Nest Theater Part Two - Extending Mains & Tuning 26Feb20

The Nest theater is first and foremost a critical listening system... I'm focused on building a great 2.1 system that may or may not get augmented with a center channel with the addition of a "TV." I am not interested in surround and Dolby and all that... just the best tunes I can manage. Improving on the DRC BLHs was fun.

 

I added a HSU ULS 15 Mk II to cover the ultra low end. This is a sealed 15" sub with an integrated 2000 watt BASH amp and flexible crossover settings. I prefer sealed subs as they typically deliver tighter bass responses and the 15 Mk II is musical, not just a LFE delivery system. The sub is a boon in delivering deeper stuff than even the horns could. Listening and measuring suggested tweaking to attenuate some out of line booms created in my non-ideal subwoofer placement and integration with the horns. More on that later in equalization. See for now the great low end added.

I "stole" the very fine Russian Viawave SRT-7 supertweeters from the Blodgett theater. They help the high end of the DRC BLHs but frankly not nearly as significantly as they did when bolstering the Paradigm Research system in COS. The Fostex driver in my horns already delivered great high end to 21KHz. Still, improvement is noted especially in fast acting instruments like high frequency percussion. The SRT-7s are also very efficient and in integrating them with the BLHs I really didn't even need the variable attenuator, but it's there. I built a new supertweeter "cabinet" from the same material as the BLHs - those holders are actually further finished in showing the flat black stain I'll use throughout the system.

After integrating and adjusting the sub and supertweeter in the audio path, I went on to measure the full system and add EQ filters to JRiver. I got rid of some low end booms as well as a mid-freq shout I was experiencing. Recognize the scale of the graph makes the adjustments seem extreme but we're dealing with just a couple of dB at most here and there. All up the new system, equalized properly for the room and my speaker placement, is awesome.

So I'm pretty happy thus far...