another powered tower question...sorry (1 Viewer)

[Evan M.]

it has been awhile since i have posted here. my wife and i just bought our first home so i have been a little busy as i am sure you all can imagine. anyway we currently have a yamaha rx-v2200 with the boston acoustic system 9000II. we love the boston sound, have had great luck with them for 15 years now, so we will always be very loyal to bostons. the only place up here in maine who sells boston is tweeter. we went this weekend to audition some speakers because we want to upgrade the fronts. the small satellites just did not do it for music. we auditioned the boston vr950 and the vr 965. they both have the lynfield tweeter. the 950's have 2 5 1/2" drivers. the 965's have 1 41/2 " driver and an 8" powered (80 watt) subwoofer. in listening to music the 965 sounded better for music and was more full sounding than the 950. we decided to purchase the 965 because it seemed worth the 250$ more. in my system i have the pv 600 boston sub. i am not connecting the l.f.e. to the powered towers, i just have it going to the external sub. i use the amps in the towers to power the woofer and have it set to large. my question is, am i wasting my money on these powered towers because i am not useing the l.f.e. inputs? would i have the same sound if i would have bought the 950's plus my sub. i know this has been discussed to death, i am just wondering if it is normal to use powered speakers and use an external sub. i have a month where i can return/ exchange them so i just want to make sure we made a wise decision. i am sorry on the length of this post i just did not want to leave anything out . thank you advance

 

[Charles M Berry]

Hey Evan,
It's GREAT to here that someone else on the HTF is from Maine! God, you don't know how good that feels, everyone seems to be from the West Coast. I don't wan't to highjack your thread, but I have to ask: If you are talking about the Tweeter in South Portland, then are you aware that the BEST audio store in Maine is only 3 minutes down the road? New England Hi-Fi is far superior to Tweeter, or any of the other big box stores. I am pretty certain that they don't have Boston, but you should at least check them out in the future. They carry Paradigm, Klipsch, Vandersteen!!, Paradigm Reference, and more. Very nice bunch of guys.
Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but I just had to say hi to a fellow Mainer.

 

[Evan M.]

LOL...i know what you mean, not a lot of us mainahs' here. i think most people think we have no running water and only out-houses . i would have gone to that hi-fi place but we love the sound of bostons. i have been there before and they are very good people and have fantastic things. i should check them out again cause' the last time i was there was 3 years ago. anyway before i get too off track does anyone know what i should do and if i made a good choice with the powered towers even though i am not running the l.f.e. signal to them. (i use a sepatate sub for that) thanks in advance.

 

[DerekF]

not a lot of us mainahs' here. i think most people think we have no running water and only out-houses

It's better than the igloos and sled dogs that people equate with western Canada!!
...sorry for the off topic post, but I couldn't resist!

 

[Evan M.]

Bump......i hate to do that, but i do need some advice and soon, i may be going tomorrow to listen to the vr950's again to compare with the 965's.

 

[Charles M Berry]

I don't know if this helps any, but for music I think that combining the powered towers AND the external sub-woofer may be a bit much for music, assuming you listen mostly to music. If the powered towers go low enough, and give you all the punch you want while listening to music, what would you need a sub for?

Then again, if you are both listening to music and pulling HT detail, then maybe the sub would act togeather with the towers for rumbling bass in movies. I checked out Paradigms website (just cause I own them), and under there "suggested systems" they match the powered "active/40" with a servo-15 sub. So, maybe this IS normal.

Since I dont have any practical experience with powered speakers, this is just me thinking out loud. Hey, you could always stop by NEW ENGLAND HI-FI and ask those guys, since they are so close to tweeter. They will definately know.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

I sort of like the powered tower mix with sub just for one simple reason, it is much easier to adjust the bass level of the mains in relation of where it's in the room to the main listening position (to a point just lower/raise the gain on the towers vs constant repositioning and possible use of tone controls). The only main negative is that the extra subs might add to peaks or cancel other bass by playing slightly out of phase and possibly causing some nulls in certain areas of the room. The other bad part I also see (assuming I'm correct otherwise I'm wrong on this) is if I'm correct the Yam only has one bass x-over setting and therefore you really are somewhat limited on how the main sub crosses to the towers.

 

[Geoff L]

Robert

Your not wrong, and bring up valid points that can be problems to some rooms and system useing powered towers along with a powered sub woofer with limited control with in the receiver.

Placement and phasing can be a nightmare.

Rgards
Geoff

 

[Charles M Berry]

Evan,
Check thislink out.
I think you question may be answered by reading through that long thread. I guess all the smarty HTF west-coasters don't like to help us Mainers' out. j/k
Post back when you decide, I'd like to hear what you end up doing. Us Mainers (and Canadians, lol) have to stick together. Get some pics of your HT up on the web, too.

 

[Evan M.]

thank you very much to all who replied. a lot of great advice (and some laughs too). we went to tweeter to try the vr950 again to compare with our powered 965's. there really is no comparison. i simply heard thing with the 965 that i could not hear with the 950's so we are sticking with the 965's. we have the sub connected via l.f.e. and the amps in the towers do a great job at kicking in the mids and higher bass. we have the fronts set to large even with movies, i seem to get so much more out of them this way. thank you for that link charles, it helped out a lot. boy after reading that thread i am glad this thread did not turn into that kind of debate. everyone just gave me some good old fashioned advice. go figure . i'll try to put up some pictures of my ht setup at some point, i just have to dig everything out of boxes and get everything unpacked from our move or my wife is going to open up a can of woopa$$ on me. lol. thank you again everyone!!