Posted by Lew on January 30, 2003 at 08:56:13:
In Reply to: Re: Bias posted by Tim Thomas on January 30, 2003 at 08:26:07:
Once I wrote the above post, I realized that I may have unfairly put Duke on the hot seat. The whole story is as follows: When I first received the M1s from Duke (which were a used pair), I could not get the crackling sound at all, even with the bias turned all the way clockwise. Duke felt that maybe I had a need for the bias supply upgrade (before all the recent fuss), but I was too lazy to do anything about it, since the speakers were knocking my socks off. About two months ago, in conjunction with the arrival of very cold weather in the Washington, DC, area, I began to notice that my speakers were crackling fairly obviously from about two feet away. We have forced-air heating, and I associated the increase in crackling with the low-humidity air that comes through our heating ducts. I did back off on the bias a tiny bit, but I left the control where I could here low-level crackling from about one foot away, as per Duke's previous communication that he prefers the sound of the speaker when there is a bit of audible crackling during rest. So, Duke did not "recommend" that I set the bias voltage high enough to cause audible crackling, he just noted that he likes his own speakers that way. But you can bet your boots that I will reset the control tonight; I may even go home at lunch break to take care of it.