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RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes?

87.95.51.10

In Reply to: RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? posted by UncleMeat on December 31, 2024 at 21:51:14

Thank you very much for your comments UncleMeat! :=) It's quite interesting to see how different opinions and experiences people have on this topic; some feel that there should be hundreds of watts to get best out of IV's, while some, like you, are happy with way below 100W.

But maybe this just points out that it's always subjective, and depends highly on the room size, preferred music style, wanted volume levels, maybe also person's hearing, etc.

Since my room is not very big and I like to listen on a near field with quite reasonable volumes, I think I will give tubes a try on mids and/or highs. If they won't work, it's quite easy to get rid of high quality tube amps anyway.

Happy new year for all you Magne-heads! :-)

Follow Ups:

RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - UncleMeat 14:44:43 01/12/25 (7)
Yes, and another way to go about tri-amping would be to split the bass panels and amp them separately, but leave the mid/high pair together with the high-pass amp driving them via the internal crossover. That would probably give the most even load distribution among the 3 amps.
- RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - UncleMeat 08:48:25 01/13/25 (5)
  On my T-IV the two bass panels are different. One is a 'low' panel, and the second one is a 'mid-bass' panel with tuned sections for the higher low frequencies. I'm not exactly sure how high the mid panel goes but it -could- be semi-full range (up to maybe 5kHz?) if a frequency sweep was done to determine it's properties. Putting my ear next to it while playing music tells me that there is -some- higher frequency sound coming out of it, but probably largely blocked out by the low pass crossover.
  My thought/potential plan was to separate the two drivers by disconnecting the wires going to the mid-bass panel from the low-bass panel. That gives the option for powering them individually, which would set up a tri-amp if you kept the T-IV midrange/tweeter paired, or quad-amp if you split the mid/tweeter and amped them separately as well.
  
  Edits: 01/13/25
  - RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - InfinityApogee 15:13:34 01/14/25 (4)
    How can they be different when its a 3 way system?
    - RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - UncleMeat 21:48:01 01/14/25 (3)
      Technically T-IV's are 4-way speakers, reduced by a 3-way crossover. The high-pass goes to a second 2-way crossover for the ribbon/tweeter, while the low-pass goes to two bass drivers on separate panels. Those two bass drivers are 'tuned' to respond to the various frequencies in the low-pass signal, one does everything below 100Hz (or so) and the second one has 3 tuned sections that cover above 100Hz to ~5kHz.
      Those bass drivers could be driven separately on single amps, doing a freq sweep would tell at what frequencies to set the crossover points/slopes at.
      
      Edits: 01/14/25
      - RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - Roger Gustavsson 10:10:28 01/15/25 (2)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? posted by UncleMeat on January 14, 2025 at 21:48:01
        
        Here a comparsion of the two bass drivers. The one the left normally sits in the center of the speaker, it is lower tuned. The one on the right is higher tuned. Still, these are bass drivers not very high performing at higher frequencies even if their response is wide band. The basses of the older T-IIIA is flat up to about 4 kHz but does not sound like that.
        
        Edits: 01/15/25
        
        RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - UncleMeat 12:26:03 01/15/25 (1)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? posted by Roger Gustavsson on January 15, 2025 at 10:10:28
        
        Yes, understood Roger. My T-IV's don't have a tuning button on the 'low' panel. The mid-bass panel looks similar to what you've posted but the center button is higher, closer to the top support bar than the second one down.
        
        RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - Roger Gustavsson 02:08:43 01/16/25 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? posted by UncleMeat on January 15, 2025 at 12:26:03
        
        T-IV is different, thinner magnets too. The low bass driver tuned to 43 Hz and the mid bass to 57-75-88 Hz (from bottom to top).
        
        Edits: 01/16/25
- RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - InfinityApogee 15:28:22 01/12/25 (0)
  That sounds like bi-amp to me, have IV,a as well
RE: Tri-amping T IV-A's with tubes? - Roger Gustavsson 05:46:51 01/01/25 (0)
Happy New Year!

Use an active crossover and it gave me an additional 1.7 dB in the bass from my 3.6. T-IV and T-IVa have similar passive crossovers. This will lower the power for the drive by 33%. There is less to gain from the midrange, maybe less than a dB.

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