Natalie P vs Energy 22.3

[jkrueger]

Hi all.

I would like to ask a question about the Natalie P. (This seemed like the place to do it.) I don't mean to highjack anything, I hope this fits. I have built the Natalie P plans, and have listened to them for a while. They are actually my dad's, and we have been comparing them to his Energy 22.3's. The Energy's two mids are poly, and they sound warmer. In fact, the Natalie's sound a little lean on the bottom compared to them. We have experiemented with stuffing, and seem unable to "warm" them up.
Now my father thinks that he would like to build a subwoofer to go with them. The only reason he would build one is to try to fill in the lower mids and low frequencies. He wants to "fix" them. They sound pretty good to me, but I am looking for suggestions. What will do the job?

Moved by moderator from main NatP thread in Missions Accomplished forum to create this separate thread.

[ThomasW]

You might want to measure the frequency response of each speaker so you have some basis of comparison.

[Chris7]

For what it's worth, metal cone mids tend to sound a lot more lean (cooler) than poly and paper cones. John Krutke used to have a page dealing with this, but it looks like he's taken it down. (This isn't the only possible reason, of course... the Energies could have more BSC, a hump in the upper bass, or something like that.) While metal cone drivers generally have lower levels of absolute distortion than poly cones, their distortion profile is usually more heavily weighted towards odd order harmonics, especially above 1kHz. Play around with the driver comparator on John Krutke's site to see this. Even order distortion pushes sound toward warmth, odd order distortion pushes sound towards coldness/leanness.

It's also possible that the cone breakup is not well-enough controlled, but I'm assuming the Natalie Ps are a competent design.

In any case, I would resist the urge to build a subwoofer to warm up the speaker. I've been in the same position (not with that specific design). The real problem is how the speaker sounds, not the amount of bass. You might consider shelving down the tweeter, lowering the crossover point if there's any room to do so with that tweeter, or adding a deeper trap on the cone breakup node.

By the way, one way to test whether your mids are an issue is just to turn up the bass on your amplifier. The sound will become bassier, but on speakers where the coldness comes from their inherent distortion profile, the coldness will not go away (it will likely become more pronounced as cone motion increases).

[Exocer]

Measuring each speaker is a good idea. Each of my speakers measure relatively flat down to 30hz in-room. You might notice a bump in the Energy speaker's FR that your dad has gotten used to.

I can related to your dad's observations, having come from NHT SB-2's to the Natalie P's. The NHT is the epitome of a "warm" sounding speaker and it took a while to adjust to the Natalie P's. In fact, having built the Natalie P's in July 06' I have just recently completely gotten used to their sound. They certainly have lots of bass down to about 32hz, and do not sound "lean" in the bass department with the right power behind them.

Just curious, what amp is your dad powering the speakers with? The reason I ask is because I had a chance to listen to the Natalie P's on 3 different amps. An Onkyo Tx Sr 602, an Hk AVR 235 and a Behringer Ep1500 (which is a bit overkill). The Behringer sounded the best of the 3, and I think the ability to properly handle the 4ohm load has something to do with it. Im assuming the behringer has a damping factor of around ~150 @ 4ohms, which is acceptable. The NHT's faired well on all 3 of the amps and didn't really improve as much as the Natalie P's did with the pro-amp, im assuming because the AVRs handled their 8ohm load just fine from the start.

I've had the best results with http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=260-520

3 squares behind each driver, extending to the brace. Two on the sides of each driver and 1 square each on the top and bottom of the enclosure.

[jkrueger]

Don't think it is the amp.

The amp in question is an older Luxman M-117. 200w a side into 8 ohms, and stable down into a 2ohm load. There is plenty of juice. Thanks for the tips Exocer. When I have had a chance to listen to them there doesn't seem to be anything wrong. They are just a little different than the Energy's. I have only had a couple of hours infront of them. I will get him to try the trick with the tone controls and see what happens. Thanks again.

[Dan B]

Truth and clarity over "Warmth"

I built the Modula MTs and my first impression wasn't much different than yours, especially with older rock recordings. Give it some time, put in some well recorded acoustic music, Jazz and classical. To my ears these speakers reproduce this music clear, rich and true to life.

Personally, I'd go with truth and clarity over "Warmth"

Dan B

[fjhuerta]

I've measured a set of Energy speakers... to compare them against the Nat-Ps. They are the Connoisseur C-7's.

I always thought they did sound a lot warmer than the Nat-P's.

Much to my surprise, they were very, very flat up to 3 or 4 KHz (IIRC), and then they had an increasing slope in power.

When I measured them off-axis, they measured pretty flat, up to 15 or 16 KHz.

I haven't yet been able to understand why they sound "fuller" than the Nat-P's. They aren't recessed in the mids or highs, as far as I can tell.