Blumenstein Ultra Fi

Clark,

You will probably be glad to hear The Modern Lovers sound pretty darn good after just 14 hours of break-in on Orca pair #425 over here in Malta. :)


Well he was only 5'3"
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York


The island never sounded this good...
 
Jim R. said:
Hi Teran,

Bottlehead or Blumenstein bases both are universal for a given plate size.  I've got a foreplay, eros, and s.e.x. 2.1 top plate each in blumenstein bases.

Actually, Jim, we do a different orientation for the SEX/eros/foreplay/reduction 8*10 and the paramour/paramount 8*10 - the screws are placed on the "sides" when the tubes are towards  the front.  So in the case of the paramour bases, the front is the long end, so the screws go into the short ends.

I'll toss up a photo here when I get a chance
 
Hi Molly,

Oh, that's interesting -- didn't know that.  I guess it's a matter of whether you'd rather see the screw holes or the little squares from the saw kerfs.  I myself think I like the look of some walnut rounded top wood plugs in the screw holes., but it's great that you let people choose.  Maybe describe the difference styles by where the screwo holes are?

BTW, it looks like a 5/16" plug fits nicely.

-- Jim
 
Clark,

For which impedance is your S.E.X. wired with the Orcas? Jim suggested using 4 or 8 ohm, but I was wondering what you guys were using? And what is the reason for having exactly that value?

Thanks!
 
Hi Herman!

Our SEX 2.1 and 2.0 are wired for 8 ohms.  Ive not tried the impedance switches yet as ive got my transformers hard wired with bjc to the binding posts which i thought would make a tiny difference for me in terms of sonics (removed headphone jack wiring).  Thats the only modification ive made to the sex amp - It did make a tiny itty bitty difference, but probably not worth the hassle imo.  The bone stock sex amp is great.

The driver in the Orca is an 8 ohm voice coil, so its best to try it on the 8 ohm transformer tap first.  As jim mentioned, the 4 ohm tap may work as well so you can try that also.

Cheers,

Clark
 
We just put up a poll about our RnD on our Facebook page - feel free to weigh in!

https://www.facebook.com/BlumenUltraFi
 
I don'tt hve a facebook account so I apparently can't vote, but I'll choose number 1.

Bring back the Nagas :-)

-- Jim
 
Hi Molly,

I just voted but felt the need to add a comment since, as with surveys, it's all in how the question is phrased and in this case found myself waffling when trying to select one of the given options.

-Randy
 
Hi all,

We have worked really hard to get our backlog down, and finally, we are here.  Right around a month for most anything ordered.  We are excited about this accomplishment - and are setting our sights high for the rest of this year. 

We've gotten in some big system orders the past few weeks and are currently moving them steadily through the shop.

We also have several pairs of Orcas, in both Natural and Caramelized bamboo that will be coming in stock early next week.  This is the first time this has happened in over two years!  Holy cow!  Once they are listed as "in stock" means that they ship in ~a week instead of in ~3-4. 

We still have a B-Stock pair of the lighter caramelized Orcas on stands listed on our site...- they are  nicely broken in by now having been hooked up to FM for several months before we even listed them.

http://blumensteinaudio.com/sale-items/caramelized-orcas-floor-stands

That's $250 off!

Well, that's it for now.



P.S. - Jim, btw, it would be really tough to bring the Naga back seeing as we werent charging enough for them and are now working on developing a line array and some bigger FR projects - that will be at the price points the Naga's should have been at...  I really do love your speakers though - the best Naga system I've heard to date!

Randy, regardless of what we release in the coming year, nothing touches the beautiful balance of price/performance that the Orca line strikes, and we still expect the Orcas to be the core of the business for quite some time to come.  We just love building and listening to them.  Our daily drivers.
 
Hi Greg,

Its funny you should ask, as we goofed on our inventorying last week and had to send off our last set of SPA 250's to a customer until we get more in the mail this week. 

I did have a few people (old and new to our speakers) come by to listen in the mean time with the SA100's we had lying around and played them with single and double subs and I did find myself mentally comparing notes on the two sub amps.

There are a few differences in the sound, however the gain and frequency settings are almost identical between the two amps.

- 9 o clock for the gain
- 10:20-10:30 for the frequency

This is the case whether you are using single or double subwoofer setups. These settings are definitely negotiable - I've got a setup in our guest bedroom at home which is a heavily carpeted room and that sub amp needs a solid bump on the gain knob to sound right in the mix.

Now, while the two amps have almost the same measurable bass levels on my RTA when they are given the same settings, subjectively I feel like the 250's have more headroom which results in them being harder to localize in the overall mix.  It feels weird to admit that 150 more watts to the bass speakers results in ANY discernible difference considering that we are still using just 10 watts on the full rangers.  But - considering that bass power consumption goes up exponentially as we drive down in the octaves, and we are mating conservatively rated class A+ tube power with typically optimistically rated class AB solid state... then there you go.

One other difference is that the SPA250's do not have a turn on "thump" like the SA100's.  This was more for an annoyance factor than anything.  For apartment dwellers already concerned about bass travelling I don't want to give any more unnecessary "door slams" every time they turn on their system. Though this is avoidable if you just manually switch the amps off with their power switches first.

One other "convenience" reason is that the SPA 250 is international voltage compatible, whereas the SA100 is not. 

The crossover slope is a bit different as well. The SA100's have a 12db/oct slope, whereas the SPA250's have a 24db/oct slope.  This seems to result in slightly fewer upper bass frequency cancellations between the Orcas and Subs, though this has proven very difficult to measure. 

Now - the original reason that I opted for the SPA250's was when I started measuring the roll off characteristic of the Orca fullrangers themselves when used with a pairs of subs, and I found that, once broken in, the Orcas themselves were steeper than I had previously realized - hovering around ~24db/oct high pass. 

So the 24db low pass and ~24db high pass creates a matching roll off character for the speakers - usually a good characteristic for a formalized 2-way system to have.

The thing is, though, that the single sub setups are a lot less sensitive to the SA100 vs. SPA250, actually.  I'd officially call it a toss up between the two sub amp models if you are using a single sub.  But for the double subs, there is a sonic advantage to the SPA250's because of the crossover slope.

Along with the Y-cables, which do away with one more mechanical connection between the amps and speakers, all of this has resulted in a really nice uptick in the overall quality of bass to our systems these days. 

If folks are interested in getting the 250's and Y-cables, by all means do so.  It is a pretty modest, yet solid upgrade.  (And you don't have to ship your whole system back to do so).

Now - one "free" tweak I wanted to make everyone aware of is that the 400hrs+ on your drivers that Jim Rebman suggested over a year ago does do something tangible. 

Yesterday I pulled one of the "shop pair" of Orcas that have been played hard every day for ~6 months overcoming tool noise and dishing out Jimi Hendricks, Dub Reggae, and the like.  I hooked them up to our big rig upstairs, and holy cow do they sound nice!  These are bona fide fatigue-free speakers for long listening sessions.  The difference between the ~10hr to ~50hr short term broken in drivers we regularly ship to customers and 1000 hour long term broken in ones like these (same exact cabinets) is just shocking.  Now - maybe the BeePree + Paramounts might be helping to illuminate this difference in a way I haven't heard yet... but that's a whole 'nother story for a different thread.

Cheers,

Clark
 
Thanks Clark,
Couldn't ask for a more complete answer.

Are the Y-cables different than the stacking bananas that i have?
 
I just got my Orcas and can't believe how small the drivers are. The finish is fantastic.

I've got them hooked up without the subs right now. They sure do put out a lot of sound for their size and only 3.5 watts. I can only imagine how they will sound once they have 400 hours on them.
 
BNAL said:
I just got my Orcas and can't believe how small the drivers are. The finish is fantastic.

I've got them hooked up without the subs right now. They sure do put out a lot of sound for their size and only 3.5 watts. I can only imagine how they will sound once they have 400 hours on them.

Brad - great to hear!  Yeah, if we made the photography more realistically portray how friggin tiny the drivers really are I don't think we'd sell any of them  ;) visual perception of value and all that BS. 

But acoustically speaking, shrinking the point source down to a small point really helps facilitate the clarity of the upper band and the "height" effect in terms of dynamics.  Also, small walls are inherently stiffer and more easily braceable to the point that you have a high enough strength to weight ratio without getting into the "excess" game that seems to captivate the majority of the high end audio scene. 

Your pair already had a few solid days on them, btw.  I was running them in an 8 strong line array mostly listening to my recently completed NEU! collection (as of record store day last month).  Recently, I've been trying to put significantly more hours on them before we ship them out to folks because we've found that those first impressions are important - people need to realize that they just bought the apex predator of the oceans... not some stupid little stuffed shamu toy. 

I still enjoy hearing them change in sound from miniature to green to gold to grand over time.  Its really exciting to hear them finally open up one day and then realize - "holy crap! this is NIIIIICE!"

pdxgrampa said:
Clark:
Found the pic on the Facebook page, the cables are different.

Greg, indeed they are.  The stackable bananas you have are still a pretty decent option - the y-cables are only ~3-5% better sounding.  Not a huge change there, but as it goes in audio, you could probably spend $80 in worse ways....  the sonic difference shows up in the upper treble and lowest bass being a bit more open.  How did your stands end up turning out btw?

-Clark
 
Clark,

Not sure what your talking about? Aren't these speakers better?

New-Bitmap-Image.bmp


And the best part is if you can't afford them you can f'n finance them.
 
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