Unisound AU265 impressions thread.

[Knuckledragger]

A thread for discussing the "Unisound Golden Series Home Theater AU265-R Speakers." A number of head-casers got these on sale @ ThingFling, and a number more were frustrated when they tried to order them from the same and got an error.

I finally got mine today, after FedEx utterly fucked things up failed at delivering them three times in a row. It was a bleeding odyssey for me to get them. The FedEx ground location is on the airport industrial park off Westover AFB in Chicopee, MA (an armpit if there ever was one). The drive ended up taking three times as long as it should have as I tooled around looking for an unmarked street.

I haven't so much as taken the speakers out of their boxes yet. When I finally do, I'm going to send white noise through them using one of my spare receivers. It's going to be quite a while before I've got them burned in and positioned, nevermind modded in any fashion. I'm sure there's a few head-casers out there who got in on this deal who will have them up and running (and modded) well before I do.

[Nebby]

Due to the fact that the larger inductor in both of mine were snapped off the XO, I never listened to mine stock and went straight to modding it to the zaph v1 XO. Wish I had my room measuring setup with me to see how the response looks, but so far it sounds good. Factoring the price, it sounds amazingly good

Fedex also nearly failed at delivering them three times in row for me; it was a direct signature required and I was busy at work the first two times. Luckily enough their third attempt was on a Saturday.

[Knuckledragger]

I just finished wrestling the Unisounds out of their boxes and upstairs to my housemate's old room. They now have white noise from an untuned FM receiver blaring through them. I did a trick I read about in an audio magazine 20 or so years ago where I wired one of the speakers out of phase and pointed them at each other to cut down on the noise. This technique gets rid of the bass part of the white noise, but that just makes the upper scope seem louder. I shut the door and it's not too bad. It's a good thing I live alone now.

Has anyone ever done the out-of-phase trick before? Does it somehow impact the burn-in process?

[swt61]

Has anyone ever done the out-of-phase trick before?

Probably all of us old timers, as this was a common practice in the day. We called it breaking in the speakers then, as the term 'burn in' was not yet coined to my knowledge.

Does it somehow impact the burn-in process?

An out of phase driver still pistons and creates noise. I hate to be the one to tell the Emperor that he's naked, but this burn in stuff is getting out of hand. The speakers will break in nicely with your current technique.

[Knuckledragger]

*chuckle* I am not particularly OCD about burn-in/break/what-have-you, but it is true that an out-of-phase speaker seems to produce a hell of a lot less bass than an in-phase one. It seems at least vaguely probable than the bass drivers of a speaker connected out of phase might not move nearly as much as an in-phase one. Maybe I'll switch the phases on the speakers halfway through this process. If I remember.

Now, let me tell you about how much my K701s have changed after a couple hundred (thousand) hours of break-in.

[cetoole]

The bass is less because the bass is canceling between the in and out of phase speakers.

[Knuckledragger]

I'm speaking about running one cabinet at a time. Once I had this speakers wired up to a Marantz receiver (which is as old as I am) I turned the balance knob (dial, actually) from L to R and the in-phase speaker sounded a lot more bassy to me. When I pointed the speakers at each other and turned them both on, the bass frequencies disappeared nearly completely, of course.

[Nebby]

I'm burning in my speakers by listening to them (not right this moment though, it'd be tough to lug them to work)

[Knuckledragger]

there is a demon living in your room. if you want the bass back, you'll need an old priest and a young priest. and an 18 AWG adapter.

[mypasswordis]

18AWG? Do they shrivel with age?

[Knuckledragger]

Thought for the night: It is never a good idea to decide to move around Yamaha NS-1000s at 1AM after one has been drinking.

That said, the Unisounds are now in position. Tonight's critical listening will consist of "do they work?"

[Knuckledragger]

A pair of UP1203s just arrived at my doorstep. Unlike with the last pair of Unisounds I ordered from ThingFling, FedEx managed to arrive when I was home and awake. That's pretty quick given that I ordered then on Wednesday. Initial impressions are: Build quality is good, but below the AU265s. Finish is nowhere near as good. Apparently the two 1203s are different revisions. One has binding posts the same as the AU265s, while the other has bigger, heavier (and TBH, more ungainly) all metal ones. Right now I am listening to them with the following setup: iTunes/laptop -> Pico DAC -> Rotel HT pre -> Rotel 125WPC amp. Not the most high falutin' sound system in the house, but it sounds pretty good to my tin ears. I have not burned in the speakers at all. I have a house guest at the moment, and he's staying in the room where I burn in speakers. I have the feeling he might object to speakers blaring white noise for the next four days. Maybe later I will lug the 1203s upstairs and plug them into my Outlaw RR2150.

[Knuckledragger]

Last night I wired up my AU265s as fronts (where they have been for a few months now) and the UP1203s as surrounds. I rented the Criterion edition of The Rock. I'm not going to say it's a good movie, because it isn't. It is, however, an excellent version of a loud film that throws noises around all 5 surround channels. As a bonus, the Creterion disk has DTS soundtrack which sounds significantly better than the Dolby Digital version.

Using 265s as fronts and 1203s as mains presents a couple problems. First, the 265s are 4 ohms and the 1203s are 8. This meant that the fronts were significantly louder than the rears, and tended to drown them out. I turned up the surround channels by a 7 or so dB on my pre/processor, but only did that after watching The Rock. I've got Tim Burton's 9 out as well, and I'm going to watch that with the channels adjusted. I should add that my center channel is also 8 ohms, but it didn't seem to be overpowered by the 265s at all. Another issue is that the 1203s have 12" woofers, and go much lower than the 265s. In spite of the difference in levels, I did notice a lot more bass coming from the back of the room. I suspect I can mitigate this with a subwoofer purchase.

[Salt Peanuts]

.....I suspect I can mitigate this with a subwoofer purchase.

[Knuckledragger]

^^ Nice, but I was thinking about one (or TWO) of these.

The message you have entered contains gratuitously oversized images. WTF, dude?

[Dusty Chalk]

There's something wonderful about a sub that looks like a water heater in your listening area.

[cetoole]

I finally got the v2 version of the Zaph mod implemented and it sounds very good.

[MexicanDragon]

On 6/27/2010 at 9:16 PM, Dusty Chalk said:

There's something wonderful about a sub that looks like a water heater in your listening area.

 

8 hours ago, cetoole said:

I finally got the v2 version of the Zaph mod implemented and it sounds very good.

So I ran the numbers, and due to your time zone, it looks like you bumped a thread from the grave 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days after it was last utilized.

That's fantastic.

**BRENT**

[Voltron]

That's satanic.

[MexicanDragon]

2 minutes ago, Voltron said:

That's satanic.

Fantastic, satanic... basically interchangeable.

**BRENT**

[Dusty Chalk]

Unholy carp!