If you can try the Bel Cantos with no obligation that would be worthwhile I think. I am a big fan of Bel Canto and their products are typically highly regarded in reviews. I also have a c5i digital integrated (60 w 8 ohm/120 to 4) in my smaller family room 2 channel a/v system with my smaller Ohms.
Using a crossover to offload work from the monitors and have the sub pick up the slack is a very reasonable thing to try.
Can’t say what will sound best. Only you can tell. But those are both very reasonable and sound things to try.
Sounds like your MF amp can deliver twice the juice to 4 ohms at least for short peaks that require it. That’s not uncommon and still a good thing. How good? Would need some measurements to know and compare. |
@millercarbon, I never said I felt stuck with or married to my speakers. The Magico Minis sound incredible to my ears. And I paid a fraction of what they cost new. So I have zero regrets. I'm here exploring tweaks to my system. If I wanted to read about your Tekton Moabs, there are 10,000 other posts on this forum where I can find that information. Give it a rest. |
@mapman I've never been able to find anything showing the MF power output @ 4ohms but regarding current, the manual says, "current peak-to-peak: 140 Amps." FWIW, it's a stereo amp (dual mono) and not an integrated one. Knowing that, would that point to the speakers being a limitation? And would an active crossover be the fix for that, something like this: https://www.jlaudio.com/products/cr-1-home-audio-subwoofer-crossovers-96020??? BTW, I already have a powered sub (JL Audio Fathom 110). And it seems to integrate with the Minis nicely. And the Bel Canto monoblocks are on my list of amps I want to try out. My local hi-fi store is a Bel Canto dealer so I think I can take them for a spin. |
@onhwy61 sorry, I don't have an SPL meter. And I'm not sure I understand the distinction between dynamic compression and soundstage alterations. I'll have to dig around and pay more close attention. Thanks! |
Its not "impossible". Like everything it just has to be done right to get the most out of it. The system is only as good as the weakest link. Not just any amp is likely to cut it with the Magicos.
I heard the minis off a very pricey VAC tube amp and a 6 digit system overall at Sound By Singer in a smaller showroom. That combo was top notch, as good as anything, at least at modest volume in a modest size room. The VAC had plenty of juice for the speakers in that room at modest volume. Did not try to go concert level though its not unreasonable to want to be able to do that. I do. But it may well take larger speakers as well to do that. Most monitors can’t, but Magico Mini’s are not most monitors.
Also headroom is not useless. It’s your insurance policy against clipping. |
Toole is right, headroom is useless. Literally. Headroom is by definition more power than you need. Translation: power you will never use. Translation: useless.
You have made the rookie blunder of buying speakers that are hard to drive. Its not that they are 4 ohm. My Tekton Moabs are 4 ohm too. They are so easy to drive they sound marvelous with my little 50 watt tube amp. They would probably sound pretty darn good driven by my iPod. So (trigger warning!) you can forget impedance.
Buying speakers and amps is so easy. Yet it is not so easy some audiophile can't make it darn near impossible. All you do is eliminate from consideration speakers less than 92dB sensitivity. I know nothing about your speakers, except for having heard the name Magic and knowing that means they are crazy expensive and have a well earned reputation for being hard to drive. So without looking I will guess they are somewhere down in the mid to high 80's. [Fact check: 87dB. Tol ya so!] Which in itself is low enough to all by itself be a problem.
Sorry, I only kind of glanced at the earlier posts, just enough to know you feel stuck with or married to those speakers. Oh well. Its not current. Its not headroom. Its not tubes or solid state or heat or ferrofluid or any of the other missing the point ideas. Those speakers simply eat power like its going out of style. The answer like I said is remarkably simple. Unless you yourself want to make it darn near impossible.
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In my case, just for comparison, I moved from a Musical Fidelity A3CR stereo amp, 120w/ch 8 ohm, 210 into 4ohm spec amp to BEl Canto ref1000m monoblocks, Class D, 500 w/ch 8 ohm, 1000 into 4. The difference in bass control and articulation at all volumes was night and day....simply transformative. This was with both large Ohm 5 and smaller Dynaudio Contour 1.3 mkII monitors, both notorious power and current hungry products.
Class D amps have a reputation in general for vice like bass control, hence their popularity in powered subs. |
What atmasphere said about effects of heat on speaker dynamics is certainly true but different speakers address that differently with different levels of effectiveness using technologies like ferrofluid, etc. Ohm is a good example of a speaker that handles power and current very well! I can vouch for that! I would expect the same of the Magicos but can’t say for certain. These are Magico Mini IIs, correct? Though wonderful speakers ( I recall auditioning them well) they are stand mount monitors and were low in the Magico line in their day and could have output level limitations. Not uncommon for many very good monitor speakers.
I have read of claims from Musical Fidelity for that amp to be able to deliver over 100 amps of current which would be very good, but at the same time no measurements or even published specs I can see to verify that. That would be quite exceptional for a Class a/b integrated amp I would say. Too good to be true? Don’t know.
If the speakers are the limitation, adding a separate powered sub and active crossover to limit the low end extension of the Magicos would be a practical thing to try to offload much of the work from the monitors and make them not have to work so hard.
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Diamond,
That’s a function of the amp. I don’t see specs or even better test measurements like Stereophile typically does for your amp into 4 ohms? Generally the beefiest amps capable of driving the toughest loads and delivering current as needed will double power output from 8 to 4 ohms and largely again into 2 ohms. So hard to say exactly where your amp stands in that regard. In general, it is less common for integrated amps to be able to do that but some can. More common with Class D integrated amps than class a/b but the best class a/b integrated amps may still do that quite well. |
Using an SPL meter, how loud are you listening when the compression in the soundstage? Dynamic compression is more likely a problem with your loudspeaker, alterations in soundstage width and depth at high volumes are a problem with your room acoustics.
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Hi OP:
The thing about a sub is that you aren't creating a speaker with sub, you are creating a brand new speaker system, of which the sub will handle the lowest octave.
So you are no longer just buying a new component, you are actively involved in speaker crossover design, and it's complicated. Crossovers are not absolute brick walls. They have slopes and knee points and Q's, or knee sharpness. The idea that you can set your sub to 37 Hz and your main speakers to 38 Hz is kind of funny. :)
I never said your speaker's were low efficiency. I said they were going to be bass limited and with enough bass signal will show the original post was concerned with. That is, they have limited dynamic range, but this range can be improved by limiting the bass the amp/speaker produces.
Do what you will.
Best,
Erik
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@atmasphere , I just finished the section in the book on bass arrays and my room dimensions don't fit the use case that Toole recommends it for. My room is very irregularly shaped and small, so I wouldn't be able to arrange the subs the way he suggests. In addition, the frequency response he shows for my current sub configuration shows very flat response for the limited frequency range I'm using it for, which is basically 27hz (the lower limit of the sub) to 38hz (where I have the LP frequency set). It's a narrow range but it really fills out the bottom octave.
I'm not encouraged by your observation about the low efficiency of my speakers since I have no desire to change that part of the system so I have no choice but to deal with it. Perhaps what @mapman was saying about increasing current flow could help this situation. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for your thoughts! |
@erik_squires I've considered an active crossover to accomplish what you suggest. My local shop didn't think it would have much of an impact but I'm still curious. I feel like there should be as little overlap of frequencies produced by both the sub and the mains as possible. It sounds like this is what you're saying too. I was considering this device: https://www.jlaudio.com/products/cr-1-home-audio-subwoofer-crossovers-96020Other commenters who know the Minis well have suggested getting all the bass out of them as they can produce, which is why I have the LP freq set to 38hz. I've played around with it in a few different places and it sounds good the way it is now. I listen to the Wood album by Brian Bromberg and can hear right down to the texture of the strings on his 300-year-old double bass. It sounds incredible. |
If you're talking Floyd Toole, then expect to hear about a Distributed Bass Array too... but since that is off topic that's all I'm going to say about it.
But that isn't what the problem is with excess power. In a traditional push-pull solid state or tube amplifier, distortion decreases as you decrease power, to a point that is about 3-7% of total power, at which point the distortion goes back up. Below this point you are getting excess noise and distortion if your amplifier power is too high for your application, since most of the time you are only using a tiny amount of total amplifier power.
A different problem you've referred to is compression at high volume. This is a common complaint with lower efficiency loudspeakers, known as 'thermal compression'. Essentially the voice coils heat up in time with powerful bass notes and the like; this prevents the speaker diaphragm from moving as far as it should. The only way to avoid this if you want the sound pressure is to go with a more efficient speaker, with which there will be less thermal compression.
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So a couple of things. If you don't have a high pass filter on your main amp, the speaker and amp will be forced to reproduce the lower octaves, even though you won't hear it.
Not only does this limit dynamic range, but it increases distortion heard from your mains, both harmonic and Doppler.
If you keep your mains at low volumes, this is not a problem, but if your goal is to use the sub to increase bass AND dynamic range, the high pass filter is a must.
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Hi OP:
Yep, this will integrate well, but leaving the mini's to go down to 40 Hz won't really improve your dynamic range.
Lift up the crossover frequency to 80 Hz.
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@mapman very interesting. So what would I do to increase current delivery? I've done a fair amount to treat the room and I feel like my sub is already pretty well integrated. Here's my room: https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9016 |
Thanks @erik_squires, IMO, all speakers, even floorstanders, could use a subwoofer and I have one in my system, a JL Audio Fathom 110. It has a 900w class D amp and auto room correction. I have the LP freq. on the subwoofer set to 38hz; the Minis go down to 37hz. With the room correction and the LP freq where it is, I feel like I have the sub and satellites integrated pretty well, at least to my ears. I’m using a single sub because I don’t think the room can handle a second one, and after reading Toole, it seems like I have the recommended placement just about right. Edit: Here's my room: https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9016What do you think the effect would be of adding extra headroom? Or should I be looking more at low noise and low distortion? Thanks for the links. I’ll read them now. |
More power and headroom alone may help get bass right especially at high SPLs by avoiding clipping, but alone is most likely not a complete solution in most cases.
Current delivery and related damping factor of an amp also contributes. How much will vary but more difficult load speakers generally benefit from more current delivery capability to control the bass better, meaning a beefier amp than one perhaps of similar power but less current delivery capability. Power and current are not the same thing.
For example Magnepans are not very efficient and benefit from more power but not nearly as much from more current than many dynamic models. Smaller dynamic designs with more extended bass tend to be the least efficient and to also present a more challenging load, so more power and current is typically the key there.
OF course then room acoustics are a big factor for bass frequency response and all that goes with that as well, but that has nothing to do with the gear itself. Once you have an idea of approximately where the speakers will be located, its much easier to get the gear matching right first, then deal with the much harder room acoustics after. Having flexibility in final speaker location is a big help when it comes to bass and room acoustics in general. |
I think he’s referring to the overall truth that getting bass right is complicated. Too many focus on larger and larger speakers with lower -3dB points and bigger amps when the problem is the room and speaker integration with it. Power in a consumer amp isn’t nearly as important as low output impedance, low noise at 1W and low distortion. You would be amazed at how much bigger a speaker / amp combination sounds in a well treated room. Now onto your particular speakers... You are going to be limited by the maximum displacement of the 7" diaphragm. Assuming you have dealt with the room well, and it sounds like you might have, your next step would be to add a subwoofer. I’ve written a couple of articles here which may help you. https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-snr-1-room-response-and-roon.htmlhttps://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-not-buy-subwoofer.htmlWhile I’m very pleased with the SNR-1 in room response, the truth is that the 7" woofer will limit the maximum volume before compression occurs. I’ve been to the Magico demo room and hears the S1 Mk II where they also do an impressive non-sub demo, but physics are real. For music, you can get impressive bass out of 7" (as I write), but it will always be limited by the physics of the maximum travel of the driver. In this demo, Alon used "merely" 150 watt amps. :) https://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/magico/mini_2.htmlWhen I want rock-concert levels, a subwoofer is my best choice, and what I use when watching action flicks. :) |
