Acapella vs. Avantgarde

I'm sure you're going to love the Violons. I did some experimenting with mine over the last couple of weeks and contrary to what most people tend to think, these speakers responded very well to bi-amping with quite different amplifiers.

I already found the perfect amp to drive the midrange horn and the tweeter: Jadis SE-300B monoblocks. These single ended amps put out only 10 wpc but it's seems like it's plenty of juice for this application. I preferred the Jadis to the mighty Lamm ML 2's and several different push pull amps I tried. The Violons sound spectacular now with all the magic you would expect from well implemented 300B single ended circuit.

I am still playing with different solid state amps for the woofers, but so far I love the combination of the Jadis monos with Belles 350A Reference. The blend is almost seemless.

The Violons need a very careful setup to sound good in the bass, but once everything is right, the bass is quick and quite extended. From my experience the stock footers should be replaced with something more adequate. I had a set of the largest Sistrum Audio Points custom made to fit Acapella threads and the improvements they brought in were very dramatic: tighter, quicker bass and better focus and microdynamics. $400, but well worth it.

If you're willing to make some changes to your electronics, the Supratek Cabernet Dual is a fabulous preamp and will make bi-amping much easier to implement. It has basically two preamp circuits in one chassis (one based on 6H30 tube and the other based on 6SN7 and 101D DHT), with independent gain control and one master volume. This way your will be able to perfectly match the levels if your amps have different input sensitivity. The Supratek pre is truly amazing and it happens to be made not far from your home!

Kotjac, I know the Supratek guy. In fact I knew him when I was back in uni and when he was first starting up his company. I interviewed him and published his comments on another forum.

Yes, a Cabernet Dual is certainly on the cards. Will have to see.

Interview is here if you are interested:

http://www.stereo.net.au/forum/index.php?showtopic=2550

So, I ordered the Violons.

Good for you!

I need to think about how I am going to drive them with my own meagre SET's...

Others have given comprehensive info.
My info comes from playing with Violons (& Campanile) using Mahler 5 (Barbirolli) & 2 (Klemperer), and a few other things. So, driving Violons & the Mahlerian or Wagnerian Orchestra:
1) You know and I can confirm that reproducing the musical illusion and impact of a full Wagnerian Orch is tricky. Worse, a fully blown Mahler 8.
2) Tricky No2: you have one unit and no horn, for mid and down.
The applicability of ONE amplification unit, working seamlessly fm dc to daylight, is questionable. You need to use two channels/side. However, this is tricky to do as the xover is set very high (normally you'd need the extra horn to go down to, say, ~100Hz) which means, well engineered amplification. So, I recommend you settle for ANYthing that can produce acceptable/good lower mids to mid-bass with yr speakers (i.e. ~60Hz upwards, this applies even with the "bass enhanced model, whatever they call it -- which is the one I played with). Many diy options in Ozz... so, do try. When find a selection of products that seem to work it's all about finding the one that blends sonically w/ yr SET. Forget the 40Hz range for the moment.
3) "What would be nicer":
If you could use an active xover with adjustable slopes, phase and attenuation prior to the amps -- despite the existance of the passive.
4) Depending on yr room & set-up possibilities, you may need to incorporate separate woofs (the ubiquitous "sub" woofs).
5) Check points:
Amplification: refer to upper mids & lower-mids as they are portrayed together, i.e. the piece you're listening to contains both ranges. Forget mids for now, and forget transparency/ amount of detail, etc. Focus only on how realistically these two ranges sound.
Positioning: work on getting the mid-bass right and the bass (such as it is) should suddenly appear out of nowhere. It's a matter of "coupling" the 2 lower units; there should be an optimum positioning range for this in yr room. In some cases, it;s a matter of less than 1". You;re playing w/ wavelengths is all -- no rocket science.

TO simplify things with the Violons, I used ss class A everywhere. I also tried hi-ish powered SETs everywhere (KR). I used the same amps for all channels; I also tried a very cheap xover (simply, a Behringer, that was laying around). I used a TVC, so no active pre stage. All of this was at a dealer's where equipment was readily available.

The result CAN be good, even on Mahler 8! I didn't use subwoofers -- but could have, most usefully so. I couldn't play very loud & this is relative to room size of course: when the ppp was easily discernible, the ffff was simply compressing. The room was large (~80 m2).
Cheers

Gregm, thanks for your response. I have been in touch with Rob (rwjp), another AudioGon member. We live in the same city and I have met him. He seems to know you.

I took your comments to the Acapella dealer. He said that he has tried amplifying the Violons with the following configurations:

- bi-amped with identical valve top and bottom
- bi-amped with valve on top, SS on bottom
- bi-amped with identical SS top and bottom
- mono-amped with SS
- mono-amped with valve

He told me that the best result was always obtained by mono-amping, and has something to do with the design of the Acapella crossover. He cannot supply the schematic for me to examine myself ... although it may be possible for me to do a bit of surgery once I get the speakers to look at the crossover design. He can't even tell me what the slopes are. ALl that I know, is that they cross over at 800 and 4500Hz.

At the moment I have abandoned my bi-amping idea and will probably upgrade my amp to the Cary CAD-211AE. 110W of Class A/B push-pull. I would like some feedback on whether other members think this is a good idea, or whether I should just buy the Cary CAD-500MB's (500W SS) to put on the bottom?

Amfibius, which tube amplifiers did your dealer try? At CES Hermann Winters of Acapella mentioned biamping while we were listening to the High Violon Mk IIIs. Einstein The Final Cut Mk 60 monoblocks were used. Einstein amplifiers are used to voice their speakers.