Starting a 250Ti adventure

A friend of my buddy's dad finally decided to sell his 250Ti speakers. It's been 10 years since he used them last. So, you know, I took the opportunity to buy them. Who would've thought a single owner pair would be 10 minutes away.

I just plopped them down in my living room. After I take the time to rearrange the furniture, I plan to connect them up to a pair of Crown PL4 amps, the SL2 pre-amp and a Technics 1200 turntable. I have a pair of Crown SA2 amps to try as well. I'm not a tweaker, but these speakers will probably end up with charge coupled networks sometime in the next decade.

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Enjoy the ride, these are excellent speakers. Feed them a good signal and they will reward you with fine sound. It's been more than a year since I bought mine and I have greatly enjoyed every minute. I've owned all sorts of "audiophile" speakers over more than 4 decades of listening and I can honestly say this is a sound I can live with for a very long time.

I fully agree with Kman, they are great speakers, very good separation and detail and they will give you a pounding if you want them to! Something to be said about a speaker like the 250 Ti, that continues to be in demand decades after they were made!:applaud:

since they are in near proximity ...how do they compare with the K-horns (?) in the pic ?

I personally will never need more than the 250ti can provide. They DO like lots of power tho.
There is debate here, but a sub does help ..IMHO.

I bought those Klipschorns in 1987. They remained stock until 2006 when I built crossovers from an Al Klappenberger (ALK Engineering) kit, put his horn on the midrange and installed 2404H tweeters. All based on Al's work. So, you know, the speakers aren't Klipschorns any more. I imagine...comparing the 250Ti to these Khorns is somewhat like the L300 comparison...except I don't experience any fatigue when listening to the horns, at an appropriate volume, for long sittings.

I set the 250Ti up in a 14x30ish room, about 2 feet away from front and side walls. I powered them with a single Crown SA2 amp...something like 220W per channel. One amp was just about sufficient and I intend to include a second when it comes back from the shop. So yeah, they seem to benefit from "a lot" of power. However, I found no lacking in the bass department. It was very satisfying. I don't have any intention of adding subwoofers to this system.

These speakers are a new path for me. I've been enjoying my Khorns and a few Wayne Parham designed 2-way horn/front radiator speakers...and I will continue to do so. Maybe I'll experiment more with tube gear on those high efficiency designs. The 250Ti is a whole new deal and I'm just getting started with 'em. Thank goodness I have some decent high power amps or I probably would have been pretty disappointed in my initial listening.

I suppose this is the good side of hanging around this forum even though I haven't had anything of significance to contribute. TiDome got me fired up about the professional series and I managed to install one of the AV2/PT800, etc. systems in a girlfriends house. My theater set-up uses the AV2 with BassQ and a pair of the Parts Express 1500s. Only one of which required re-gluing. I've read about these 250ti systems and jumped at the opportunity based on all the discussion here. Haha, I even have some 4206s hanging on the wall of my kitchen thanks to Ian M's recommendation. All good.

But maybe back to your point about having the 250Ti in close proximity to those Khorns for comparison. I haven't played them in the same room...and I probably won't. I think I'll just enjoy the 250ti in my bedroom and the Khorns in the living room.

Thanks for posting on my thread. Maybe I'll have something to contribute here while following the path from these new speakers.

Interesting thread... I think it's great that you are open minded enough to find the good in two polar opposite speakers. You are also quite lucky to have the room to enjoy them.

Keep us posted as your system evolves, and happy listening!


Widget

I spent the last few hours on my birthday listening to the 250Tis. Boy oh boy what an experience.

Let me digress a bit.

I bought a pair of Sennheiser HD650 headphones a while back. I built a Bottlehead "Crack" tube amplifier for the headphones. When I listened to that combination I was flabbergasted. Just shocked. The detail. The soundstage. The subtleties that just sort of emerged from nowhere. Pretty cool, but I missed the whole body experience I have with my loudspeakers. Say what you will, but I get a LOT of enjoyment out of the feel of music on my body.

Well the 250Ti gave me the soundstage and the feel. I lounged back in a recliner and was just surrounded by the sound. And I daresay it was 3d, or at least I imagined that there was depth to what I was hearing. Well no, I perceived it and that's all that matters to me. There was fine detail. There was power. I'm still using just one 275W / ch amplifier (Crown SA2). It seems we talked about damping factor relative to these speakers and this amp is specified with a damping factor >700. But anyway. these speakers projected power. There was a realism that made me just marvel while I was listening.

I was thinking about all the threads I've read here about these speakers. The comment I couldn't shake was a quote carried over here from another forum. The guy called the 250Ti too bright. While I was immersed in the sound, I tried very hard to hear "bright." I couldn't. That trite little word had no meaning relative to all the sensations I was having while listening. Would you call a statue too hard? or a painting too red? Oh well.

I'm pretty grateful for my good fortune. These speakers are another watershed event. I wouldn't have considered buying a 4-way, power-hungry speaker system a few years ago. It pays to have an open mind.

Great! That's the kind of thing I like to read.

[QUOTE=Wayner;336564]
I was thinking about all the threads I've read here about these speakers. The comment I couldn't shake was a quote carried over here from another forum. The guy called the 250Ti too bright. While I was immersed in the sound, I tried very hard to hear "bright." I couldn't.QUOTE]

The 250 Ti's are great and I'm inheriting a pair from a coworker when he retires (I scored him the pair four or five years ago for $600 the pair and he's going to sell them back to me!). They'll join the EV's and the 4315's in the shop. If the commenter on that thread wants to hear 'bright', he oughta listen to a pair of 4315's with the high freq and uhf controls set at 12 o'clock! The 4315's will show you what 'bright' really is!:D