Another Advesnture in Lo-Fi

[Deleted member 133]

Impulse purchase: today I acquired a pair of used Sony SS-CRB5 speakers.

Here's a stock photo of them.



They're each roughly the size (volumetrically) of two Realistic Minimum 7 speakers.

They are in like-new physical condition. Once I got them home I had to give them a try so I hooked them up to a crappy-sounding 40 year old 15 w/ch Yamaha receiver (every switch and rotary control crackles like crazy) and played some discs. Besides the receiver, the setting (top of a chest freezer in a storage area of the basement) was less than ideal.



But those speakers sounded... not terrible. Not terrible enough that I moved them into my main HT. I figured I'd give them every chance to show their worth (more on that later.)



So there they are sitting on top of a pair of Koss CM/1020s, being driven by a 50 w/ch NAD 2150 power amp (not shown) off Zone 3 of an Onkyo PR-SC886.

And guess what? They sounded ok. Very solid through the midrange. Nice clean extended highs. While lacking in bass (as expected) it was still solid enough in the upper regions to keep the sound relatively balanced.

So I brought a SVS sub into play (not shown), did a quick level / balance and... quite nice sounding 2.1 system!

Why did I buy them? I want to put together a little compact system for my grandson's bedroom. He loves listening to music and I want to encourage it.

Oh and the cost? Got them at the Salvation Army's Thrift Store as they were just being put on display for... $5.99C for the pair. I figured it was a risk worth taking.

Jeff

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Wow....you suck........at spelling Advesnture

 

[PaulyT]

Wow....you suck........at spelling Advesnture

It's a Canadian spelling, they're weird that way.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

It's a Canadian spelling, they're weird that way.

We probably should build a giant wall up there.

 

[Haywood]

We probably should build a giant wall up there.

Give Trump time...

 

[Deleted member 133]

Wow....you suck........at spelling Advesnture

But I exsell at drinking.

Jeff

 

[Deleted member 133]

Stop the presses!

I just looked at my Thrift Shop receipt and...

The check-out girl gave me the senior's discount, which worked out to $0.90C off. So my real total cost was $5.09C.

Woo-hoo!

Take that to the bank and deposit it!

Jeff

 

[mcad64]

Jeff
I did something similar for my son. Put my old Marantz receiver, my old JVC turntable, a Denon sub from an HTIB, a couple of Axiom speakers and my squeezebox in his room.

What are you adding to the speakers for your grandson?
Mike

 

[Deleted member 133]

Jeff
I did something similar for my son. Put my old Marantz receiver, my old JVC turntable, a Denon sub from an HTIB, a couple of Axiom speakers and my squeezebox in his room.

What are you adding to the speakers for your grandson?
Mike

Lucky son!

I hope to start with a "small" AM/FM receiver of some sort. I'm debating whether that old Yamaha is even worth taking in to the shop. I have a nice Sherwood that would fit the bill - but it has a wonky volume control that would need to be checked out first. I don't want to buy new - and anything used will likely have unknown issues to deal with . (Better the devil you know...)

Jeff

 

[Deleted member 133]

So today I went back to the same Thrift Store and for $4.99C came away with a great pair of... Realistic Minimus 7 speakers.

I don't need them. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. But I know a great deal when I see it!

Jeff

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

So today I went back to the same Thrift Store and for $4.99C came away with a great pair of... Realistic Minimus 7 speakers.

I don't need them. I have no idea what I am going to do with them. But I know a great deal when I see it!

Jeff

I used to have those; not bad for use in the garage.

 

[Deleted member 133]

I used to have those; not bad for use in the garage.

Yeah, I've already got a pair up in the garage rafters - along with a Yamaha YST sub!

Hmmm... garage surround sound?

 

[Flint]

I used to coat the paper woofers used in the Minimus 7 with a light tacky Polypropylene to improve the midrange and replaced the components in the crossover with audio grade parts and slightly raised the crossover frequency on the tweeter to improve reliability. I also replaced the stuffing with a fully stuffed loose fiberglass batting to tighten the bass. I charge people about $50 to $75 per pair to make that system significantly better sounding and longer living. I did this enough to buy a ton of drumsticks and drumheads for my main occupation.

 

[Deleted member 133]

I used to coat the paper woofers used in the Minimus 7 with a light tacky Polypropylene to improve the midrange and replaced the components in the crossover with audio grade parts and slightly raised the crossover frequency on the tweeter to improve reliability. I also replaced the stuffing with a fully stuffed loose fiberglass batting to tighten the bass. I charge people about $50 to $75 per pair to make that system significantly better sounding and longer living. I did this enough to buy a ton of drumsticks and drumheads for my main occupation.

Thanks for that post.

The Minimus 7 is probably one of the most modified speakers out there, probably because they were so cheap to begin with, there's significant room for improvement, and the mods don't cost much.

I've never done one myself, but now that I've got a spare pair that only cost me $4.99C to start with, I think I'll look into it - as a fun little project.

There's no shortage of posts / videos out there describing any number of options.

If I do then the crossovers would certainly be the first up - with the simplest upgrade needing only a cap change.

Jeff

 

[Deleted member 133]

After today's find I'm tempted to change this thread's title from "Lo-Fi" to "Hi-Fi."

Purely by chance I decided to pull into the same Thrift Store parking lot as I was driving by. Good thing that I did.

I picked up a pair of Energy Veritas Reference V-Mini speakers - in terrific condition - for ... $10 Cdn for the pair! I knew they were worth more than that (just by picking them up and feeling their "heft") but it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I found out that they currently sell for $150 Cdn each at BestBuy.













I'll give them a listen later today.

Jeff

 

[Xgm3]

Nice find

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Flip 'em.

 

[Lone Stranger]

After today's find I'm tempted to change this thread's title from "Lo-Fi" to "Hi-Fi."

Purely by chance I decided to pull into the same Thrift Store parking lot as I was driving by. Good thing that I did.

I picked up a pair of Energy Veritas Reference V-Mini speakers - in terrific condition - for ... $10 Cdn for the pair! I knew they were worth more than that (just by picking them up and feeling their "heft") but it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I found out that they currently sell for $150 Cdn each at BestBuy.

YOU SUCK!!

 

[Deleted member 133]

Yeah, I called Gen down to have a look at them and told her how much I paid. She was hugely impressed by them - and the deal I got.

She then said "I'm going shopping!" and left the house.



This could end up costing me big time!

Jeff

 

[Deleted member 133]

I hooked them up to confirm that they are working.

They have pretty much no bass to speak of - as one might expect - but over the rest of the range they sound very nice and clean. (In fairness they were sitting way out in the open, far from surfaces that might reinforce whatever bass they were producing - so I'd expect better if they were on bookshelves or mounted to a wall, with their rear port close to the wall.) One would definitely want to run these with a subwoofer (or bass bins ). I'd probably cross them over way up at 120Hz or so - which is pretty much what I do with the comparably-sized Minimus-7s in my living room.

Speaking of which, I did run a pair of 7s beside them just now and there's no real comparison: the Veritas sound way better balanced / clean - as one would expect.

I'm giving some serious thought to having them replace either the 7s in the living room system (where I now never use the 7/sub system - preferring instead the Totem Sttafs), or more likely the 7s that currently occupy the surround positions in my family room HT. I'm finding that I'm listening to a fair amount of multichannel music (SACD & DVD-Audio) in the family room HT and I think they'd be a definite upgrade. Probably less noticeable with TV / movies.)

If not, I'll do as rammis has suggested and flip them.

Jeff