Beomaster 1900 sound output

I have a Beomaster 1900 which I completely restored thanks to help on the forum, especially Martin with a capacitor kit and many follow up emails to him. All the sliders were rebuilt as well so treble and bass are functioning.

So I bought some small non-B&O speakers to put it in a bedroom. It has never sounded very dynamic with the CD or radio. I suspect the speakers because of their size are responsible but have tried it with other larger ones, my B&W Nautilus 805s and am still not sure if it is the receiver or the speakers. No distortion just sounds somewhat boxed in. Anyway what is needed to see if the output of the receiver is all it can be? Does this require an oscilloscope or something like that? Or is their an adjustment I can do to the receiver by ear?

Any thoughts will be appreciated.

John

<sarcasm>

Ooooohhhhh, another pending argument about burn-in!!!!  Yay!!!!!

</sarcasm>

<sincerity>

Good luck, John.  The BM1900 with decent speakers should sound great.  I love mine.  With the possible exception of my BC4500, my BM1900 is my favorite piece of B&O gear.

</sincerity>

Did you adjust the idle current ?

Hello Søren,

Thanks for the reply. And yes I replaced those trimmers and did an adjustment to the idle current when I first did the restoration a year ago. And I do think the receiver is "burned in" by now. I may have to open it up again and check them again if no one has a suggestion otherwise. i just hate to have to take it apart again. But I believe that Martin now has replacement sliders controls so it might be I should replaced my glued repaired ones with his.

Regards,

John

 

 

If your slide potentiometers works without problems (no tics and tacs when adjusting levels and adjusting levels properly) no need to change them. Did you check with Headphones ?

And did you change any component since you adjusted idle current a year ago ?

No component changes since the restoration. My only earphones are ear buds. It does sound brighter with the buds on however. Not sure I trust  them for judging sound quality. My only other thoght is the speakers are wired wrong. I thought i had checked that out for proper phasing. Not sure what impact on the sound would be it they were reversed.

 

John

Hi John,

With speakers wired out of phase you would notice a suck-out in the bass region when playing music.

A good test to identify speakers wired out of phase with each other is to play a mono track, e.g. a BBC Radio 4 From Our Own Correspondent podcast. The voice should sound like it's coming from dead centre of the speakers. If it sounds at all stereo, e.g. some sounds coming from left or right, then you probably have one speaker wired out of phase with the other.

Now, I'll also mention absolute phase here. Some people notice a difference whether speakers "suck" or "blow", i.e. wiring positive output from amp to negative input on speaker, for both speakers. The rising half of a sine wave signal would then cause the drivers to move INTO the cabinet rather than out. You MAY notice a difference in sound quality.

Lawrence

Thanks, Lawrence. I will check the speaker phasing when I can tommorow.

John