on saturday, i again woke up around noon. i had a guy that wanted to sell me a sewing machine desk for $20 and drop it off for me. great; done. this desk will fit perfectly in the closet, and i will be able to move the chair back and forth between the sewing machine and the writing desk. i took a shower, i ate the rest of the apples (they were getting a little sweet), which was i think 6, and then ate an entire package of apple sauce just to be ridiculous about it, along with a small amount of jam left in the container. i wanted to make some coffee and sit down and test the speakers while doing this write up, but i had difficulty getting going.
i pulled an ssri record out of a box called effeminate godzilla-sized wind chimes and tried it through the nad, expecting it to give it a bit of a work out. this is the first and last record that the nad failed on, as it was a pretty spectacular fail. this is a largely self-produced record by a couple of kids from bc in the late 00s that has the unusual quality of citing cardiacs as an influence. i picked it up after seeing them play at the old zaphod's beeblebrox in downtown ottawa. if you know cardiacs, you know why i picked this as a speaker workout test; the record has prominent synths, guitars, bass and drums that fill out the spectrum, contains detailed arrangements and production and features multi-part harmonies and complex counterpoint melodies through much of it. i know my jvc could make this record sound good through these celestions (the kefs are better). the nad made it sound like it was put through a compressor-limiter that squished the sound right to death, and this is the kind of record to use to demonstrate this kind of difference, because it wasn't engineered for loudness, and isn't designed for radio and wasn't crushed to death in a pro studio. you should be able to hear the edges on the square-waves on the bass sequencer that opens the record, for example. the nad just completely killed it.
here is the trick to this - most people would prefer the sound of the nad and think it sounds "more correct", including most expensive professional engineers and producers, because they've been trained to listen to over compressed music. and they're wrong. the nad actually sounds terrible.
so, i quickly dismantled that and set up the yamaha cr-320 instead, which quickly returned the record to a more open, less compressed sound - which is how it was actually mastered and engineered and what it actually sounds like. you might disagree, you might prefer the nad, but the mathematical reality is that you're wrong.
i then set up the 6 ohm, 50 watt yamaha ns-e55s, which is what i had connected to this yamaha cr-320 in the last apartment, as secondary speakers and tried the ssri record through a few placements and a few combinations.
- all four speakers on top of the shelf
- just the yamahas
- just the celestions
- with the celestions down a little, and the yamahas in the shelf
- just the celestions, to the side of the shelves.
the yamahas are full range speakers and their lower resistance makes them louder than the celestions when wired through the same amp in parallel, despite being 50 watts and the celestions being 110 watts. i didn't think to stop to do the math, but i shouldn't have done this at all, as this old amp shouldn't be running at lower than 4 ohms ever and 1/8 + 1/6 ~ 3.5. i don't think any damage has been done, and it could probably handle that in real life at low volume for quite a while before exploding, but i don't want to do that again. this amp is very old - it's older than i am. i can run these 6 ohm speakers by themselves, but not in parallel with 8 ohm speakers, pretty much ever.
what i learned is that i wouldn't want to do that anyways as there's not a way for me to turn the yamahas down and i don't want them to overpower the celestions or the kefs or whatever else they're connected in parallel to. these are secondary speakers, not primary speakers.
however, i also decided that the celestions do sound better when paired with a full range speaker that has more defined mids, letting the celestions work more for their mid lows. i just want to turn them down a little and can't.
before the end of the night, then, i had decided the yamahas would not be being used as a part of any audio system, but would be used for the kitchen tv system. i would need to buy some new 8 ohm full range satellite speakers in the 30-50w range and experiment a little.
i made some ad-hoc nachos early in the morning with a box of crackers i got from the food bank as a sub for the doritos, and without the salsa at all, as i will be having the salsa separate in a large bowl this afternoon. i was in bed slightly earlier.