Infinity Renaissance 90 questions

Hail new R90 owner. You've got yourself one of the finest speakers of its day and, dare I say, a real challenger for many current ones. At the price you paid, you certainly can't touch the R90's for 4 times today’s prices.
I have the Black Ash finish as well - the blonde oak never caught my eye. I would love to nab a pair of R90's in the rare black gloss finish though.
I've been running my R90's with my trusty Platinum+ DNA-1 since about 2004 and, while I don't host Block parties, they have been played (on occasion) quite loud - without being damaged by my 'whimpy' 185 watts/side McCormack. Having said that, when I was running them with a stock DNA-500, they really blew me away with how much more they could portray so, giving them more juice will allow you to hear them at their very best.
I have not re-wired mine but have considered it. Don't know of any place I'd trust to have it done - especially in re-doing the crossovers. The R90's are already pretty spectacular and my concern is that they would end up sounding worse. Souping up the parts without alot of time spent listening, adjusting, compensating - IMHO - will just make them unlistenable. Right now, I find these speakers constantly improve when I improve my upstream equipment so, I feel the best bang for the buck is to trust all the R&D, parts that went into these Gems and, spend your tweak dollars on bettering their input.

Enjoy your new purchase - these babies do not disappoint

Hi Jgwilson, thanks for your response. I definitely agree with your comment about how the Ren's compare to what is around today. I estimate you would have to spend atleast $8-10K US to equal them, and goodness knows what to better them, so they are a no brainer. The seller also had left over (brand new) spare High Energy Emits, Emims & Ren 90 grilles which i'm snapping up, so these really should be my speakers for life.

I think the Classe's high current, stable 235watts/4ohm drive should do a "very good" job of driving the Ren's, whilst obviously upgrading to a CA-2200 & tube pre would take them to another level, but on a budget, I feel like i'm doing really well. I agree with your comments about upstream components too; I have a very nice transport, suspended on high end iso feet & running a Nordost Silver Shadow digital cable connected to a Vimak DS-1800mk2 dac (one of the best sounding dacs ever made). And I connect my source (via the dac) fully balanced via an Audioquest Sky XLR cable. The signal then runs through Acoustic Zen Holograph 2 'Custom Shotgun' cables to the speakers. I'm also upgrading soon to a Shunyata Hydra 6 filter & high end Shunyata pc, so system synergy should be excellent. Incidentally, I recently read the Technical White Paper for the Ren's & have to agree; Infinity put an incredible amount of R&D into the x-over network & internal wiring, so i've decided i'm not going to touch it. I'm happy with my current digital source & will wait to see if Bluray Audio takes over SACD.

Cheers!

hi, just to let you know how good then ren 90's are i also have them in black ash and will never sell them they are that good, i had the irs sigmas and liked the sound of the ren 90's better, to me the sigmas woofer did not blend into the emim as nice as the ren 90, the ren 90 just has a nice warmth to the mid bass that is to die for, i also had the mts prelude and when i compared them side by side with the ren 90's there was no contest the rens won, the ren 90's are a more musical speaker and i think the preludes are made for ht, the real joke was when i played jewel live she is playing an acoustic guitar while singing, the ren's ripped an image of her so much better that you would swear she was in the room with you and the acoustic guitar was spot on, i had to laugh, on the preludes the guitar strings sounded like plastic, thats when i sold the preludes, i was running them on a pass labs x-250 power amp, adcom 750 pre, sony es cd player, i would not touch the crossover as infinity used computers to design them and spent countless hours tweaking and choosing the right parts to get a flat frequency response, if you change caps or coils i think you will alter their sound for the worse, i would leave them stock, nice pickup on your ren 90's i saw the for sale ad for the too, the guy also just sold the blond pair, enjoy your new ren 90's.
greg

Hi Okeeteekid, thanks for sharing your views and experience with your Renaissance 90's. It's great to hear you like the black ash finish as well! I have also heard many accounts of the Ren 90's not sounding boxy at all & having excellent coherancy. That is testimony too to the successful collaberation between Charlie Watkins & Infinity in developing the 10" Watkins woofer for the Rens.

I currently own Infinity Reference 60's which had twin 8" IMG bass drivers & an IMG midrange, so I can certainly appreciate the timbral accuracy and warmth the IMG drivers seem to produce; wonderful with accoustic and jazz (eg: Diana Krall). I agree with your statement about Infinity (aka Harmon)'s "hifi" offerings such as the Preludes!...Arnie Nudel must have smashed a hole in his apartment wall after he saw 25 years of his hard work turned into a flea market!

Ah you saw the ad for my black Rens! Yeah, I think that member is known to AG members here. Larry is a Doctor with his own practice & an absolutely terrific guy. He is also an Infinity nut as you would have read & owns IRS-V's, two pair of IRS-Betas, 3 pairs (now 1) of Ren 90's & a pair of Ren 80's. The pair I bought were late-manufacture & used less than a dozen times in 11 years, so are virtually mint which is unheard of for these speakers, so i'm wrapped :)

I'm anxious to see how my Classe Cap-2100 handles the demanding load of the Rens. Obviously the Cap doesn't have anything like as many watts per channel as your big Pass block, however surprisingly it has a lot more current, so on balance it should do a good job, but of course being an Audiophile - I plan on upgrading to it's bigger brother (CA-2200) & a tube preamp next year which, apart from a future upgrade of my current transport (JVC XL-Z1050), will be the final iteration of my high end system :) And yes, I am going to trust Nudel & Christie and leave the Ren's x-over well alone..

Welcome to the club! I have a pair in blonde oak. Look and sound great! I started with a 150 w/ch 8 ohms/ 300 w/ch 4 ohms integrated A308 from Musical Fidelity. It did a decent job in running the speakers but I could tell their was something missing. Then biamped using the integrated for the bass and a Rogue 80 watt per channel tube amp for the highs and mids. Good sound but light on the bass. I then moved to a Musical fidelity A308 pre-amp and A308 amplifier at 250 w/ch 8 ohms/ 450 w/ch 4 ohms. Now we're getting somewhere. The speakers bloomed ! So I figure they love power! I then got another A308 amp and biamped the system. Now at 900w/ch into 4 ohms !! WOW what a difference. !!! The speakers sang! Soundstage was huge and open, bass was tremndous ! Of course, the supporting equipment must be up to par as well as the cables. I now run the speakers between two systems. The one above and a vintage Luxman CL-35 II tube preamp and the monster Luxman M-6000 rated at minimum 300 w/ch into 8 ohms. I couldnt even guess what the 4 ohm rating would be. The mids are just beautiful ! The more high quality power you feed them, the better !! Good luck !