Definitive Owners Thread - Page 9

I listened to some of the definitive speakers in Best Buy/Magnolia as well as Ovation Audio and thought they sounded pretty good. I may upgrade my speakers later this year. Since I'm already set in the subs area I'd probably be looking at the BP Towers w/o the sub and the same for the center and rear channels.

Has anyone compared the Definitive to the Polk RTi series? I'm wondering how much of an upgrade they would be and if it would be worth it.

Also, can you expect any kind of discounts on Definitive Speakers?

Where do you live? If you are in my territory (NY Metro), I can help you.
Adam

For a long time now, I have been crossing my BP10b's over to an Athena AS-P400 sub at 80hz and thought it sounded good. As an experiment, I tried setting the speakers to "large", sending the LFE to them, and turning the sub off. I will never look back. Wow, what a difference in depth and clarity! The BP's need no help from a sub: that 20hz extension is the real deal, and flawlessly integrated with the other frequencies.

Bob
thanks for the reply, just wondering if this would be a quality sound for the money or if I should choose other components and which?

ADZ, I am on the central coast of CA. Thanks
Nelson

Hey Sharpie and others - Thanks for the reply! Forgive... my bad for the BOSE/DT comparison. I don't see Bose really pushing their $1200/pair Bose 901 series 6's anymore but they are at the outlets(mine are for sale)... but their rear firing drivers do give that Bigger soundstage. I Love DT's because of that AND because of the REAL (instead of equalized) highs AND I can "see" where the music is. I Love it you guys are defending OUR speaker. I got my first 901's when 18... ('77!) and it has taken me a while to grow up ... that is why I ask your help! So I all DT except for the fronts now and just wondering if the BP10b's w/ SC1 sub will make me as happy as a pair 7002's. I wanna be the Maxell Man, you know sitting in the chair...

i see that all my speakers have the lfe out. i assume the only way to hook this up is using a splitter from the lfe on the receiver. im my case i have 7002s 2300 center and a supercube I, any opinions on whether its worth even trying? theres going to be alot of splits so im concered about losing quality or bass output.


brandon C
lovin my 7.1 def tech ht !
def tech 7002
def tech 2300
def tech super cubeI
def tech bp2x
pioneer eltie74txvi
panamax m5300
sony 34hs420

I'm the very happy new owner of a Definitive ProCinema 60 set. I guess this is proof you can get good, small, and (relatively) cheap! I don't consider myself an audiophile, but I am picky about music and my old Panasonic HTiB was holding it hostage.

My budget for speakers, sub and receiver was <$1000. Initially, I was looking at the Athena Micras. I recommended them to a friend with a $500 budget, and he loves 'em, but after some listening I thought they sounded a little too thin for music. I considered the Infinity TSS-750, but they have worse numbers than the Micras, and certainly didn't sound any better. Then I listened to the '60s and took them home (along with an Onkyo 503.)

Those little sats sound smooth and solid even without the sub, and with the sub picking up at 100hz there's no mid-bass dip at all. The sub is extremely tight and deep for its small size, and I don't even have it corner-loaded. I'vd had half-decent towers on my bedroom stereo forever, but the DefTechs are so detailed I'm hearing things I never knew were there.

I do have one question about the sats: The DefTech manual recommends you check the system for shipping damage, so I popped the grilles. One of the sats has what looks like an oil stain. It emerges from the rim of the tweeter dome and runs down next to the driver. With the grille on, of course, you can't see a thing. There also appear to be some very tiny drops of some kind of oil on the tweeter dome. It's not ferrofluid: that stuff is a dark, opaque gray and this substance is perfectly clear. It could be mineral oil that leached out of the ferrofluid. In any case, the tweeter seems to be fine and that speaker sounds the exact same as the other three. Has anyone ever seen this kind of thing before?

Have you touched it? Does it feel oily or hard? I ask because it may be glue. It is not unusual for excess glue to end up on a speaker element, and it doesn't hurt anything.
Glad you are enjoying your setup. Def Tech makes nice speakers, even at the low end of their price range.

After discovering that one of my Infinity SM120's has blown a woofer, I have decided it is time to upgrade to DT in my home theater. My room is an odd shape, as you can see from the picture room layout . It has an L-shape. The front of the room is about 11ft wide, with a 92" inch screen centered on the wall. The lenght of the room is about 20 ft. The "T" portion is off to the side, and another 11 ft.

I have been debating over whether to purchase the 7002 or if 7004 would be a better choice for this small area. I can place the speakers 12 inches off the front wall, but will only have about 6 inches of side wall air space. Is that too close to the side wall for the built in subs?

If I go with the 7004, then I would consider getting the larger center perhaps the 2500) and the bpx surrounds for side and rear. I would want to mount the surrounds directly on the walls both side and rear. Will I need some sort of speaker mount for the surrounds or can they be mounted directly to the wall in some other manner? Should I use the same model for the rear as the side surrounds, or is there an advantage to having a different model (like the bp2x)?



I have a pair of Pro200TL subs already, but one of them is not working (won't power up). I am thinking of placing the working sub in the rear, and not getting the other one repaired as it is out of warrenty. My amp is the HK635.

Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Khellandros,
Thanks for the advice. I made the mistake of listening to the 7002's at Magnolia, otherwise it would have been an easy choice to pick the 7004's.
I think I will take your advice, have my SM120's refoamed, and then save a few more months for the 7002's.

As for the sub, I checked the fuse, but I think it is something more serious. This is the second time I have had problems. The first time I had one replaced under warranty, but I don't remember if it is the same one, or if it is the original that has blown this time. It was about 4 yrs ago.

Hey fellow DT owners I decided today to spike my 7002's and man am I crazy or did it make a huge difference? Any body else find this to be the case? I believe it gave the 7002's a better sound stage and better imaging. J.H.

My system consists of a pair of original BP20's and a CLR1000 up front, and a pair of original BP10's serving surround duty. The BP10's served as my main left and right front speakers up until about a year ago, when I found a deal on a pair of used BP20's that I couldn't pass up, at which time I moved the BP10's to the rear, and ditched my old little BP2 surrounds, which I never liked.

I bought the BP10's first, way back in '93, and that's where my story starts. I auditioned the BP10's, and really liked what I heard, but I had a couple questions about the design, so I called Definitive Technology, and Sandy Gross himself answered the phone. That's when I got the distinct feeling I was dealing with a man and a company that really cared about speakers and audio enthusiasts. About 7 years after I bought the BP10's, I started hearing a raspy sound on strong bass passages, and upon inspecting the drivers, I discovered that one of the woofers was partially separated from the foam surround. I told my dealer about the problem, and he told me that the original BP10's had a glue bonding defect that led to the separation problem. Although the speakers were now out of warranty by a couple years, he talked to Definitive Technology, and they agreed to replace the front pair of woofers in my BP10's, free of charge, which I thought was mighty stand up of them. Now just a few months ago, I started noticing the same raspy sound, and up inspection found that one of the rear woofers (still original drivers) had separated. My dealer told me I was out of luck this time, since the speakers were so old, so I e-mailed Definitive Tech directly, told them how old my speakers were, where I bought them, and that one of the original drivers had separated, and without the slightest hesitation they said ship the driver to them, and if it they deemed the problem was due to the glue bonding problem, they would replace the driver free of charge, even though the speaker was now 8 years out of warranty. I asked if they would replace the rear woofers in both the BP10's, so that I maintained matched drivers across the back, and they said no problem. So last week I finally got a chance to remove the drivers, at which point I noticed that the other driver had also separated. I packaged them up and sent them down to Def Tech in Maryland. Then last night, not more than 5 days later, Fed Ex dropped off a package from Def Tech which contained two new BP10 woofers. They received my drivers, and same day Fed Ex'd replacements to me, free of charge, on 13 year old speakers. Now THAT's a stand up company!

Dave

Not an owner yet, but the BP7002s or 7004s, CLR 2500 are top on the list right now. (And BPX or BP2X for surround and rears) and I'll probably get these in the next few weeks.

But, I'm a complete neophyte with all of this. I know what I like when I hear it, but I get completely lost with the technical details. So, few (probably stupid) questions.

They will be finished framing my theater next week (13ft x 22ft) and I need to give them instructions on pulling wire for the speakers. The sales-drone kept mentioning that these tower speakers (as well as the center) can be 'bi-wired' or 'tri-wired'. From reading this forum end-to-end, I know this means that I can either send 1 speaker wire to the speaker and let it figure out the bass/high, or I can run multiple wires and do the sub-woofer part separately, right? At the moment, we aren't adding a separate subwoofer -- although we'll wire for one, regardless.

Can someone explain how this works? While the walls are open, I want to pull all the speaker wire that I might need, so do I need to run 2 wires to each of the front locations? Is the LTE wire a different kind of wire? (Like I said, I'm an AV idiot). Do I need a specific functionality in my receiever (not picked yet - any suggestions?) to handle this?

Can the rear surround speakers be ceiling mounted if the l/r surround are wall-mounted? The room is very long, and to keep the speakers relatively equidistance from the main seating, they can't be mounted on the back walls -- or is the extra distance ok and I should just adjust the sound field?

Sorry for all the questions -- I appreciate any help!

I tried bi wiring my dt mains and it didnt make a noticible difference to me. Just use good 12ga or better wire to the fronts. 14-16 ga should be fine for the rear/sides. The rears should be mounted to reflect sound from their rear drivers to get the bi polar effect

I have made an interesting discovery. After much experimentation, I have found that I like the BP8b's better than the BP10b's for 2-channel music (at least in my particular room.) This flies in the face of my usual philosophy, which is to always buy as high up in any particular product line as I can afford. The only explanation I can think of is that the smaller mid/bass drivers provide faster transient response.
(Meanwhile, I am getting good use out of the 10's in my HT room, where they sound awesome and don't need a sub.)

I have to say for speakers this is a pretty bad philosophy. I auditioned the DefTech StudioMonitor 350s and 450s. I could easily have afforded speakers 5x more expensive than either, and I chose the 350s, I just thought they sounded airier, more detailed and had better highs. No knocking the 450s, they didn't sound as accurate to me as the 350s.

Money != quality in speakers, like it can in many other products.

It comes as no surprise that a speaker can sound better than a more expensive one if they are from different manufacturers, or even from different product lines by the same manufacturer. What surprises me is that the BP8 sounds better to me than its larger, more expensive sibling within the same product line.

Yeah, well I guess then it should be even more surprising that the DefTech 350 sounds better (in my opinion) than the 450.

I wonder if that is just dumb luck...

Hi, Def Tech Heads. Does anyone have experience with a total on wall Mythos system?
model two, three or eight with Gems for surround? I was wondering about wall effects interfering with imaging, sound stage or maybe making them sound muddy or boxy. Anyone have experience with this? Because of room design, I need an on wall system.
I also like to listen to music. Thanks, JP

I agree with that theory. The odd thing is that the room in which the BP10's ended up is smaller than the one in which I am using the BP8's.

Well, I have the patience of a bi-polar humming bird on crank so I ordered a trio of eights for L/Rand C and a pair of Gems for surrounds. Have a sunfire True sub already. I got the eights specifically because of the larger drivers, I wanted a full bodied sound from larger drivers. Could be a mistake. Possibly smaller drivers crossed over higher to the sub would mitigae wall effects. I will find out. I'll experiment cutting the woofer over higher if I have problems. I also will experiment with decoupling them from the wall with bracket extensions if needed. Small things can make a huge difference.
I mounted a pair of class C Stereophile rated PSB Image 2s (One of the great speaker bargains on the planet)on wall brackers too close to the wall in my workshop and it just killed them. I went to a ceiling mount with the woofer farther from the wall and they turned into their old wonderful selves again. Lesson: Don't put ported speakers close to a wall, Def Tech is a sealed box with internal compansating construction features so they should do much better. I hope, I ope, I hope...................

I haven't heard the Mythos speakers, but I know they are designed specifically for wall-mounting. They have also gotten great reviews. Good luck, hope you love them!

Thanks for the reinforcement. I think the mythos will be fine. I bought a Yamaha RX-V659 to drive them and have a Sunfire True Jr. Sub for WAF (Wife acceptance factor=small sub) Right now the receiver is burning in, set up in my workshop, with a small pair of Role Kayak monitors hooked to it and the Jr sub woofing along. I am listening to CDs played on a NAD 542 hooked to it by a Music Metre Cable. The system sounds much better than one would reasonably exect. Thoroughly enjoyable. Very musical. Toe taping good.
I will break in the Mythos on good stands in the workshop to get an idea of their nature away from walls and then see how or if it changes on wall. When the whole system is paper trained, I'll bring indoors and enjoy. Should be interesting.