Posted by Lew on January 30, 2003 at 14:21:46:
In Reply to: This is how I set the bias posted by Kevin on January 30, 2003 at 13:19:37:
Your observation that your speakers charge up "in seconds" is interesting to me, as that was not the case for my M1s. When I received them they were surely fully discharged, and it took at least a whole day or maybe more before they achieved max performance as indicated by bass and treble response and a subjective sense of their efficiency (meaning that over the first day of use the sound got progressively louder with better bass and treble rendition, using the same setting of volume on my pre-amp). Perhaps if you listen daily, your speakers never reach the fully discharged state and so can recover rapidly when you turn up the bias. One alternative method that might work would be to back off the bias voltage about one-quarter turn on the potentiometer when speakers are not in use, then dial up the proper voltage for a listening session, but in my experience one should be prepared for 30 to 60 minutes of suboptimal sound, if one adopts that technique. Martin-Logan has a circuit that does this automatically on some or all of their ESLs. I always wondered how that worked, given my experience with the Sound Labs. But the M-L products typically have a much smaller diaphragm (because all but the CLS are hybrid designs) and use a lower bias voltage compared to SLs, so maybe the M-L products can bounce back from zero bias more rapidly.