Optimus 40-1296 PASSIVE Others

Optimus 40-1296 PASSIVE Others 

DESCRIPTION

PASSIVE 2-WAY CROSS-OVER

USER REVIEWS

Showing 1-2 of 2  
[Jan 20, 2003]
LEE MOTEN
Casual Listener

I only need to know where can i get a remote control for my system 732 system that i have my remote is busted and i need to replace it is there some where that can buy one that will work with my system.

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
4
[Jul 07, 1999]
ROBERT G
an Audio Enthusiast

My first foray into hometheater was both very educational and budget conscious. My first AVR was the Pioneer VSX-455, front/rears the Fisher 424 (definately don't recommend buying them and can be viewed for a comical attempt at Circuit City), and for my mains the Pyramid HSP-15 (2-way with 8" woofer and 2" paper cone woofer). The problem I had with listening to this system was that the midrange was very muddled with bass lacking contol (but not boomy). Taking a suggestion from a friend, I decided to open-up the Pyramid bookshelf for a look.
The concept of cheap speaker designs were very evident in this speaker: in-line capacitor to the tweeter, 20-24 gauge wires for both drivers, no brancing, no dampening material, non-isolated drivers (tweeter vented into the same area as the woofer), the speaker cabinet made of very thin particle board (3/8"), and of course the tweeter was of paper design (sounds quite a bit like if I was describing a Bose speaker). I knew something had to change but due to my budget I couldn't replace them so I had to work with what I had. So borrowing a friend of mines speaker building book (ironically also from RS) I started to learn about basic speaker construction and what are the bare minimim requirements for good sound.

First thing to do was change the internal wires and buying 3' of mega-cables (RS version of Monster which was cheaper than Best Buy at the time) that were 12 gauge took care of that. The second thing was to mount a speaker wire terminal cup and unfortunately my budget at the time forced my to go with spring-clips. I knew I needed dampening materials and since I had two old pillows with polyester filling these were going to be sacrificed for better sound. The last and maybe the most important thing was that I needed a cross-over to clarify the sound and at the time the only place I knew that sold such an item was RS that was cheap (the book also suggested this and the local car audio places were $20+ each).

I did notice an immediate improvement in sound as all vocals immediately cleared up and bass was tighter and went lower. The strange part was that treble didn't improve at all even with the larger and higher quality capacitors in the cross-over network. This definately was worth it as this made this speaker sound better than any under $100 speaker I heard in a long while (until RS discontinued the Linaeum tweeter line-up). The other obvious thing I should have done latter was add a real tweeter (don't paper suck) but as ugly as these speaker were I knew I would update as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately I didn't know I would be in for bad streak of luck and was stuck with this speaker for 2 years.

The speakers I ended up replacing these with were the PRO-LX8s and these were moved to the rears for 6 months as I was saving for a BOSE 301s. During this time a friend of mine had even worse luck and his place was broken into and someone stole his Bose AM-10s and 301s but left his AVR (a Pioneer 606S, I guess it was easier to carry the BOSE for pawn value), and being desperate for sound I loaned him the Pyramids since I just got done picking up another pair of PRO-LX8s.

What shocked both of us was that when his insurance money came back and he purchased another set of Bose 301s (this time he went with 2 pairs 4-channels and bought the PRO-CS5 after hearing mine) and the Pyramids sounded better. We even exchanged mains and rears and that is when I lost faith in the 301s, the difference was simply amazing! How could a bottom feeder such as Pyramid make a speaker with the most minimal modification ($1.20 wire, $9.99 cross-over,$3 for polyester from a pillow, and $0.99 speaker cup) beat a $319/pair speakers when the Pyramids only cost $45/pair? To this day I don't know which of the modification made the most difference but believe this is the main thing most people can do to improve most budget speakers other than stuffing them with polyfil or cotton (they also make 3-ways which should help CVs). The only reason that these will get a 3 speaker rating is that they roll off only 6db/octave and only hander 100 watts of power and if you look on the net there are other companies offering similar for the same performance for a lower price (not including shipping). I think this is good beginner cross-over for the budget conscious as it allows 3 settings (1000/2000/4000hz from woofer to tweeter), doesn't require soldering (will have to use clips but I did use solder), and most low end speakers use the voice coil in the woofer to roll off mids/trebles and muddles vocals and this is definately better than doing nothing. But do check some of their competetors such as WWW.MCMelectronics.com and other budget speaker component replacement companies (plus you will see some of the OEM replacement parts for Bose, Magnavox, Pioneer, Aiwa, etc...)


OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
Showing 1-2 of 2  

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