Happy Thanksgiving. (Remember, the indians were here first...No I’m not indian)
So Ive got my cornwalls. 1980 horizontal pair. Heavy and solid walnut, in excellent shape for their age. Here are my thoughts on those in comparison to the outgoing b&w cm10’s, when swapped into my component chain, with no other changes. All of my listening thus far has been LP, my most favored choice format by far, especially for heavy music, as a large majority of the bands I follow, focus their recordings towards analog, and many record in true TAPE rolling studios for this purpose. I cannot stand loudness war CD mixed productions. People who think aggressive music is all about ’cranking it up’ are confused in my opinion.. Ill take quality at the sound of a whisper over loud, fatiguing, smushed, condensed bullshit. Anyway.
It took a good bit of adjustment going from the cm’s to the cornwalls. The sound is significantly different. Ill be honest, I was expecting the cornwalls to possibly be shrill, or harsh in some aspects with my solid state amps, and marantz pre. Polar opposite. FAR less shrill than the cm10’s. These really make me realize how cynical and sterile the cm10’s sounded. My friend pointed it out immediately when I let him hear them. He is a very particular guy with guitar and bass tones as we are both gear heads in that field...I listened till 3am the past 2 evenings. And i was not ’forcing’ myself, I was naturally just doing so, and the time was flying, as I was enjoying it, and not finding myself fatigued at all. The cm10’s had me hanging it up after about one side of an LP... The sound is a little bit ’muffled’ at first, but then my ears adjust, and it doesn’t seem as much... Lets keep in mind, if i upgrade the old wiring, and crossovers, I’m sure it would open things up and fix some of that, but i think once the SET gets in the path, it will change things.
The cornwalls are even somewhat ’dark’. The sound is very warm now. My concepts of maybe it being ’my room’ before, are much lessened. I can crank these and I do not feel like the bass is booming me and the treble is piercing me. The treble is warm but THERE. It is smooth and enjoyable. Midrange is nice too. Now the bass on the other hand... WONDERFUL. These 15" drivers sound SOOO good with the type of music I listen to. Ill try to explain it the best I can. Ive been playing the electric bass for near 15 years now. I have been playing the upright for about 2. I am very familiar with what bass should sound like, and what different recordings bass tones DO sound like. Maybe this sounds weird, but my records now are very distinguishable in bass tones. The cornwalls provide deep, chunky, fat, full bass. Sludgy and crusty where it when it should be, warm, and rounded when it should be. I can hear the vast different in bass tones on different albums now. These 15’s sound like I am in my basement playing my fender jazz bass through my 2x15 bass cab. It is tonally ACCURATE. The cm10’s produced: bass. Period. It didn’t SOUND like a bass guitar should. Whether the bass on the recording is boosted with overdrive, or it is natural, they did not make me feel like there was a bass cab in the room. They do ’boom’ well. They do ’bass’, FOR ME however, they did not sound like these particular band’s bass guitar sounds like through their specific rig. The bass is SUBSTANTIALLY better. Not only bc these dig deeper, but the tone is more revealing and realistic. It is not boomy or overpowered in any way.
I have my SVS PB13 ultra crossed over at 40Hz, handling only the very very low stuff, but the cornwall are taking the grunt of it and doing it beautifully.
The cm10’s sounded like speaker. The cornwalls sound....live. Much more of a ’wall of sound’, which the cm10’s could not do at all. Guitars are not harsh or shrill, as sometimes on the cm10’s they bit TOO hard.
The cornwalls seem like they could use a little more dynamics, but i think this will totally be enhanced when I put a 24w/channel huge transformer’d SET amp in the chain, and replace two so-so emotiva mono’s and a marantz pre which has tons of video processing stuff all built in etc etc., which isn’t going to help any matters. Cornwalls are known to be very dynamic so...
I believe the cornwalls being so transparent and of such high sensitivity, that I am hearing the ’warmth’ of the marantz pre, heavily coloring the sound. However, it sounds pretty nice, an once I do give it some volume the dynamics improve. These speakers are not designed to be driven with 500 watt SS mono blocks so....
To sum it up. In my current system, as it sits NOW, Cornwalls>Cm10’s... The cm10’s were a little more open and dynamic, but as whole, the cornwalls are far more inviting and listenable. Not to mention, more natural.
Mb1audio: I DO have a hum. My marantz volume goes 0-98, once I get to around 40 the hum is pretty audible. If it is still there once the 219ia is here, which I’m doubting, then I will address it/troubleshoot at that point. Ive heard two line magnetic amps running through two different types of klipsch heritage speakers in the past month, and neither had the slightest bit of hum or hiss at all. And the one pair were la scalas, which are about 5 db higher than what I have here so.. You get my point.
Things will be changing drastically once the 219ia arrives. I can only imaging that low level listening will be heavily improved, the midrange will become denser, as well as dynamic improvement. I had photos sent to me this morning of the amp being boxed up for shipment. Will follow up. I appreciate the help this far.
