vivek.saikia
Active Member
I recently setup a stereo system after carefully considering each individual components.
This was going to be my 4th stereo setup and I wanted to avoid all the mistakes I had done before.
Also, I was more sure about the kind of music I listen to and about my sound preferences.
So, finally I decided upon the following components -
Source : Squeezebox Touch - As all my music is in digital format
Amplification: Dared i30 tube integrated amplifier - Simply love the tube sound, after owning many tube headphone amps, owning a tube integrated was inevitable.
Speaker: Usher S520 - They were perfect for my smallish apartment.
Initially, I was very much happy with the sound quality although when I did some long listening sessions (5-6 hours), I ended with some listening fatigue.
I realized the treble from the Usher S520 is a bit forward, atleast in my nearfield listening setup (6ft from my listening position). Although at no point they sound sibilant. Infact, many will find the sound perfect and I would say it is more of a personal preference, as I like my music to sound natural.
In the stock form, the male voices were having that extra sharpness which was bothering me, as they were not sounding as if the singer is singing in my room and was sounding a bit "synthetic".
I decided to take things into my hands. I knew the speakers can do much better than this and I knew I can somehow tweak them to customize them as per my taste.
And thus the operation of the Ushers begun...
First, I just wanted to take a good look at the drivers and the crossovers to see if there is any scope to tweak those.
I literally tore apart the speaker including the drivers.
Very beautiful and quality construction of the cabinets with ample amount of stuffing.
Impressively huge motor assembly of the tweeter
Textile soft dome tweeter
Cast aluminium frame....magnetic shielding.....nice!
The enclosure is quite small hence the crossovers are hardly accessible.
Also, tweaking the crossover would result into change of the tonality of the speaker, which I wanted to avoid.
I dropped the Idea of tweaking the crossovers and rather thought of some alternate ways to attenuate the tweeter output.
First option was to surround the tweeter with felt padding to control the diffraction. This might have worked but wouldn't have attenuated the tweeter much.
Second option I tried was to place the speakers facing straight rather than pointed at my sweet spot. This worked to some extent but still the treble was a bit pronounced.
Finally, I saw this excellent solution in one of the forums and decided to try it out.
The solution was to replace the jumper between the +ve terminal of this bi-wireable speaker with a resisiter, which will eventually attenuate the tweeter volume. You can experiment with different resistance values to see which one suits you better.
I ordered a pair of 1.5ohm and 2 ohm 10 watt non inductive resisters from parts express.
The resisters should be non inductive as it will not mess with the frequency response of the tweeter and it will just reduce the volume of the tweeter a bit without rolling off the high frequencies.
If you use inductive wound coil resisters then it will roll off the upper frequency, which you will not want.
Initially, I experimented with the 1.5 ohm resister to the speaker as jumper, did some listening and then swapped with the 2 ohm resister and the system sounded exactly the way I wanted it to sound. The sound was very detailed but without a hint of sibilance or brightness. Mission Accomplished!! :yahoo:
I cannot recall any speakers which had sounded more sweeter than this set up, including the thousand dollar speakers which I auditioned. :licklips:
The speakers now had more of the fullrange driver sound which I totally dig.
Only thing to make sure is to connect the speaker wire to the woofer terminal and not the tweeter terminal otherwise you will end up with even more brighter system.
Or alternatively, If you have a very dark sounding speaker then you can just connect the speaker cable to the tweeter terminal, with the resister as jumper. This will attenuate the woofer volume a bit hence making the tweeter a bit prominent, if you like it that way. You can try out different resistance values to get the sound of your liking.
Needless to say this tweak will work only for the bi-wireable speakers.
The best part of this tweak is that it doesn't mess up with the crossover frequency distribution and also is 100% reversible.
So, if you have a speaker setup which sounds too bright to you then at least try out this tweak before deciding on the next upgrade.
You will be very pleased with the results and you will save a lot of your hard earned money.
Happy DIY'ing!!
Bonus pictures...Enjoy
This was going to be my 4th stereo setup and I wanted to avoid all the mistakes I had done before.
Also, I was more sure about the kind of music I listen to and about my sound preferences.
So, finally I decided upon the following components -
Source : Squeezebox Touch - As all my music is in digital format
Amplification: Dared i30 tube integrated amplifier - Simply love the tube sound, after owning many tube headphone amps, owning a tube integrated was inevitable.
Speaker: Usher S520 - They were perfect for my smallish apartment.
Initially, I was very much happy with the sound quality although when I did some long listening sessions (5-6 hours), I ended with some listening fatigue.
I realized the treble from the Usher S520 is a bit forward, atleast in my nearfield listening setup (6ft from my listening position). Although at no point they sound sibilant. Infact, many will find the sound perfect and I would say it is more of a personal preference, as I like my music to sound natural.
In the stock form, the male voices were having that extra sharpness which was bothering me, as they were not sounding as if the singer is singing in my room and was sounding a bit "synthetic".
I decided to take things into my hands. I knew the speakers can do much better than this and I knew I can somehow tweak them to customize them as per my taste.
And thus the operation of the Ushers begun...
First, I just wanted to take a good look at the drivers and the crossovers to see if there is any scope to tweak those.
I literally tore apart the speaker including the drivers.
Very beautiful and quality construction of the cabinets with ample amount of stuffing.
Impressively huge motor assembly of the tweeter
Textile soft dome tweeter
Cast aluminium frame....magnetic shielding.....nice!
The enclosure is quite small hence the crossovers are hardly accessible.
Also, tweaking the crossover would result into change of the tonality of the speaker, which I wanted to avoid.
I dropped the Idea of tweaking the crossovers and rather thought of some alternate ways to attenuate the tweeter output.
First option was to surround the tweeter with felt padding to control the diffraction. This might have worked but wouldn't have attenuated the tweeter much.
Second option I tried was to place the speakers facing straight rather than pointed at my sweet spot. This worked to some extent but still the treble was a bit pronounced.
Finally, I saw this excellent solution in one of the forums and decided to try it out.
The solution was to replace the jumper between the +ve terminal of this bi-wireable speaker with a resisiter, which will eventually attenuate the tweeter volume. You can experiment with different resistance values to see which one suits you better.
I ordered a pair of 1.5ohm and 2 ohm 10 watt non inductive resisters from parts express.
The resisters should be non inductive as it will not mess with the frequency response of the tweeter and it will just reduce the volume of the tweeter a bit without rolling off the high frequencies.
If you use inductive wound coil resisters then it will roll off the upper frequency, which you will not want.
Initially, I experimented with the 1.5 ohm resister to the speaker as jumper, did some listening and then swapped with the 2 ohm resister and the system sounded exactly the way I wanted it to sound. The sound was very detailed but without a hint of sibilance or brightness. Mission Accomplished!! :yahoo:
I cannot recall any speakers which had sounded more sweeter than this set up, including the thousand dollar speakers which I auditioned. :licklips:
The speakers now had more of the fullrange driver sound which I totally dig.
Only thing to make sure is to connect the speaker wire to the woofer terminal and not the tweeter terminal otherwise you will end up with even more brighter system.
Or alternatively, If you have a very dark sounding speaker then you can just connect the speaker cable to the tweeter terminal, with the resister as jumper. This will attenuate the woofer volume a bit hence making the tweeter a bit prominent, if you like it that way. You can try out different resistance values to get the sound of your liking.
Needless to say this tweak will work only for the bi-wireable speakers.
The best part of this tweak is that it doesn't mess up with the crossover frequency distribution and also is 100% reversible.
So, if you have a speaker setup which sounds too bright to you then at least try out this tweak before deciding on the next upgrade.
You will be very pleased with the results and you will save a lot of your hard earned money.
Happy DIY'ing!!
Bonus pictures...Enjoy
Last edited:
