I am at a lost here!

[BobSD]

My brother loves music as much as I do, and recently has fallen on hard times because of the ailing economy. So to pick him up a little, I decided to buy him a pair of new speakers. He has old ancient speakers from the 70s era.

I bought him the Def BP7004s and I thought he would be shocked and over joyed hearing these speakers for the first time like I was, but instead, he said he had to hit the power button on his receiver to get the bass to sound good. My first thought might be his receiver, it is a Pioneer VSX455, and it must be very old. Can this most likely be the problem, he said it has at least 100watts out put.

I live in SD and he lives in NYS, so I cannot be there to actually hear them. Would a plain stereo power amp be his best way to hear these speaker, or should that Pioneer be able to bring out the best of the BP7004s?
Any help would be so appreciated! Bob

I did ask him to recheck his wire connections and make sure they are correct!

 

[Adam]

Hi, Bob. That was a very generous thing that you did! Buying your brother those speakers was very nice of you.

I'm confused by the problem. You said that:

...he said he had to hit the power button on his receiver to get the bass to sound good.

I don't follow that at all. You don't mean that he had to turn on the receiver, do you? I'd think that would be a given.

 

[Rickster71]

Hi, Bob. That was a very generous thing that you did! Buying your brother those speakers was very nice of you.

I'm confused by the problem. You said that:

I don't follow that at all. You don't mean that he had to turn on the receiver, do you? I'd think that would be a given.

Hi Adam,
I wonder if Bob means, the loudness button?....

 

[Rickster71]

Does your brother know they have a built in sub amp, and have to be plugged into a wall receptacle?

 

[Alex2507]

I wonder if Bob means, the loudness button?....

Probably.

The brother also probably got accustomed to the sound of his old speakers and misses their sound signature. I'm pretty sure the DT's are better but it's gonna take him some time to get use to them. I think he needs to be told the 'break-in' lie.

I took a quick look and was unable to find the impedance/phase angle curves but if they are hard to drive an amp that is stable at lower Ohms may be a help as is the case with some Paradigms.

Another 'lie' that may help is the one about speaker wire. Send him some 10ga from Monoprice and tell him it's 'special'. That should help too.

 

[Rickster71]

Couldn't find any impedance curves, though they are very efficient speakers.


Nominal Impedance: Compatible with 8 ohms
Recommended Amplification: 20 - 300 Watts/channel
Efficiency: 92 dB

 

[Adam]

To add to Rick's comment about plugging the speakers into a power outlet, your brother also needs to adjust the gain on the internal subwoofer amplifiers.

Bob - if you meant that your brother needs to power cycle the receiver periodically to get good bass, perhaps the auto-on sensor for the sub amps in the speakers isn't getting enough signal to keep them on? I'm finding conflicting into on the web about that receiver, so I don't know if it has a line-level subwoofer output or not (but I think not). Your brother is probably just connecting using speaker wire, and unless he's playing music very softly, I'd think that the sub amps would turn on and stay on - but it was something that I wanted to mention as a possibility.

 

[griffinconst]

Hey bob, sounds like everyone should have a brother like you.
I'm an only child. We should talk.

 

[BobSD]

Thanks for the relpys, I called my brother and he was impressed with the "being use to his old speakers", That could be it, they are called cerwinvaga VS 1990year model, with 8" woofer.

yes it is the loudness button, but some people use to refer to them as the power button, gave all the ranges more boost. But it does distort the sound in my opinion. It was intended to be used when playing at very low levels, but many found that at higher levels it was great.

So maybe looking into another receiver is not necessary, if it were me, I would get a modest price two channel power amp, any thought on a good one?

 

[Adam]

Bob, has your brother calibrated his system? I'd suggest running a frequency sweep using a set of test tones and an SPL meter. I'd think that he would at least want to get the gain on the built-in subwoofer amps set so that the bass volumes match the rest of the speaker outputs. Sure, that can also be set to his personal preference, but he doesn't seem happy with it at the moment, so maybe calibration (or just tweaking the gain knobs on the sub amps) would help out.

Also, he might just need to tweak the orientation and/or placement of the speakers.

 

[BobSD]

Thats what he is doing now Adam, thanks again, sometimes I feel alot of you here would have appreceate (the speakers) more I was expecting a wow, unbelivevable). I guess I did it more for my mother she taught us to share if we have more, so I did, hope she is smiling down on me..............

 

[MUDSHARK]

What goes around should come around and may fortune smile on your generosity.