Stereomour Speakers

[benzxc]

Hi all,

I'm saving up for a Stereomour II and have been eyeing some speakers to pair with.  I intend to place them in my living room (13' x 13'), which has an open floor plan connecting it with my kitchen (5' x 7') and dining room (10' x 13').  While I will probably spend most of my time in the living room listening to the speakers, I also like to play music while I am doing housework/chores around the kitchen/dining room.

I mainly listen to jazz and classical music.  Not too much vocals apart from the odd opera pieces. 

My budget range is USD1,000 - 1,500.

Three speakers have interested me so far:

1. Blumenstein Orcas + Subwoofer combo

2. Omega Super 3 XRS

3. Caintuck Betsy Open Baffle + Alpha Sub

Anyone have any experience with the above speakers or any other speakers to pair with the Stereomour II that can provide me with some advice? 

My concern with the Orcas is that it might not be powerful enough given the open floor plan of my intended listening area. 

While I like the Caintuck open baffle look, I have never used an open baffle speakers before and there seems to be a dearth of places near where I live that I can audition those speakers.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Ben

[bernieclub]

I don't have experience personally with any of the above specifically, but have experimented extensively with single driver and open baffle speakers over the years, in a similar listening environment.   You don't really have the space to get the best out of the OB.   Single drivers are nice, but come with specific sacrifices.   You might want to consider these with the finished cabinet option...

www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/2-way-speaker-kits/seas-a26-10-2-way-kit-pair-based-on-the-classic-a25/


Bernie

[benzxc]

Thanks, Bernie!

[2wo]

I have listened to the Betsy's driven with one of my 45 amps and they sound wonderful. They have a huge sound stage, a "you are there image" and a beautiful tone. I really liked them a lot...John

[benzxc]

Thanks, John!  I'm leaning more towards the Betsy due to the price and I just really like the looks of the open baffle design.  Though the omega super 3 xrs and orcas look really nice too....

[EricS]

I'm a little late to this conversation and don't know where you are in your decision making process, but I thought I'd put in a vote for a single driver design called the "Frugal Horn XL."  You can find some details here:  http://frugal-horn.com/FHXL.html

I'm using mine with a number of lower-powered amps including a new 300B amp I'm working on.  They have enough bass that I am satisfied to listen to them without using a sub.  Drivers are inexpensive and if you have woodworking skills, you can build cabinets yourself.

[benzxc]

Thanks, Eric! I ended up going for the Orcas with subs and am eagerly awaiting their arrival!

[oguinn]

I have the Orcas and use them with the Stereomour II. I like them quite a bit. I'm using a shitty old Yamaha powered sub and a powered crossover (against Clark Blumenstein's advice, actually - he suggests using the speaker level outputs as the input to the sub but I wasn't really able to get what I was looking for with that setup). I'd love to upgrade to a nicer sub, and I'd love even more to get stereo subs at some point.

[Jamier]

Jameson,

     What, exactly, was the reasoning that Clark gave you concerning not using an active Xover?

Jamie

[oguinn]

I want to be really careful here for two reasons:

• Clark Blumenstein is a tremendously nice guy who called in response to an email I wrote him and very patiently explained why his speakers didn't require a crossover to work with a sub.
• Clark Blumenstein has forgotten more about audio than I'll ever know, and his explanation made some sense to me at the time but I'm positive I won't get my recitation correct.

With those two caveats (boiled down to: Clark's nice and I'm probably going to get this wrong) out of the way, here's what I think he was saying: the Stereomour has more than enough power to handle both the Orca and the sub. Concerns about lower frequencies being difficult to drive are a little overblown. Additionally, a powered sub will have a filter that will weed out the higher frequencies, and there's a reasonable overlap between what the Orca is able to drive and what the sub is asked to drive that results in a fuller sound.

I'm 100% sure I butchered that. Apologies to Clark. He's been around the forum before, maybe he'll come rescue that explanation.

In my experience, however, I never got the sound I was looking for with the sub at speaker level, and I think it's because I use The Fix between the Smash and the Stereomour, so I was performing baffle step correction on the sub in that setup. Ultimately it's also easier to control the subwoofer's sound with the various controls on the X2 crossover.

[Jamier]

Jameson,

      How did the system sound without the Fix?

Jamie

[oguinn]

I want to say it was a little dull and light on the high end, but it's been a while since I listened without it so it's probably worth re-testing.

[Paul Birkeland]

I would add that if you listen loudly in a large room to music with lots of low frequency content, you can overdrive the full range driver in the Orca.  What you'll hear is the voice coil former hitting the back plate, and it will sound like a loud pop.  If this is something you run into, you can stuff the ports with socks or put a passive high pass crossover between the amp and Orcas to increase the power handling. 

This is an inexpensive experiment to try, but often times isn't completely necessary. 

[Jamier]

Jameson,

      I have never seen the curves for an Orca, but it is ported so it probably has a couple of impedance peaks below 600hz. I know what Clark is referring to concerning the constraints, or lack there of, when an amp is driving low frequencies. So with the SII, @ 3.5 W/ side, a good deal of it’s abilities will be consumed driving those speakers in the lower frequencies, if they have the typical twin impedance peaks that most ported speakers have (PB, correct me if I’m wrong). So, I agree with Clark that, all things being equal, low frequencies don’t require more from your amp than higher frequencies, but in real life they usually do.

     I think the reason that you probably prefer the system with the X2 in place is that with speaker level connections there will be a lot of duplication of frequencies around the Xover point ( from both the sub and the satellites) and this will create a loss of coherency in that region with reflections, cancellations etc. With the active xover there is a much cleaner cutoff which reduces that and you get better coherency. In addition you cut your SII off at the xover frequency which relieves it of reproducing the lowest frequencies thus giving the amp more headroom. This has been my experience anyway. YMMV.

Jamie

[oguinn]

All that makes sense.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Ben. I have really enjoyed the NHT X2 crossover that Jamie recommended, so it might be a good pick up if you find yourself wanting more in the bass department. They're out of production but I found mine on eBay with a little patience.