You’d have a range of +/- 24 dB in each band which would cover the full range of the 901 Active Equalizer. The Bose 901 Series I and Series II equalizers are interchangeable as they both produce the same frequency response curves, but if you really can’t come up with one, it is possible to use two equalizers daisy-chained together. Which means, you’ll need to turn the volume up that much more and risk running into distortion. If you use an off-the-rack equalizer, you’re just not going to get the boost you need for it to sound right if you leave it zero-centered, and if you offset the curve, you’re going to lose about 8-10 dB of gain in the midrange to accommodate the full travel. I’ve never seen an equalizer which offered more than +12 dB of gain – which represents only a 15.8x increase in level at that frequency. You could look up the service manual (or some of the curves I’ve published previously) for a Bose 901 Series I/II equalizer, but you’d need to shift the curves somewhat to make it work. Obviously, this requires a pretty powerful amplifier to drive that power – +18 dB corresponds to a 63x increase in required power at that frequency. The Active Equalizer applies a pretty serious amount of emphasis to the low and high ends – as much as +18 dB to the low end. Without it, you’re left with the sardonic description, “Bose: No Highs, No Lows”, and for good reason. The 4 1/2″ drivers are very midrange sized to achieve the highs and lows, you need to apply some serious curve shaping to the incoming signal to make up for the physical limitations of those drivers.Įnter the Active Equalizer. These are full-range speakers, but are only loaded with 4 1/2″ high-excursion drivers whereas a normal speaker might have an 8″, 10″ or 12″ (or even multiple!) subwoofers, a midrange, and a tweeter. When you think about the speaker design, the equalizer makes a lot of sense. Designed to be placed in corners of rooms, the Direct/Reflecting design produces a ridiculously wide, lifelike sound field which packs more of a punch than you might think from speakers that size. About 11% of the sound is radiated from the single front-mounted speaker, and the remaining 89% of the sound is radiated from the back. There’s no crossovers or other passive components inside – just a bunch of individual speakers wired together to give the right impedance. Each contains a set of nine, 4 1/2″ full range drivers wired in series-parallel. Thanks for writing, Jim! Can you use that Kenwood graphic equalizer in place of the bose? Short answer: It’s not recommended.īose used a really interesting design concept for their 901 speakers. Can I use that instead? Is the Bose equalizer really that important? Somewhere along the way the equalizer got lost, but I have an old Kenwood equalizer. I bought a set of Bose 901 Series II speakers on base back in the ’70s, and have had them in storage for the past 20 years. I’ve got this one a few times lately, though, so I figured I’d answer this one publicly. I take questions from readers often, but they don’t always make it to a Mailbag segment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |