Focal Scala or Diablos with subs?

Hey Elviukai,

thanks for taking the time to come back to me. Not sure if you got my reply yesterday.

Questions no problem, I've done my best to give what answers I can.

My father is a sound engineer, he will be coming over tomorrow to run some measurements on the room so hopefully will be able to provide you with something by Thursday.

Listening room is around 4mtr x 4mtr. Brick walls front & rear. Glass door/window one one side (with drop down blinds). Open to dining room on other side. Carpet floors. Leather lounge opposite front speakers for listening.

Both lounge & speakers are hard up against front & rear walls due to the size restriction, nothing I can do about this.

So I would say that my room seems to make the Diablos sound leaner than I remember them sounding in the dealer. But that is just my ears so let me do the measurements & try to tome up with something more accurate.

A friend has a set of Diablos in a larger room with similar amps & they do seem to sound more open. Like most speakers I guess they like being away from walls.

Have been speaking with a friend on another forum who has heard the Scalas being run from a MF AMS35i integrated (same power as mine). He felt that it managed fine, in fact he thought that it might have even run the Scalas easier than the Diablos (higher sensitivity?)

At the moment I am using one JL-F110 10" sub. I have played around with freq response & phase a bit & feel that it is working OK. Just the volume tends move up & down a bit depending on the source material. Don't have it set too high as I would prefer it to sound seamless rather than overpowering & muddy.

I have the pre running into the power via balanced & the sub running off the pre via RCA. From what I have read an external cross over might be the best way to get it working together, but I would prefer to avoid this expense if I can.

Musical tastes are electronic/dance, blues/acoustic, reggae/dub, bit of rock, little classical but not to much. So you can see that bass is a fairly important component.

Listening volumes are typically soft to medium, don't often crank things too loud.

I just was so impressed with the extra midrange of the Scalas & the taughtness in the bass. My wallet is more than happy NOT to buy them however! Would be content to leave it at one more sub & be done with it. Just the deal on the Scalas with a trade in on the Diablos is worth considering.

One more question about placement of the subs. What are your thoughts about placing the Diablos on top of the sub? I was playing around with the idea of mounting the subs on some granite plinths with isolation spikes & then taking the Diablos off their stands & placing them directly on top of the subs again with isolation spikes. Bad idea?

Talk soon

Thanks again

Hi Raks,
unfortunately second hand Jl subs don't some up all that often over here is OZ.
If I was to consider two new JL-112 I'd be up for about the same as the Scalas.
Definitely a good option, but not sure I can make that work.
I would like to hear the step up between the 10 & the 12. The 10 is pretty impressive given it's physical size, I love it!

OK, If your father can do folowing measurements-
1) from 1 meter on tweter axis left
2)same but right
3)from listneing position right
4)same but left
5) both speakers from listening position

its important that sub would be switched off during those measurements.

I know diablos frequency quite well in 4 rooms , so it will be easy to see

As for midrange- midrange resolution comes diferently in Diablo and Scala. Diablo have most of it midrange resolution going from tweeter (that sparkle snap you hear on fast records) Scala most of its reolution in midrnage have from its midrange driver (Maestro- something between those two) . Plus that Scala behavour is more civilized than Diablo.

Placing Diablo on subs makes more harm than goood in your case(xover point is low) uncless its the only place in room where sub outputs are linear.When you father will be after Diablo he can heltp you with sub placement. turn of diablo, set sub aoutpu as high as possible (up to 300hz) mesaure sub from 10-20cm as reference , then keep microphone fixed and make some sub moovements and making meausrements, until you find region 30-80hz smooth without major peak/dip. of course you can adjust diablo+sub by ear.signal tones to be flat ( dues low fr. wawes canceliation with diferent phases) , but this way i described here are much better form origin.

having Diablo mesurement in your room will make green or red light for Scalas. Then comes personal preferencies.

Hi Neuphonix,
It seems our musical taste are somewhat similar. I listen to a lot of electronics/ EDM (trance, house, etc). This maybe more like a lateral move. Have you considered Dynaudio C1 MKII/Sigs? I recently moved from Electra 1008 Be to C1 Sigs. Granted I've only had C1 Sigs for less than a week, but so far so good. I'm also using Pass XA30.5 (rated 30 watts class A) to drive the C1 Sigs in a 18x25 room. C1 Sigs' bass vs. 1008 Be's is no contest (all gears/cables the same). I hate to say this but it is what it is. Not sure about how it compares to Diablo as I haven't heard Diablo in my room with my equipment, my music. I have heard both Diablo and Scalas at shows and always been impressed, but then again, they don't play electronic music at shows. :D

Note: C1 Sigs are less efficient being 4 ohm and 86db speakers but my "small" Pass amp drives them quite well. They seem to love a lot of current though, which Pass can plentifully provide.

Best,

Hey Elviukai,
I tried to PM you a reply but they blocked it because I listed my email address?
I'll do the measurements as you listed & let you know what I come up with.
I suspected you might say no to the sub placement idea. Again somewhat restricted about where they can go due to the size of the room. One can sit quite nicely next to the Diablo, two is too much. There are a couple of other spots where they could go and suit the asthetics of the room, but I doubt there will be the flexibility to have them placed in the ideal SQ position. We'll see.
Thanks again for your detailed response, much appreciated.
Talk soon