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Thoburn · 6275

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Offline Thoburn

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on: October 03, 2010, 02:18:23 PM
My Stereomour is driving Lowther DX4 drivers in the Lowther Medallion cabinet. I would like to add a sub woofer powered from it's own amp. The question I have is how best to connect it. I don't own a subwoofer yet. Lowther America suggests putting the 12 inch Rythmic sub mounted down-firing in the bottom of cabinet and use their plate style amp. I think I can connect the output of the Stereomour directly to the 'speaker' inputs of the sub amp. Is there a better way to do it? How might the additional load on the Stereomour/Lowther effect the sound? Thanks for any advice.

Dynavector DV-20X2L > VPI Scout II > Musical Surroundings NovaPhonomena
Mac Mini > USB DACiTx
Stereomour > Lowther Medallion DX4 and Rythmic Subs
Monster Power HTS3600


Online Paul Joppa

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Reply #1 on: October 03, 2010, 02:56:01 PM
By al means, try it with the speaker outputs. The plate amp will have no effect on the Stereomour's sound, and this is the easiest connection to make.

The downside risks are small, but there are two:

1) If the main speaker's impedance fluctuations are large, the frequency response fed to the sub will reflect that to a modest extend due to the non-infinite damping factor of SET amps. I expect this to be insignificant since room resonances will be an order of magnitude larger, but it is a real effect. You may need to re-optimize the speaker position, but you'll have to do that for the subs anyhow.

2) The sub amp will get the hum voltage from the Stereomour's AC-heated filaments. This will normally be quite small, and if you cross well below the 120Hz hum frequency the plate amp will attenuate that hum even further. But in unusual circumstances this may be audible. If it's a bother, then some internal surgery will be needed to obtain a line-level outout to the sub that does not affect the internal sonics of the amp. I'd be inclined to tap off a tiny fraction of the 249K grid resistor on the power tube grid, in order to keep the source impedance small so that the cable capacitance doesn't upset the amp's tonality.

Paul Joppa


Offline Grainger49

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Reply #2 on: October 04, 2010, 12:57:53 AM
I am running a sub with my Paramours.  I come from the preamp output and go into stereo line level inputs.  As I don't know the suggested plate amp I don't know if you have that option.  This method has neither of the possible problems mentioned above but the speaker wire option gives you the flavor of your amp in the sub.  I like that answer.

Try it as PJ suggests and if there is noticeable hum try it my way and see which works best for you.



Offline Thoburn

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Reply #3 on: October 05, 2010, 03:49:02 AM
Thanks for the advise. When my pocket book recovers I'll be buying the Rythmic subs and amp. The amp can feed off of the speakers or from a pre-amp. Will be trying the speaker route first.

Dynavector DV-20X2L > VPI Scout II > Musical Surroundings NovaPhonomena
Mac Mini > USB DACiTx
Stereomour > Lowther Medallion DX4 and Rythmic Subs
Monster Power HTS3600


Offline Clive

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Reply #4 on: October 06, 2010, 04:43:07 AM
Thanks for the advise. When my pocket book recovers I'll be buying the Rythmic subs and amp. The amp can feed off of the speakers or from a pre-amp. Will be trying the speaker route first.
With speaker level sub connection you do get a flavour of the amp's sound.  However, depending on how deep the amp goes you may get a certain amount of distortion coloring the sound as OPTs, even Bottlehead one, are not perfect down to 20Hz.  Suck it and see!