Voyeur
By Des Stanley

Hi Steven,

  Thanks for a great site. A short description of my system:

Tri-amplified system using a Marantz 3300 preamplifier with modified power supply (my design) feeding Technics electronic crossover. This goes into two Marantz 240 amps (circa 1974) and a bridged amplifier also of my own design. Speakers are the last in a series of designs pursued by myself over the last 25 odd years. These 72 litre floorstanders house a side-firing 12 AR unit crossed over at 140Hz for bass. A Dynaudio 17w75 is in a triangulated enclosure of 8 litres which are crossed over at 1,000Hz for lower midrange. Next comes a Dynaudio D52AF and crossed over again at 3500Hz for midrange while for highs I used a Dynaudio D28 tweeter. The passive 12dB octave crossover is used between upper mid and tweeter. The cabinet itself is constructed of a sandwich consisting of two 25mm MDF sheets with a non-hardening adhesive joining the two. This makes a wall thickness of 50mm (2"). The choice of side firing woofer was made with a low diffraction width in mind which is "coupled" to extend in-room bass to -/+20hz.

My ongoing passion in life since the age of 15 has been jazz (i am 56 now) and all my speaker efforts to date have been to reproduce this wonderful genre as faithfully as possible. Being in the sticks so to speak, it has been a major problem in obtaining data, components etc. Because the advent of the internet, I now have access to all! Major advantage of the system is the fact that the wide range units are used well within their frequency range giving very low I.M. distortion, good imaging, and great power handling. Sensitivity is around 88db/w/m.

My most used source component is a very modified AR turntable fitted with a Thorens main bearing and shaft. The Rega RB300 tonearm and Zenmc10 moving coil cart round things out nicely. Head amp is a battery powered unit of my design. All interconnects at this moment are your design (the Max Rochlin Memorial Cable). I am busy evaluating at the moment and am very impressed so far. Thanks again for your site, and thanks for the opportunity of sharing my efforts with you!

Thanks again,

Des Stanley

 

PS. A bit more history---the technics crossover was bought from the local dealer after a country wide "road show" which toured the country circa 1978. Subsequent efforts to get a circuit diagram from the factory provided zilch, even denying that the model ever existed! The venerable A.G. Tannenbaum in the States (USA) admitted defeat. I don't know if the serial #003 means that this unit did not make it into production. Anyway, it is a three way crossover, with slopes adjustable 6, 12 and 18db. Gain adjustment plus phase inversion and Q adjustment. The whole unit is very well made using all discreet components. Not a IC in sight! The CD player is a Sony CDP79 with muting components removed and hard wired interconnects. The tuner and tape deck are also Technics (used for taping music for the car mostly). Main source of music is vinyl, then CD and a feed from a satellite dish which provides 24 hours per day of music of your choice. That is about it. Forgive the verbal overflow, but you did ask!