Infinity Renaissance 90 questions

Melbguy + others

IMO the only real shortcoming of the emit tweeter is the narrowing dispersion at very high frequencies. This results in a rolloff of high frequencies above 10KHz at > 25 degrees off axis and a rising response - on axis. For this reason the amount of 'toe in' becomes very critical in achieving the right tonal balance which makes then Ren's more of a 'one person' speaker because the sweet spot is very narrow. I have experimented (in the past) with ribbon super tweeters (sitting on top of the cabinets) to supplement the dispersion above 10Khz but I found that it was best to cross over (via a passive network) just above 10KHz, but the additional crossover introduces time alignment complications which can take plenty of listening time to fully optimise. However I was able to acheive excellent results using Raven R1's as super tweeters with a first order crossover at 10KHz. This made the horizontal dispersion really wide and gave the treble more 'air' creating an even bigger soundstage. Unfortunately the trade off was poorer vertical beamwidth (due to the distance between the EMIT and the Ravens) and this made listener height more critical. However I did persist with this setup for some time because it worked better in my room. I'm now using Raal ribbon tweeters which sit on top of the cabinets and the EMITs are no longer connected. This avoids the interactions between tweeters but the larger distance between the EMIM and the Raals does reduce the vertical sweet spot. I will probably (ultimately) go back to using the EMITs with the Raals purely as super tweeters because the EMITs IMO are better than all of the pure ribbon tweeters I've tested in the low range (2 - 6 KHz). The Ravens in particular are very poor performers below 6KHz where they sound very thin and dynamically very lacking. They are a very over rated tweeter IMO but they do work well as super tweeters due to the 50KHz BW and performance above 10KHz is pretty good.

FWIW I'm about to embark on an upgrade of the caps in the Watkins woofer crossover. The bass is sounding a little bit spongy these days which makes me think that the caps are lossy and need replacing. I will provide feedback to this thread on the outcome of that upgrade in the hopefully not too distant future. I do have the schematic but getting the correct value caps from a reliable manufacturer might be a challenge.

Here is a link to the Ren 90 crossover schematic. I would advise downloading this while it's available. Note there is an error. The 5 ohm resistor in series with the EMIT should read 0.5R.
http://www.kalman.org/RENAISSANCE%2090%20x-over.pdf

Timpani

Thanks Timpani, am not contemplating any refurb of my crossover as mentioned at this stage, but your comments are interesting. Also, which version of the Ren 90 crossover is that, as there were obviously several revisions throughout the production run for the Rens?

Cheers

The xo changes did not seem to find their way into an updated schematic but there must have been errata's sent out to distributors. The only schematics I have been able to find have all had the same values as those in my early gen 90's. The changes I am aware of are in the EMIM LPF (2nd pole) and there were also some updated values in the woofer XO to provide a bit more punch and speed in the bass - at the expense of a little extension. None of these changes make any radical difference but the changes to the EMIM do make the response slightly flatter through the crossover region and address a 2-3dB spike at 2.3kHz. Bear in mind that the values chosen in the EMIM / EMIT crossover are mostly all 5% standard values - which are easy to obtain and result in a lower production cost so there is actually some scope for fine tuning. If you look at the crossover schematics for the IRS Sigma EMIT / EMIM XO you will not find any standard value caps or inductors - hence the higher price tag. Fortunately though the solen caps in the EMIT XO are all very HQ and ditto the EMIM with the exception of C4. This cap is somewhat critical because any capacitance modulation here will result in some audible distortion, which is why I changed it to a BG. The Sigma's address this by using a polyprop cap in parallel with a HQ electro. This is a 50% improvement but I'm sure the Epsilon uses pp throughout.
In summary, the Ren 90's are using the exact same EMIT + EMIM drivers as used in the Sigma's and nearly the same quality of crossover components - save for one cap. The main difference seems to be that the Sigma's do have fine tuned component values for a slightly more linear response - but remember that subsequent revisions of the Ren XO have largely addressed these so if you are not aware of any colourations then any modding is probably not worthwhile. FWIW I have never heard the Sigma's but it's unlikely that they would offer any significant improvements over the Ren's.

i have owned the sigma's and thought that the woofer did not make a smooth transaction into the mid bass driver, i always felt that the upper bass was lacking thus the reason i sold them, from the midrange up i thought that the sigmas sounded slightly better than the ren 90's probably because they used higher quality caps in them, i now have a pair of ren 90's and i actually like the sound of them better than the sigmas, i also have a pair of kappa 9's that i replaced all the old solen caps in the crossovers tweeter section with new solen caps and after the break in period, well let me say that the new solens sounded like crap and they are the same ones used in the ren 90, i called sonicraft and asked them which caps do they think would sound the best in my kappa 9's and they recommended the wonder dynamicaps over my preference the mondorf silver oils, the fellow i spoke with said that he would sell me either one but that i would be waisting my money if i went with the mondorfs, that the dynamicaps would match the kappa 9's much better, so i bought and installed the dynamicaps in all the crossovers tweeter sections in my kappa 9's, omg what a difference in the sound you hear everything, when i used to compare the kappa 9's to my ren 90's i always thought that the rens from about 5k to 10k sounded much better more dynamics than the kappa 9's, but not anymore, i used to like to listen to my rens but now when i compare them after having done the mod to the kappa 9's the rens sound like you have cotton balls in your ears and i just don't like to listen to them anymore, i wonder if you replaced the solen caps in the tweeters crossover section in the rens with the wonder dynamicaps how much better they will sound, has anyone tried replacing the caps in the rens crossovers tweeter section ? if so what where the results?.
greg

Hi everybody,

nice to see so many enthousiasts for Infinty's Renaissance 90.
I bought them in 1995 in black ash, mostly because of their marvellous mid range and the stage imaging. Until summer 2008 I had a Treshold Fet nine + OCM 200 (some 250 Watt /channel) to drive them. I choose this combination after having heard a couple of different things, beetween them there was also a Classé Audio (which number ?? I can't remenber).
In August last year I had at home a Audio Research Ref 3 and Jeff Rowland's Capri & monoblocs 501 (1000 watt per channel at 4 Ohm) ...

Oh my goodness, this was incredible, I discovered 13 years after having bought them how really they can sound. This was a shock (a beautifull one ;-) ) the staging became completely holografic, the musicians are just playing there in the middle of the room in front of me, I can zoom with the ears beetween the instruments, the sound never gets hard, and the stage is deep and wide.

I think these elegant beasts need a lot of power, the more they get the better they are under control and only in these conditons they can show their best.
Now I have upgraded everything in my system, I use Rowlands Capri, Monos 501 with their PC1 (a unit which makes the 501 sounds even better). Perfect and precise bass and mellow middle & high range. (I hear mostly Symphonic Music, Opera & Jazz).

At your place I would definitively try Jeff Rowlands Monos 501 , you will just wonder. Maybe you could also consider Nuforce. From this point you have then to build your system like a french dinner in a 3 stars Michelin Restaurant, choosing the right I.C. & P.C. which matches with your taste and you will have long years of pleasure ;-)

Infinity's Sigma is a little different as it is a dipole speaker, one Emit is on the back and the bass and mid speakes are bigger than Renaissance's ones. I have never heard them and would be happy if somebody could tell the differences beetween them.

Furthermore I wonder if somebody could tell which speaker in 2009 has similar sound caracteristics or is a succesfull further development of the R.90.