Mancave help


I'm considering setting up a vacant room in my house as a 2 channel mancave. I dont really have a budget, meaning ( no money). I plan on using mostly equipment I have laying around. such as My Dynaco ST70 rebuilt amp, Arcam dv27 dvd player as a cd player, torn between my Adcom gtp-450, or my Dynaco pas 3 preamp,and a old Kenwood TT. I also have a Technics se/su 9600 amp and preamp, that need to be fixed. The speakers I'm using now in my bedroom with the st 70, are a pair Advent baby II. I was in a pawn shop the other day and ran across a pair Swans Divas 5.1 for $250. not knowing anything about them, I put them on layaway just to hold them till I got some info on them. my question is, does anyone know anything about these speakers, and if so, would they make a nice addition to the set-up I'm considering using? My main set-up consist of Apogee centaurs, Emotiva USP1 pre ERC1 cd player, NAD 2600 amp, Marantz 2120 Tuner, and the Kenwood TT I'm going to move to my mancave.
ddan6815
Have never heard them, but have a gut feeling at least that
they may turn out to be something of value for you,
especially at $250. Just looking at them I can see that they
use HiVi M-series woofers, this series of drivers in this
size and as well as the 8-inchers they make, while not as
expensive as you might think, are actually surprisingly good
sounding woofers and have a very good reputation -
particularly in their x-max performance - the spec of which,
based on observing the 8-inch versions in my own rig (not
Swans), if anything seems rather conservative. Can't say how
well the Divas would match up to your ST70, but in my own
case I've found the 8-inch woofers to offer up extremely
transparent and dynamic bass.

The tweeters look like Swans has made some sort of partial
attempt at time alignment by off-setting them. Could be very
good, but they evidently did not do much more in the way of
diffraction control than to create that beveled dip on the
top of the cabinet. Expect a little diffraction there, but
probably not too serious, hopefully. It's at least possible
they have taken much of the diffraction response into
account in the xover design. If so, then placing any felt
material in that dip may cause the highs to become rolled-
off sounding and loose their sparkle. If not, the highs
will likely gain in clarity, focus and smoothness. The
silk tweeter looks like a diffraction-free design all except
for the screen grill and, since they are fabric domes
(pretty durable), you might want to consider investigating
whether or not they could be removed once your setup is
complete which should also give you clearer and more focused
highs, although the point made about the xover taking the
diffraction into account still applies to the grills, too.
However, the tweeters are isolated from the front baffle
giving them a bit more dispersion than most. If your room
size is on the moderately large side, then this will be a
good thing - a larger and more coherent soundstage. But, if
your room proves to be too small or your sidewalls are too
close to the tweeters without any absorption treatment, then
the highs may sound congested, vaguely defined or even
harsh. Experiment when in doubt, with all that. Not
technically reclined enough (and not enough info) to comment
either way on the 4th-order xover, but the graphs appear to
me to be plausible enough, anyway. All in all I'd venture to
say that they could be a right good bargain if their
condition is verifiable, although I don't have any way to
know how well cabinet resonances have been dealt with and
all that. Hope this is of some help, FWIW.
Thank you for your in depth response. As you can possibly tell Im not very technically inclined. I'm actually starting to think that maybe a vintage type speaker may also be a good option . Right now my ST70 is used with my baby advent, and I love the sound, If I could get this type sound on a larger scale, would be great. I'm also looking at some KLH VIRTUOSO 62T. Anyone familiar with those?
Ooops! My bad if I got carried away (I've done it before, Lol). Dispense with the above if you like and I'll just say that the Divas at least *LOOK* like a steal, to me anyway. As for vintage speakers, that's not really my thing so I'd be outta my element there...loosely familiar with Advent and their good reputation, but not familiar with the baby. I can recall seeing threads though about tube amps and reasonably price vintage speakers - audiocircle, audiokarma etc...possibly here if you can find them. If there's no luck in this thread for you, you may want to do a little stalking on those threads and just dive in and ask at some point. Regards
Thanks Ivan,for your needed input, and thanks to the others that made it easy for me to make a decision,based on not having to read thru several opinions of others, I made an opinion based on my own gut feeling and the little knowledge I have on speaker specs.I talked the guy at the pawn shop into giving me a couple hours to take the speakers home and try them out, with the option to return them if I didn't like them.The only problem is, they never made it to my mancave. They are still hooked up to my main system in the family room. and my Apogee Centaurs are in the closet.My wife took one look at the speakers fell in love with them. I began to listen to them playing a few of my favorite CD's and we both were in love. Need I say more?
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