Quote:


Get two of them and trade none of it away. That's my plan. I wanted balanced connections, mono-blocks and more than two watts so I ordered two SE84UFOs and (in theory) it will be win, win, win. They are still a couple months out though so I can't tell you how it works in practice, but I'm optimistic.  :)

FWIW the amps the UFOs are going to replace are Pass Aleph 2s that I've had for 25 years.

At least one poster is doing it, with good results. I started a thread "UFOs as Balanced Monoblocks?" that is a little further down the forum. Check it out if you're interested.

I have run my PAP Quintets (both Horn1 and Vox 1.6) with a Zen 2 watt and a Torii Jr 20 watter.  I never felt I had enough control over the woofers with either amp and ultimately settled in with my LFD NCSE at 50 or 60 watts.  The LFD is fronted by a Decware CSP3-25 preamp and the combo is spectacular.  

The triode magic of the little Zen was not missed at all when moving up to the Torii Jr.  In fact, Steve’s Hazen Grid amazingly makes the Torii Jr sound like an SET amp!  For me though, 20 watts did not satisfactorily drive my Quintets.  I’ll bet the big Mystery amp would do the job!

On a side note, if you haven’t purchased your Voxative drivers yet, you might want to consider a pair of Decware FRX2 fullrangers instead.  I put my FRX2’s in my Quintets months ago and have had no desire to remove them.  I still have my Horn1 and Vox 1.6 drivers sitting on a shelf, but I will likely be selling them soon, as the Decware FRX2’s sound so good.  The FRX2’s produce far more detail than either Vox or Horn1 and yet retain incredible smoothness.  

Room size:  13 x 18 x 8

With the FRX2’s being the same efficiency as the woofers I simply removed the two L-Pad resistors from the circuit.  That leaves the big stock Mundorf cap and an add-on Duelund silver foil bypass cap, which is a nice, and inexpensive, upgrade to the crossover.  I also rewired the speakers with Duelund DCA-16, which resulted in another significant upgrade at a low cost.  

If I insert the Voxativ 1.6’s again, I’ll do it with the resistors removed.  I always felt that the woofers overwhelmed the padded down Vox’s with every amp I tried.  Now that I’m thinking about it, I just might do that today for the fun of it!   The Voxativ 1.6’s are very fine musical drivers, but like everything else, completely system dependent.  Another contributing factor is my slightly diminished ability to hear higher frequencies due to playing guitar in a rock band during the 70’s and early 80’s, and due to heredity.

What are your room dimensions?  What preamp are you using?  

Regarding bass management, some time ago Steve mentioned in a post that big bass corner horns make great bass traps.  Having a pair of Klipschorn bass bins in the garage, I immediately moved them to the listening room, put them in the front wall corners, shorted the terminals, and like magic, the boominess that I was experiencing at the listening position completely vanished.  What kind of bass issues are you having?

I'm running the trio 15's with the horn and the Mystery amp and a Ztpre. My favourite combo to date. my room is fairly small (13 x 20) with 12 diffusers and some sound absorbers in the corners. Speakers are 3 feet off the wall with some diffusers behind the speakers.  No boomy bass, but I think I would get better bass in a larger room. Some recordings have great bass, tight and textured. I find its more dependent on the recording.
As to power, most music I listen to is plenty loud, 1/4 volume,  but some movies I will have the Mystery amp at 3/4 volume with the pre at max.
I love the speakers, great imaging and can listen at 70 to 80 db without losing anything.  The Ztpre expands the sound stage, if I remove it from the chain the imaging is still good but seems to be more focused between the speakers.
As to the cross over, I"m using the Duelund Carbon resistors. For the caps I never liked the Mundorf, tried several. So I lost my mind and purchased 2 Duelund RS Mylar at 15uf and put a 3.3 cast copper Pio in parallel for each side with the .01 on the board. really happy with this combo.
Eventually I want to try the copper foil speaker cables.
I have to get my hearing checked annually for work and so far its great. I do find some of my favourite songs from the 70's I cant listen to with these speakers. the recordings are so shitty, never noticed it until I put these speakers in. To sibilant.
I thought about trying 2 of Steves UFO's as mono blocks, but the feed back I've gotten from others is they seem to like the power to bring out the bass. If I win the lottery I will order a couple, but I love this combo. Keeps me up too late at night.
Cheers

While I don't have Pure Audio Project speakers, I do own a Mystery amp. I don't think you can go wrong if you can stretch the budget for a ZMA. It's truly been a revelation in my system, especially since I had Steve complete the 25th Anniversary modifications.

In addition to the exceptional sound quality, the ZMA provides added power in case you opt for less sensitive speakers in the future. Good luck.

HK

A few quick updates below...

First, I did finally go for it and found that I could drive the Zen Triode into clipping with my Aesthetix Calypso preamp.  It gets pretty darned loud first, but after a few beers I do run that loud at times.  I can also hear it losing headroom and dynamics as it approaches that volume level and that's the more worrisome part.

I still love the crap out of the Super Zen Triode, but I'm guessing my heart should be set on a Torii or Zen Mystery Amp for my room and listening tastes.

Voxativ Experiments Followup
Sorry for the slow response to your post, Doug.  That sounds like an interesting experiment!  Can you post a photo of how you have the crossovers wired up?  It sounds like you're running straight into the Voxativs and also running the woofers for low-end enforcement.  Is that right?

Sadly my Voxativs are still a couple weeks out I think.  I'm trying hard to wait patiently, but can't wait to experiment when they arrive...

Keith - Any chance I can get you to post a photo or PM me one?  Your crossovers sound epic!