Hi folks
Recently i have had some amplifier problems.
My Conrad Johnson LP70s 70watt tube amplifier on two separate occasions made a nasty noise and a fliking flash on start up. The amp was switched off straight away. After trips to the shop each time for repairs ( both of which were diagnosed as tubes) it went again a third time in spectacular fashion. This included smoke and loud noise. The amp had a bad circuit board track and this was fixed ( very nice virtually invisible job). No fuse blew which seemed odd and the amp had otherwise survived the meltdown.
Upon the amps return i thought all was sort of good, well sort of. My concern was actually a woofy kind of bass. Oddly i found that an Audirvana upgrade fixed this ( yeah, weird i thought). Bass is now tight and very detailed.
Anyway, a month or so later ( which included plenty of critical listening, another audirvana upgrade and a new SSD in my computer) and i am listening to Ben Harpers "Please me like you want to " and i notice that the high hat and other high frequency parts normally prominent are pretty much missing in action. i start trying to just listen to the tweeters but there seems to be output.
I then played the stereophile test CD with the high warble tones. I am hearing it all in stereo but as it gets really high there is a sort of crackling dancing between the speakers.
I had to do some work so that is as far as i got last night. Right now ( apart from insomnia due to working late) I am suddenly thinking that i didn't get off scott free on that blown amp. The reason that i have not picked it up to this point is because these speakers have almost super tweeters. They are tiny. When i had my doubts perviously i put it down to Audirvana, or cable dressing or whatever else because "Vivid has never experienced a blown driver in 10 years because they are so over engineered " according to Phil Dickie, the speakers designer. Maybe no one has had a power amp failure like mine, there are only about 10,000 or so Vivids out there i believe.
I can swap in my B&W 804s or 705s and play the same tracks to see what happens. That will be my next step. Neither of these speakers are ideal with my tube amp but its my best diagnosis tool i guess.
Does a tweeter just blow and go silent or does a record like crackle sound with high frequency material sound more like a blown tweeter.
So much for my golden ears. No even noticing 2 tweeters have gone. The speaker does cross over at 4000 hertz.
If its a blown tweeter its gonna be expensive to fix. How do i know its not the crossover that was damaged?
I guess i will have to just see how the speaker swap goes. I am thinking the 705s.
System is sounding pretty good otherwise although i am starting to recall that crackle happening i other material recently. I had put it down to something else and it was only fleeting and it was gone.
Recently i have had some amplifier problems.
My Conrad Johnson LP70s 70watt tube amplifier on two separate occasions made a nasty noise and a fliking flash on start up. The amp was switched off straight away. After trips to the shop each time for repairs ( both of which were diagnosed as tubes) it went again a third time in spectacular fashion. This included smoke and loud noise. The amp had a bad circuit board track and this was fixed ( very nice virtually invisible job). No fuse blew which seemed odd and the amp had otherwise survived the meltdown.
Upon the amps return i thought all was sort of good, well sort of. My concern was actually a woofy kind of bass. Oddly i found that an Audirvana upgrade fixed this ( yeah, weird i thought). Bass is now tight and very detailed.
Anyway, a month or so later ( which included plenty of critical listening, another audirvana upgrade and a new SSD in my computer) and i am listening to Ben Harpers "Please me like you want to " and i notice that the high hat and other high frequency parts normally prominent are pretty much missing in action. i start trying to just listen to the tweeters but there seems to be output.
I then played the stereophile test CD with the high warble tones. I am hearing it all in stereo but as it gets really high there is a sort of crackling dancing between the speakers.
I had to do some work so that is as far as i got last night. Right now ( apart from insomnia due to working late) I am suddenly thinking that i didn't get off scott free on that blown amp. The reason that i have not picked it up to this point is because these speakers have almost super tweeters. They are tiny. When i had my doubts perviously i put it down to Audirvana, or cable dressing or whatever else because "Vivid has never experienced a blown driver in 10 years because they are so over engineered " according to Phil Dickie, the speakers designer. Maybe no one has had a power amp failure like mine, there are only about 10,000 or so Vivids out there i believe.
I can swap in my B&W 804s or 705s and play the same tracks to see what happens. That will be my next step. Neither of these speakers are ideal with my tube amp but its my best diagnosis tool i guess.
Does a tweeter just blow and go silent or does a record like crackle sound with high frequency material sound more like a blown tweeter.
So much for my golden ears. No even noticing 2 tweeters have gone. The speaker does cross over at 4000 hertz.
If its a blown tweeter its gonna be expensive to fix. How do i know its not the crossover that was damaged?
I guess i will have to just see how the speaker swap goes. I am thinking the 705s.
System is sounding pretty good otherwise although i am starting to recall that crackle happening i other material recently. I had put it down to something else and it was only fleeting and it was gone.