{"id":5537,"date":"2016-05-03T16:23:51","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/?p=5537"},"modified":"2016-05-03T16:24:46","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T15:24:46","slug":"alpair-10m-ft96h-speakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/2016\/05\/03\/alpair-10m-ft96h-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpair 10M \/ FT96H speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long time since I haven’t tweaked my speakers. After more than 9 years I decided to change the drivers after falling in love with the Alpair 10M<\/a>\u00a0from Mark Audio.\u00a0I listened to my friend Andy’s system (4P1L PSE driving the Alpairs) and decided to get hold of them.<\/p>\n

A simple upgrade<\/h1>\n

As I don’t have much time left for DIY audio these days, I needed a simple solution. I couldn’t build a new set of speakers despite the love I have for some horn-type designs. Bringing new speakers was out of the question, so I had to modify my existing boxes to replace the FE167E<\/a>. Sadly they didn’t fit straight on, so my friend Tony made me a pair of adapter boards to fit these. Made of MDF I painted them in grey:<\/p>\n

\"Altair<\/a>
Altair 10M Gen3 with FT96H horn tweeter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The build process took less than I expected. When I tested I noticed the treble to be higher than normal. I knew that some tweaking of the crossover was needed, in particular the level of the FT96H horn tweeter:<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a>
First test – no modification to crossover network<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed there was a need to attenuate the horn tweeter. I added an 8\u03a9 wirewound L-PAD attenuator as shown below:<\/p>\n

\"Crossover<\/a>
Crossover board (below) with attenuator (top)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Calibration was very easy to do using REWL. A few sweeps were required to get the level about right. The remaining tweaking will be done through listening:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_2934\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The results are good. Very flat response between 50 Hz up to 20kHz and above. The Alpair has a higher Fo=38Hz than my previous FE167E. \u00a0I have a subwoofer so need to adjust the LF crossover to provide a better response below 50Hz:
\n\"alpair<\/a><\/p>\n

\"alpair<\/p>\n

Now, need to listen to these drivers. Allow them to settle in properly and provide some listening impressions. So far so good, the detail is impressive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long time since I haven’t tweaked my speakers. After more than 9 years I decided to change the drivers after falling in love with the Alpair 10M\u00a0from Mark Audio.\u00a0I listened to my friend Andy’s system (4P1L PSE driving the Alpairs) and decided to get hold of them. A simple upgrade As I … Continue reading “Alpair 10M \/ FT96H speakers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[706,154,698,5],"tags":[905,377,904,699],"class_list":["post-5537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lme49830","category-output-stage","category-speakers","category-valves","tag-alpair-10m-driver","tag-fe167e","tag-ft-96h","tag-speakers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2r2tK-1rj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5537"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5546,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5537\/revisions\/5546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bartola.co.uk\/valves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}