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   Home » Horn-Loaded Speakers» Bill Gaw: over 50 years of high-end audio experience and time aligned horns. (34 posts, 2 pages)
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06-15-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 134
Joined on 03-15-2010
Post #: 21
Post ID: 28259
Reply to: 28247
Thank you again
As written above, Romy came over the other night, and once again his acumen and ears elevated my sound system once more. My equipment list is to numerous to mention, including 

1. multiple ac filtering units, including purepower 2000,and Niagara
2.Trinnov preamp processor for crossovers, time alignment and phase control for my main self built Edgar style horns using Vitavox mids, tannoy red tweeters, and five foot straight horns with dual each electro voice 12 l drivers. Also time and volume alagning a 7.5.5 surround, using Auro 3D primarily.this unit allowed us in one hour to do changes to the main channels that would have taken possibly months to recreate using analog components and time alignment speaker movement.
3. Four of Romy's magical ampx units to power the main speakers with various less than audiophile amps for the ambiance channels.
4. Less than audiophile quality long run  professional xlr cable and speaker wire.
5. Self built audiophile quality windows computer using Fidelizer to transmit hard and ssd disk files from my stored CD's, 24/96 digitized Vinyl, dvd, and 4K Blu-ray and several hundred second generation 15 ips masters from several of the New York based major record producers from the 50 and 60's.

But this night we listened through my Auralic S1 streamer due to convenience. Normally we listen to a variety of my digitized recordings from my self built computer using fidelizer and J River Media Center.

When he came he seemed upset as he thought that the system was not on. After 5 minutes of discussion, I finally convinced him that Al 20 amplifier channels were on, it was so quiet. Must have been a good electricity day, although the sound was a little darker than it was after the last session with him. I swear I had not touched anything since. So we spent the next half hour listening and adjusting the trinnov main speaker settings, adjusting the frequency curve, the crossover of the mids up to 9000 Hz. And adjusting the phasing and tweeter and mid bass  volume.

I hope I’m smart enough not to touch anything again, as the sound took another step forward. After he was done the sound was good enough to last me for the rest of my shortened life. While it does not have some of the qualities of his two systems, it good enough for me and far superior to what I had a few years ago, before having him over.

He really should run an audiophile system tuning company.Thanks again, Romy.
07-12-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 134
Joined on 03-15-2010
Post #: 22
Post ID: 28294
Reply to: 28259
Solar
Several months ago I decided at 78 years old to go ahead and do a solar electric install. While costing $56,000, most of which I’m sure I’ll never see a return due to my age, it was well worth the investment for my audio- video system. The system is from Enphase, probably a Chinese commie company, with a large Franklin Electric lithium iron Phosphate battery for backup. 

When either the panels or the battery are running, the street electric is cut off. The battery can power the house for several hours during the night.I have to say this is one of the best investments I’ve done for my system, rivaling those taught to me by Romy. The sound is the most natural I’ve heard with my system, ven beating what Romy and I heard a couple of weeks ago. At any time of day for the past two weeks, it has been glorious. No further good and bad listening sessions. Plus the sound now is not just pure, but natural, and draws one into it. With the best recordings, especially using Auro 3d, there is absolutely no noise coming from my 105 dB sensitive Edgar designed horns even when the ear is up against the mouth. Overall, the improvement is well worth the cost even if I don't live to see a financial payback. I've as yet no heard any negatives, xcept to my bank account.

Next time Romy comes over I’ll let him described what the off the grid sound is like, as words fail me at the moment.

Bill
07-12-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 358
Joined on 08-18-2014
Post #: 23
Post ID: 28295
Reply to: 28294
Enphase
Bill, good to hear.  Enphase are from California but your batteries, inverter etc. could be from anywhere.  I have an off-grid Enphase based solar/battery system for my office which includes the audio/video.  My improvements are not in the same league as yours, by the sound of things, which could be because we are 240V mains here hence about half the current draw.  Things still sound better at night and I can even tell when the sun is out and when the solar is not producing due to subtle changes in the sound.  To combat this I have installed a large balanced isolation transformer with high and low frequency AC filters to provide cleaner differential power after the inverter, however I am yet to connect it as I subscribe to the "one change at a time" and there is too much other stuff to sort first!

One benefit here is that the voltage is now 100% stable at 240V which means that my electronics are operating exactly as they were designed.  My favourite dac has a triode gain stage and before the solar/battery system the bias wound wander with the mains voltage causing sound changes.  Now it is perfectly stable and the sound does not really change.

My batteries are also LiFePO4, made in Australia, and I use a Victron inverter.  Could have done it cheaper using asian batteries but where possible I prefer to support local business.
07-13-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 134
Joined on 03-15-2010
Post #: 24
Post ID: 28296
Reply to: 28295
Thanks
For the reply. Glad to hear I’m not the only one with this information. My system is set up to completely disengage from the line when there is sufficient battery power a night and the panels are producing more electricity than the house is using. Plus my system has its own ground pole behind the media room, and I am using the purepower pp 2000 to further clean, so that could also be the difference. Hope this information gets others to try solar battery backup.
07-13-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,380
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 25
Post ID: 28297
Reply to: 28296
A cognitive dissonance.
I do not think the solar has anything to do with solar.  I think when we listen at playback driven from solar system we listen the battery and AC converter. Would it be driven by solar or by previously charged battery is kind of irrelevant.  So, what we are talking is just new generation of converters that are better than our purepowers. Elsa, from what I understand, the batteries that power the whole house are significantly larger, weather for lower impedance. 

I have since a few attempts to do exactly this. Some of them were very good. However, one thing kind of constantly drive me nuts if we stick with the battery powered systems. We need to have electronics which would be driven directed by 12 volts, no. Regenerators, no transfer matters. No power supply in electronics. I think I have seen somewhere one or two guys build something like this. I do not know the result but conceptually it is very right direction.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
07-13-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,779
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 26
Post ID: 28298
Reply to: 28297
What I have heard
My own limited experience with the house-sized solar and batteries is that the biggest improvements came from dedicated, "home run" audio circuits with a good bleeder ground for the front end. Mark's old solar system sounded best to me when the mains power was good. I run my own DAC from a dry cell motorcycle battery, bleed off any stray current. It is 12V, as Romy mentioned. That "works".

Paul S
07-13-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,380
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 27
Post ID: 28299
Reply to: 28297
Who knows?.

Bill, I do not think that what you describing is contribution of solar power. The actionable factors in your playback is new regenerator and new battery. They might be good and bad but you also need to take under consideration the following. The Purepower regenerators that you use most likely at this point not functioning properly as its own battery are gone. As acidic battery is getting old their impedance increased and they stop filter AC. So, your generator, unless you changed after 5 years, the batteries is substantially compromised. Very much like mine. If it shut down power, it's not capable to maintain charge even for 1 second. It means the battery is garbage in my unit. 

I've sent me intentional response to fix it because I do not want to buy those 8 ampere batteries but I would like to buy bank of automobile batteries. My playback now is not 16 KW and many tubes, by mostly solid state and low voltage 12x7, so I perfectly fine can run it from battery for a long time. 

The remaining question is the Media of regeneration. The contemporary regenerator supposed to be better than 25 years ago... Hypothetically. Alsa, contemporary batteries are order of magnitude better than old solid battles.  Maybe it Worth to review the performance of PP and try to find contemporary alternative product. Or it might make sense to retrofit PP with new big battery. One way or another I would not use PP and your new regenerator together as those digital converters have a very ugly ways to talk to each other and typically more than one regenerations in run installation never sound properly. 

But, again, it is freaking electricity. Nobody knows anything.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
07-13-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,779
Joined on 10-12-2006
Post #: 28
Post ID: 28300
Reply to: 28298
Same-Phased
Just wanted to add, Mark's dedicated home-run hi-fi circuits (hot, neutral and ground) were all the same phase (120V). Thinking at first this stuff should be in the Electricity thread, but it already is, several posts on this there, for anyone who's interested.

Paul S
07-14-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 358
Joined on 08-18-2014
Post #: 29
Post ID: 28304
Reply to: 28299
Almost certainly
 Romy the Cat wrote:

Bill, I do not think that what you describing is contribution of solar power. The actionable factors in your playback is new regenerator and new battery.


For sure it is the inverter and battery contributing to the sound, and the solar generation  taking a little away...at least in my experience.  Here, the best sound is still at night when running only from battery power, but in full sun is also pretty decent (we have lots of cloudless days here!).  A slight hardness comes to the sound on overcast days where (I assume) the microinverters on the solar panels are having a harder time generating full solar output.
07-15-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 134
Joined on 03-15-2010
Post #: 30
Post ID: 28308
Reply to: 28299
I agree
I agree that it's not the solar itself doing the improvements but the combination of the solar-battery-inverters that are doing it. Being able to completely remove the system from the line's anomalies is the trick. Also you are right in that they are new inverters plus a much larger battery supply that allows instantaneous power to the system.My purepower batteries are the lithium iron phosphate variety and they tested good a few months ago. But tonight I,ll remove the line to see how long they last in the system, and then remove the purepower from the chain and see what happens. Hope you are right as that would mean ven cleaner sound. Will let all know bill
07-16-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Bill
Kensington, NH
Posts 134
Joined on 03-15-2010
Post #: 31
Post ID: 28309
Reply to: 28308
Right again
As usual Romy was right again. Disconnected purepower from ac and within a few seconds the unit went dead. Then plugged system directly into house which at the time was running on battery only at 8:30 pm. Sound was glorious but did not hear any improvement compared to running on battery through the purepower. So guess the purepower didn't have any deleterious effect on the battery ac. But as it didn't show any improvement either, wil leave it out of the system unless the solar batteries run down.Still highly recommend going with solar with battery backup at least with the Enphase-Franklin system I have. Wish I had done this years ago.Bill
07-16-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,380
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 32
Post ID: 28310
Reply to: 28309
PurePower vs ...

The PurePower performance with discharged battery is not well understood. We do understand what happened with the unit on electrical level but how it manifests itself sonically nobody knows. My unit has absolutely dead battery for a few years. I do not have luxury to have a unit with battery and unit without it, so I cannot be certain. I contacted Richard from purepower and he was very thoughtful to provide number of options how batteries might be replaced. My personal feeling that his discharge battery the quality of electricity the unit produced is reduced, but since this frag was boiling for a long time, I do not see it as a problem. 


Bill, if you feel that your generator from your solar panel does wonderful job that I would strongly encourage you to drive any another digitally generate in power devices out of your system. Those units return obscene amount of digital noise to the ground and grounds of your multiple digital devices will be talking to each other in very negative way.  Unfortunately, you cannot lift grounds for your your regenerators. So what basically you need to do is decide which regenerator produce better quality from your solar system or purepower. Since your purepower is compromised with the battery you might wait when I refresh my batteries for my purepower and then you can borrow it from me and try.




"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
07-17-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
anthony
Posts 358
Joined on 08-18-2014
Post #: 33
Post ID: 28313
Reply to: 28259
Holy Trinnov!
The Trinnov is in my system for the first time tonight.  Just a rough optimization done and running 8 channels in Auro3D configuration including Macondo, 2 front height, two rear height, two surround...very rushed...no great care taken setting things up.  All non-Macondo channels are the same JBL708P studio monitors.  Have not bothered any bass setup yet nor installed the ceiling speaker.

The sound.

There is so much to unwrap here with my first couple of hours just streaming Youtube and letting the Trinnov do the Auro3D processing including for Macondo (I am using digital out from the Trinnov to my Aries Cerat dac for Macondo).  So much to unwrap, such unexpected results, my head is almost spinning.  I love what it is doing...but is it too much?  Or too much too quickly?  

Bill, you are certainly on to something here.
07-17-2025 Post does not mapped to Knowledge Tree
Romy the Cat


Boston, MA
Posts 10,380
Joined on 05-27-2004
Post #: 34
Post ID: 28314
Reply to: 28313
It will take for a while...
Well, Antony, I think it is too early for you BUT in my view one of the greatest impacts with AURO you get when you plug the AURO subwoofers and they will give the “space”. You might consider using 2 or 4 Macondo bass cannons for it. Still, it will be great it they were behind your listening spot. Also, do not forget that your AURO monitors are ported. So high path them at >80Hz

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Page 2 of 2 (34 items) Select Pages:  « 1 2
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