For one pair of 4355s to sound presumably good and another to sound "very bad", there must be something else going on. Different rooms, different equipment in front of the speakers, etc.
I don't know the "test" conditions of your comparison, but in my experience, after speakers, the room is the next largest variable in sound quality.
FWIW: I am not blindly defending CC networks. For my own DIY speaker projects, I have opted to go with higher quality caps and keeping them simple, but as I mentioned earlier in this thread, anecdotally it did appear to me that the factory CC network in my DD66000s did have a positive influence.
Widget
And GM used to be the largest car company in the world... what's your point?
JBL today is hardly the company it was under the control of Sydney Harman. I suppose a 50-60 year run at greatness is pretty good... I'm not holding my breath waiting for new wonderful products to come out of Northridge in the future.
Widget
I did some investigations into Biamping with better /best quality capacitors and CC about 10 years ago.
The upshot was that the bi amp active crossover can have the effect of an overall blanket to transparency or cast an electronic glare on what your hear subjectively.
So in your scenario you have the vintage Jbl active crossovers feeding your power amps and the crossover in the midrange horn array.
If the Jbl active crossover is injecting a sonic signature it’s possible the non charge couple passive crossover to masking the signature.
The charge coupled (Solen Fast Cap 250 volt at least) is comparatively far more transparent so your subjectively hearing the vintage Jbl active crossover signature.
I have used both the 5234/5235 and they are far from what might be termed transparent or a price of copper wire.
Something to chew on.
Btw what are the caps in the non charge coupled network?
If you grab some Y rca connectors and run the high mid/ horn array direct from your preamp into the power amp that will validate if it’s the Jbl crossover or the charge coupled network.
These days l prefer full discrete analog active crossovers.
Which famous speaker using C-C network like JBL?
46 lover
While we may have moved on from charge-coupling to superior electronic-based, active bi-, tri-, and quad-amped systems, I've NEVER heard a properly charge-coupled network that wasn't better than its non-charged counterpart.
There's no need for an unnecessarily complicated double-blind test for this, if you have a pair of speakers. A single-blind will do. It's not like you don't already know the speakers in question—in fact a single speaker may be better. All you need is three people and two batteries: one fresh and full, and one dead. One person, out of view of the other two, switches batteries randomly and keeps a record of which battery he replaces (or leaves in place) for each trial. Another person controls the trial without knowing if the network is charged or not and insures that the sounds and music played are consistent, repetitive (each trial repeated four times at random and a record kept), and timed. The third person does the listening and "scoring" of each trial. It's boring, but verifiable and easy to replicate.
While folks are working up a sweat, take a break to watch this video all the way to the end. There are a couple of names that everyone will recognize, at least one of whom I respect. Even if we never want to do the work of building charge-coupled networks or believe that c-cs are pointless, we can appreciate the effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2a-OtN1IHQ
(Sorry about the music.)
Out.
Moved sideways.
Not everyone would agree active is an automatic upgrade
In many instances it’s a sideways move depending on your preferences and budget
There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)