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I own a pair in blonde oak. They are beautiful and sound incredible. Female voices on them are so good that the realism is down right scary.
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Re the phase issues, yes you are correct and my adapted tweeter crossover uses some conjugate matching to minimise the sharp phase transitions. Infinity's are not everyone's choice and your friend may have a valid point, however, the issue of coherence can be minimised with careful attention to speaker placement and the right choice of a listening room. Any 4 way speaker will need more distance to generate a coherent wave and the ren's are no exception. One big advantage of planar drivers is that the impedance is flat and resistive not only within but also well outside the operating range, so passive crossover design is far easier to get right and can be achieved without RLC networks that rob efficiency and introduce other side effects. Planar driver impedance also remains constant with power which is a source of non linearity with cones or domes. Every design has strenghts and weaknesses and the 90's are not perfect but they really don't do anything very wrong and what they do very right is difficult to live without once you have lived with them for a while. BTW from my brief experiences with Classe amps I think they are an excellent choice for the Ren's but I'm sure you will hear improved dynamics when you upgrade to the CA-2200. I would like to hear that setup. BTW I live in Sydney and bought my Ren 90'S new back in 1995 from Audio Excellence. The RRP at the time was $7999 but they gave me a nice discount. I have owned many other speakers including B&W 801 but these are my fav. |
That's an interesting set up on your Rens Timpani. Speaking the obvious, but smooth watts are very important for the Emits! I can certainly understand the popularity of running a ss amp on the Watkins & tube power for the highs, but I feel that running separate amps for lows/highs creates phase issues and (personally) I feel using tube amps introduces microphonics which muddy the sound of highly revealing speakers like Rens.
What interested me about your hand-made tweeter amp was how similar in concept it sounds to Classe amps which employ Jfets in the input stage, Mosfets in the driver stage & Bipolars in the output stages. It's certainly rewarding and exciting to invest in that level of amp, but more fun if you can design and build your own!
Incidentally, I have a friend who is an Infinity sceptic. He actually sold a smattering of Infinitys back in the 90's (eg: IRS Epsilon), but he never heard Renaissance 90s. His common line is that Infinitys "lack coherancy". His favorite speakers are ML's, and in fact he tried to persuade me to buy a pair of CLS 2z's off him recently. I felt they had inherent weaknesses in that they are absolutely reliant on an add on subwoofer & good room acoustics. My response to him was "just wait till you hear the Rens!" |
Melbguy, If you're completely happy with the tonal balance then it's good advice to leave them alone.
FWIW I'm using a 10 year old Meridian 557 to drive the Woofers, Mid Bass's and EMIM's and I designed and built my own amp for the tweeters because I couldn't find anything commercial with the smoothness and refinement I was after. The EMITS can sound a bit metalic with some SS amps and my own design - using a mosfet output stage with bipolar drives in CFP configuration results in a very sweet fluid treble while the gutsy Meridan gives me the dynamics and control from the mids and down to the sub bass.
I find the Ren 90's a tour de force when it comes to 3d imaging. I'm yet to hear another large speaker that can present a 3D image the way these can. |
Hi Timpani, I was really interested to read that earlier run Renaissance 90's had a 2.5db peak at 2.3Khz. Interesting! That does support Infinity's motivation to introduce later revs of the crossover. That also put a smile on my face as the pair I bought were late-manufacture/late sale examples which would have had the later x-over, thus not requiring mods for (hopefully) a long time to come. It would take a very skilled audio engineer to do in a couple of weeks what Infinity spend hundreds of hours to perfect, so on reflection, i'm happy to laave it well alone. |
I have actually built external crossovers for my Renaissance 90 EMIT tweeters using Mundorf SIO caps and copper foil inductors. There was quite a jump in efficiency and I had to slightly alter the tweeter amp gain to compensate. For single amp drive you could pad the EMIT with a slightly bigger resistor (0.5 > 1 ohm).
The main benefit of the upgraded crossover was improved dynamics. I also modelled the crossover frequency response in LT spice and found that there was a 2.5dB peak at 2.3KHz. I was not surprised to see this because I had always thought that they were a bit too forward in the presence range. I have heard that there were changes made to the crossovers during the Ren 90's lifecycle that corrected this but I'm not 100% sure. However, the Ren 80's are using diferent values and do have a flatter crossover response when modelled.
I subsequently modded my crossover values to achieve a response +/- 1dB from 1Khz to 20KHz. To do this correctly you need to change a 33uF cap in the EMIM crossover to 30uF and also insert a 0.22R in series with the cap. When I did this mod I also noticed that the 10 year old 33uF electrolytics had expanded slightly at each end. I replaced them both with Blackgate 30uF 50V NPO electros and there was an immediate audible improvement. The MF seemed more pure and imaging was much more accurate. The other fine tune necessary is to add a 1uf in parallel with the 5.6uF pp film cap in the EMIT crossover. Both of these changes combined will result in a much smoother sounding upper mid range and a far more seamless transition from EMIM to EMIT.
More recently I have disconnected the EMITS and am using Raal pure ribbon tweeters which sit on top of the Ren 90's. This also necessitated some fine tuning of the crossovers but the result is really stunning. I have also designed a DC bias system for the tweeter crossover so that both SIO caps are voltage biased at 33V DC.
The main improvement from the Raal tweeters stems from the much wider HF dispersion and far more extended treble, but they also seem cleaner, less grainy and sweeter sounding, but then again they are also very expensive. IMO the EMITs used in the Rens are a very good tweeter and with the 2 component changes mentioned above the response will definitely be flatter. |
Hi Olp88, thanks for sharing your experiences with your Renaissance 90's. I always find it interesting to hear the excitement and genuine enthusiasm owners have for these gems. You're certainly feeding your Rens plenty of juice! I agree, I believe they need lots of good, high quality power. I am kind of starting out in a similar vain to yourself with a high current Classe Integrated. I am passionate about the ultimate fidelity of my system, hence buying new Classe gear; very clean, smooth tube-like warmth & very high current. I did weight up the bi-amping option, but that adds considerable cost & I would have had to have sourced earlier model gear on A'gon to achieve that within my budget. I am getting all the weak links in my system sorted out before I upgrade amps & am planning to upgrade 6 power cords to reference pc's & a new high end filter - your system is only as good as the juice you feed it! The more vs fidelity battle on amps was easily resolved for me (pardon the pun) Fidelity one! So I plan to upgrade next year to a big Classe CA2200 & Audio Research tube pre-amp :) I thought that will sound stunning & always leaves me room to bi-amp the system with an AR tube PA one rainy day :) |
Welcome to the club! I have a pair in blonde oak. Look and sound great! I started with a 150 w/ch 8 ohms/ 300 w/ch 4 ohms integrated A308 from Musical Fidelity. It did a decent job in running the speakers but I could tell their was something missing. Then biamped using the integrated for the bass and a Rogue 80 watt per channel tube amp for the highs and mids. Good sound but light on the bass. I then moved to a Musical fidelity A308 pre-amp and A308 amplifier at 250 w/ch 8 ohms/ 450 w/ch 4 ohms. Now we're getting somewhere. The speakers bloomed ! So I figure they love power! I then got another A308 amp and biamped the system. Now at 900w/ch into 4 ohms !! WOW what a difference. !!! The speakers sang! Soundstage was huge and open, bass was tremndous ! Of course, the supporting equipment must be up to par as well as the cables. I now run the speakers between two systems. The one above and a vintage Luxman CL-35 II tube preamp and the monster Luxman M-6000 rated at minimum 300 w/ch into 8 ohms. I couldnt even guess what the 4 ohm rating would be. The mids are just beautiful ! The more high quality power you feed them, the better !! Good luck ! |
Hi Okeeteekid, thanks for sharing your views and experience with your Renaissance 90's. It's great to hear you like the black ash finish as well! I have also heard many accounts of the Ren 90's not sounding boxy at all & having excellent coherancy. That is testimony too to the successful collaberation between Charlie Watkins & Infinity in developing the 10" Watkins woofer for the Rens.
I currently own Infinity Reference 60's which had twin 8" IMG bass drivers & an IMG midrange, so I can certainly appreciate the timbral accuracy and warmth the IMG drivers seem to produce; wonderful with accoustic and jazz (eg: Diana Krall). I agree with your statement about Infinity (aka Harmon)'s "hifi" offerings such as the Preludes!...Arnie Nudel must have smashed a hole in his apartment wall after he saw 25 years of his hard work turned into a flea market!
Ah you saw the ad for my black Rens! Yeah, I think that member is known to AG members here. Larry is a Doctor with his own practice & an absolutely terrific guy. He is also an Infinity nut as you would have read & owns IRS-V's, two pair of IRS-Betas, 3 pairs (now 1) of Ren 90's & a pair of Ren 80's. The pair I bought were late-manufacture & used less than a dozen times in 11 years, so are virtually mint which is unheard of for these speakers, so i'm wrapped :)
I'm anxious to see how my Classe Cap-2100 handles the demanding load of the Rens. Obviously the Cap doesn't have anything like as many watts per channel as your big Pass block, however surprisingly it has a lot more current, so on balance it should do a good job, but of course being an Audiophile - I plan on upgrading to it's bigger brother (CA-2200) & a tube preamp next year which, apart from a future upgrade of my current transport (JVC XL-Z1050), will be the final iteration of my high end system :) And yes, I am going to trust Nudel & Christie and leave the Ren's x-over well alone.. |
hi, just to let you know how good then ren 90's are i also have them in black ash and will never sell them they are that good, i had the irs sigmas and liked the sound of the ren 90's better, to me the sigmas woofer did not blend into the emim as nice as the ren 90, the ren 90 just has a nice warmth to the mid bass that is to die for, i also had the mts prelude and when i compared them side by side with the ren 90's there was no contest the rens won, the ren 90's are a more musical speaker and i think the preludes are made for ht, the real joke was when i played jewel live she is playing an acoustic guitar while singing, the ren's ripped an image of her so much better that you would swear she was in the room with you and the acoustic guitar was spot on, i had to laugh, on the preludes the guitar strings sounded like plastic, thats when i sold the preludes, i was running them on a pass labs x-250 power amp, adcom 750 pre, sony es cd player, i would not touch the crossover as infinity used computers to design them and spent countless hours tweaking and choosing the right parts to get a flat frequency response, if you change caps or coils i think you will alter their sound for the worse, i would leave them stock, nice pickup on your ren 90's i saw the for sale ad for the too, the guy also just sold the blond pair, enjoy your new ren 90's.
greg
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Hi Jgwilson, thanks for your response. I definitely agree with your comment about how the Ren's compare to what is around today. I estimate you would have to spend atleast $8-10K US to equal them, and goodness knows what to better them, so they are a no brainer. The seller also had left over (brand new) spare High Energy Emits, Emims & Ren 90 grilles which i'm snapping up, so these really should be my speakers for life.
I think the Classe's high current, stable 235watts/4ohm drive should do a "very good" job of driving the Ren's, whilst obviously upgrading to a CA-2200 & tube pre would take them to another level, but on a budget, I feel like i'm doing really well. I agree with your comments about upstream components too; I have a very nice transport, suspended on high end iso feet & running a Nordost Silver Shadow digital cable connected to a Vimak DS-1800mk2 dac (one of the best sounding dacs ever made). And I connect my source (via the dac) fully balanced via an Audioquest Sky XLR cable. The signal then runs through Acoustic Zen Holograph 2 'Custom Shotgun' cables to the speakers. I'm also upgrading soon to a Shunyata Hydra 6 filter & high end Shunyata pc, so system synergy should be excellent. Incidentally, I recently read the Technical White Paper for the Ren's & have to agree; Infinity put an incredible amount of R&D into the x-over network & internal wiring, so i've decided i'm not going to touch it. I'm happy with my current digital source & will wait to see if Bluray Audio takes over SACD.
Cheers! |
Hail new R90 owner. You've got yourself one of the finest speakers of its day and, dare I say, a real challenger for many current ones. At the price you paid, you certainly can't touch the R90's for 4 times todays prices.
I have the Black Ash finish as well - the blonde oak never caught my eye. I would love to nab a pair of R90's in the rare black gloss finish though.
I've been running my R90's with my trusty Platinum+ DNA-1 since about 2004 and, while I don't host Block parties, they have been played (on occasion) quite loud - without being damaged by my 'whimpy' 185 watts/side McCormack. Having said that, when I was running them with a stock DNA-500, they really blew me away with how much more they could portray so, giving them more juice will allow you to hear them at their very best.
I have not re-wired mine but have considered it. Don't know of any place I'd trust to have it done - especially in re-doing the crossovers. The R90's are already pretty spectacular and my concern is that they would end up sounding worse. Souping up the parts without alot of time spent listening, adjusting, compensating - IMHO - will just make them unlistenable. Right now, I find these speakers constantly improve when I improve my upstream equipment so, I feel the best bang for the buck is to trust all the R&D, parts that went into these Gems and, spend your tweak dollars on bettering their input.
Enjoy your new purchase - these babies do not disappoint |
