinary materials and termination. Lower series resistance also means better damping factor (better control of the amp over the speakers).
Sometime in ancient history, when snakes freely roamed the earth without fear that their oil would be disparaged, John Johnson asked me if I wanted to review the complete line of Ultralink/XLO Argentum audio cables. Since I thrive on comparisons, be they of cabling, amplifiers, or sopranos, I welcomed the assignment. (The Argentum power cable is not necessarily just for audio, but we include it as such here.)
My history with cable comparisons goes back at least 15 years, to the time when I began to upgrade a fledgling high-end system by purchasing a $550 Rotel CD player. As I was about to cart it home, the dealer declared that I would have to spend at least $78 on an AudioQuest Ruby interconnect in order to get the most out of the player.
Fit to be tied rather than cabled, I reluctantly marched out of the store with a loaner pair of Rubys. Ever the inquisitive one, I also made a near-fatal error, and asked to try the next level up ($110 plus tax), whose casing was blue.
Which brings us back to Argentum. The price difference between the Argentum and Nordost Odin line is huge. How, I wondered, would an Argentum Proteus-12 power cable that costs $1050 for 2.74 meters compare with a Nordost Odin power cable that costs $16,000 for 2.5 meters? More to the point, assuming that the price difference was reflected in quality, how could I even think of comparing the two?
All cables are hand-terminated. Audio interconnects come in RCA, XLR, and BNC terminations; video interconnects are either RCA or BNC. Connectors are non-magnetic and of minimal conducting mass, and include direct 24K gold plated contacts. Speaker cables are terminated with interchangeable 8.0mm billet-cut spade lugs made from CDA alloy 101 (99.994% pure) copper, and are direct gold plated. Deltron-style banana plugs are also available.
I wondered what was up. The explanation came at CES 2009, where Argentum cabling was officially unveiled. There, Nate Mansfield, Sales Manager for Ultralink/XLO, gave me the low-down on the difference between the design philosophy of the two cable lines in the Ultralink family, XLO and Argentum.
Argentum, on the other hand, was designed to overlook flaws in components. Its presentation is intentionally more forgiving, and tends to soften highs. It is priced in the middle of the XLO line, is only partially hand-assembled, and its geometry is not visible. It may have certain design similarities to XLO cables, but its ideal applications are different.
The ideal situation, of course, is to own a synergistic match of tonally neutral, maximally transparent components, and to mate them with neutral, full-range cables that best transmit sonic truth. Some of us own such components. Most of us do not.
For those whose components are sonically compromised and far from neutral, a judicious choice of cabling can help maximize system strengths while balancing out flaws. Argentum cabling, which was conceived with the goal of transforming a bright, overly etched system into one far more neutral and pleasing, might be just what the doctor ordered.
I auditioned Argentum by systematically replacing the Nordost Odin in my system. Since I had enough Argentum Proteus-12 power cables to replace all my power cables except the two on my amps, which use special 20 amp connectors, I started there.
Then I changed the 1.5meter XLR interconnect between the Theta Gen. VIII Series 2 DAC/preamp and the VTL monoblocks from Nordost Odin to Argentum Mythos. I immediately noted a loss of richness and color. Timpani strokes were a bit blurred, because the bass response was not as fast and crisp. The sound was somewhat more pedestrian and ordinary, lacking some of the illumination that makes me love my system as much as I do.
There is a lot of space to the left of the left speaker. First-order reflections aim toward a small alcove that leads to the front door. While a heavy curtain covers the windows behind the system, the wall behind the speakers is not flat due to record shelves and room supports. There are other openings on the right wall, close to the listening position, that lead to the stairway and kitchen. In the rear, behind the sweet spot, is a large granite fireplace that also catches and messes with the sound.
Floors are hardwood and carpet in front of the system, and hardwood elsewhere. Walls in the living room are a combination of plaster and wood, with a large granite fireplace in the rear. The dining room is all plaster.
Proteus is design with pure technology, designed in Italy, it is a real revolution in the smaller PA systems for musicians. Its secret is in the layout, its shape is based onto the study of line array speaker system response and, together with the loudspeaker technology, allow a uniform sound spectrum with very low distortions.
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Computer: Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop, 2.8 ghz, 2 gigs ram, Windows XP (sp2).
Sound card #1: Sigma Tel Audio (This is the native sound card and associated software inncluded with the computer.)
Sound card #2. E-MU 0404/USB (This is a small box w/ sound card and software. It has 2 mic ports, midi in/out, USB 2.0, etc. I got it to connect a studio mic [Rode NT-1A] to my computer for recording guitar and vocal.)
Midi controller: M-Audio Axiom 49 It has USB 1.1 and midi in/out. (This is a piano keyboard type midi controller.)
Midi controller software: Proteus X (This is a synth with sounds (sampler). It receives the signal from the midi keyboard and translate them into usable audio [analogue?] sounds. i.e. drums, bass guitar, pipe organ, etc, etc.)