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Comments, please, on Spica TC-60 setup.

I'm new to the forum and have a decidedly beer-budget approach to music reproduction, but would appreciate any comments or advice on setting up a pair of TC-60s I bought recently on eBay. I hear they're tricky, and would like to think they're capable of better than what I'm hearing.

The system: Harman/Kardon HK3500 50wpc receiver & FL8550 5-disc CD changer and Mission 772 speakers being replaced with Spica TC-60s. Monster interconnects and XP speaker wire (2 10' pairs for biwiring). Also, Stax Lambda Pros with SRD-X energizer.

The issue: The Spica's are much more reticent than the Missions on dynamics and vocals, and the imaging, while good and deeper than the Missions, is not dramatically better.

The setup: very lively 12x18 room with 9' ceiling. Speakers 4' from front wall, 2' from side walls, 8' apart on 26" metal stands. Listening position 4' from back wall, 10' from speakers. As it's an apartment, listening levels are natural only on quiet vocal material.

This arrangement seems to yield the best soundstage, but it's not what you'd call holographic. It's a little more tightly defined than the Missions' and deeper. Bass is also much more articulate. But, the upper midrange reticence (around 1-2KHz) is just killing vocals and any sense of immediacy. Norah Jones and Abbey Lincoln are just too far away and hiding behind a thin curtain. The Missions are perhaps too up-front, killing soundstage depth, but intimate vocals are right there and very close to the Staxes in tonal balance. With the Spicas, only on livelier material like Paul Simon's Rythm of the Saints cranked up to near-natural levels (enough to bother the neighbors downstairs) do the dynamics start to open up and generate a sense of space despite the laid-back reproduction of the vocals. These speakers seem to need to be fairly loud. At low levels, the dynamics just aren't there.

Now, obviously, better source and amplification gear would help. Better stands would help. Better cables might help. But, in terms of dynamics and presence, the Missions manage much better with this modest kit, albeit with a more forward and much shallower soundstage. I'm not aiming for the ultimate in resolution here. I just want a believable soundstage and presence. I have to believe the TC-60s can sound better, and I'm hoping it's a question of positioning.

My 20-year-old memories of the TC-50, and the reviews of the TC-50 and Angelus I've read, led me to expect a somewhat thin, tipped-up sound from the TC-60, which would suit me fine if the imaging lived up to Spica's reputation. But, this is exactly the opposite of what I'm hearing. It's not that voices are chesty, but more that their upper octaves are rolled off.

Any help or comments, especially from TC-60 owners, would be greatly appreciated.
jacquescornell

Showing 3 responses by opalchip

opalchip
355 posts
 
Spicas should be toed in almost until they point directly at you - if you had them set up more conventionally that may have been part of the problem.

The TC-60's will not image quite the same as the TC-50's you remember since the design incorporates a larger mid-woofer, a larger cabinet, and a port - all of which will create some amount of blur, relatively speaking.

Better amplification would certainly help, but I don't think I'd recommend older Adcoms. Even on a tight budget, IMO, there are better alternatives. Frankly, I'd rather have a big ol' high power, high current integrated amp like the Pioneer A-71 Elite. Or a better receiver, like a Yamaha R-2000 or Pioneer SX-1250.

Keep in mind, before going too crazy, that all the Spicas are now dated designs. They were superb, even revolutionary in their day, especially for their price. But that was almost 20 years ago. You may want to check out something like a used pair of Polk Lsi 9's eventually.
opalchip
355 posts
 
One suggestion which yielded pretty amazing results with TC-50's when I did something similar some 20 years ago:

Once you have the position for the TC-60's optimized, and you've got a new amp(s) - try running the Spicas in parallel with the Missions. You'll still need the H/K receiver to run the Missions, since it will give you the ability to fine tune the volume of the speakers relative to one another. (The Spicas at 4 ohms will be louder at the same power level - which is probably how you want them to balance out anyway). The key to maintaining imaging and proper freq. response is to measure the distance from the Spica midrange drivers to your listening position and make sure the Missions are placed symmetrically at EXACTLY the same distance. By keeping them close together, you'll pick up some bass coupling. You may be amazed at what you hear.

The downside is that any movement by you, even a few inches, out of your "sweet spot" will have phase cancellation issues. But right in the spot and you will possibly have some very exciting audio.

I did this with TC-50's, literally sitting on top of a pair of a friend's Bose 501's in 1986. As we know, the 501's SUCK on their own - which was what I intended to demonstrate by bringing my Spicas over to his place. But as part of the combo they served to fill in the lows and the highs - and the imaging was spectacular. We were pretty blown away.
opalchip
355 posts
 
Here's my theory on mating smallish ported speakers like the TC-60 with a sub(s).

1st part of the problem - if you're running the speaker level output from your receiver through the sub's crossover then into the Spicas, you have probably already scrambled the phase of even the high-passed signal. So the whole advantage of the TC-60's design is out the window.

2nd part of the problem is that the TC-60's port will still create it's "one note" bass even with the main speakers crossed over to the sub above the port's tuned resonance. The port output interacts with the sub's output and creates a hump in the bass response and mud.

3rd part of the problem is that to get full benefit, you need to crossover at a fairly high frequency since, without the ports reinforcement, the speakers just don't go all that low. So the sub drivers have to be small enough to accurately produce at THEIR higher end. And if you crossover high up - imaging from the sub becomes an issue. So basically, two 10" subs are better than one 12" or 15".

To attempt a solution -
Try this - pack an old tee shirt loosely all the way into each of the TC-60's ports. You don't want to seal the speaker airtight - you just want to interfere with and dissipate the bass response of the port itself. This will allow the sub to do it's thing without interference, and will improve the imaging from the mains.

If this isn't how you were doing it - Run the sub directly from the receiver's subwoofer outputs while running the speakers from the receiver's normal speaker outs. Experiment with setting the sub's internal crossover on the higher or lower points (which are both pretty high on the Mission, anyway).

Make sure that the sub is EXACTLY centered between the speakers AND the same DISTANCE from you as the Spica's midrange drivers.

If this works pretty well, consider adding a 2nd sub in a stereo configuration.

I haven't tried this with TC-60's specifically, but it has worked well on other ported designs I have played around with.
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