Cheers Kelv for the mention. Good to discuss these with you. Never been a huge fan of the 33. Difficult to set up right compared to some of the other Dittons.
I recently bought a perfect pair of Ditton 33 after giving my friend my old pair. I tried probably 10 pairs of new speakers the past few years. Nothing compared to how music is pure fun coming from a sealed box design. The bass is, for me, amazing. A bass guitar you can follow the exact notes..no boom or smearing. I do have a sub filling in the very bottom under 45hz. I prefer an energetic and engaging sound and these deliver!
I bought a pair of 25s back in 1973 and was really happy with them until I suddenly had a lot of money (an inheritance) about 8 years ago; I decided to sell them on Gumtree. To replace them I bought a pair of Tannoy XT8Fs which perform magnificently. The Tannoys have a remarkable HF reproduction but the Ditton 25s had a much better bass, going down to 20 hz. In many ways I still miss them, but times change. Thank you for an interesting video.
I had the pleasure of listening to a friends dad’s 66’s and remember her playing ‘time to say goodbye’, by Andrea Bocelli . I think she was trying to tell me something 🤣. I closed my eyes and omg the Gods of sound had spoken and floating ballerina angels seemed to appear. I was struggling to keep up with this home experience. But suffice to say it was an experience that I will always remember. Clarity, dynamics and tonality all on point. In this case you really do get what you pay for guys. 🔇🔉
Wadding - I recently replaced old standard foam wadding (standard yellow sponge material) in a pair of B&W DM22's with "memory-foam" from an old memory-foam topper-matress I had discarded...the memory-foam is much denser than the standard original foam and hence i needed less foam in the actual speaker. I also recapped speakers - the speakers now sound much better than they used to.
My Celestion Ditton 33's are driven by the Sansui AU 317 or my Rega Brio. Plenty of bass from these speakers. As you said before, it may have to do with my room.
Another well thought out review, and i totally agree that a well enginered three way sounds more revealing in general, also the issue with cabinet damping is a intresting point, but room acoustics i am sure all play a part...when i was a lot younger "Vibrating boxes" really put a smile on your face...but i digress, could we do a little quiz called "name the drive units" on those speakers ..ill go first.. is that a Kef based unit on the monitor audio and the tweeter you really liked a Son Audax HD 100...cheers Kelvin.good work as always.
Generally a reflex enclosure should only be lined, but in sealed enclosure can be filled. (to an extent) This slows down the air speed in the box to make the driver 'see' a larger enclosure therefore lowering the system resonant freq. But as you say, if its too dense and too tightly packed in will have the opposite effect. Also, I have used Solen 'Fast' caps and find they are brilliant value for money. I'd never use an electrolytic cap in a crossover. Like you were told, the inline caps in series with the higher freq drivers are the most important though. Love the Vids as usual. Keep them coming.
You are the only one here reviewing vintage stuff as if it came out today. Please keep up!! I found "Spinning Away" by Brian Eno and John Cale to be a good track for testing audio... give it a chance. It makes my Monitor Audio MA1 and my B&W DM2 sound like two completely different speakers. Which they are, but not all tracks enhance that as much.
I remember in !970’s first hearing Goodmans Mezzo SL ( paper bass driver, seas tweeter ) with the Sansui 331 and a humblish Garrard turntable. I was absolutely blown away and it remains my reference system to this day. I also remember my pre-purchase anxiety when buying new stuff about the total harmonic distortion. ( makes me chuckle now but I got over serious then about such stuff) Like you Kelvin, I’ve been disappointed by a good deal of modern kit. However I’d love you to review the Triangle Borea BR03 ( French, paper cone bass driver, 89db sensitivity) Very mixed reviews but those that like it seem to love it !!!
Just to add that I've tried all sorts of capacitors in the range of Dittons. Always found SOLEN to work really well in the tweeter circuit. Using polypropylene in the midrange makes them harsh and shouty. Causes impedance issues to. The values on the woofer circuits are large and in shunt so there's no point using anything other than electrolytic's. Believe me I've tried and measured all sorts. The midrange in the 33 is the same used in the 22. Its a fairly lazy driver. Trying to force more clarity out of it with better capacitors doesn't really work. Then you cause impedance issues in the midrange circuit. ALCAPs work nicely in the woofer and midrange. Solen pull out some more detail, space and air to the top end.
For midrange something like a mondorf in oil capacitor would be better or clarity audio quite nice sounding mid range and seem to work all right for me and in tweeters I haven't tried solen yet what type of construction are they you know the makeup?
@@jedi-mic Midrange in the Ditton 22 and 33 is quite a lazy driver. Trying to force detail through them with better capacitors doesn't really help. You pull down the overall impedance of the mid circuit using polypropylene capacitors to. ALCAP work really well. Using SOLEN on the tweeter really helps the overall sound and clarity
@@haycrossaudio5474 I can't imagine it pulling down the impedance that much to really make any difference going to be insignificant. Where are we talking about where the capacitor's is in series or parallel in the mid range, does it have two or three. Is the mid range normally in in phase or out of phase on these? The tweeter outer phase should be.
in the early 80's we had the Hi-Fi Exibitions down from me at Harogate and i heard a pair of MA4's and was bowled away by them if i had not already had my Tannoy Cheviots i would have bought a pair 😊
I had a pair of m84’s but unlike yours mine were in a larger cabinet that stood around 3ft …there was an open space underneath that had some sort of bass trap material in the bottom and a small grill that covered the opening on the front. They had castors on the bottom too. Nice speakers ….I tuned them to fit my room by filling the port with plastic straws cut to the length of the port and wrapped together with elastic bands ….
Using a better cap, yes. Also adding better resistors, especially for the tweeter and glueing in some braces. Solons are good, but can’t be a bit harsh compared to a sonic cap.
Now, it’s important to always remember what you said about amplifier current delivery, and damping factor in delivering prodigious amounts of the bass slam, SOME folks enjoy. (Often times, it’s an acquired taste, not everyone likes overpowering infra-sonics) those Ditton 33s with a really big amplifier like Musical Fidelity’s NuVista PAM monoblocks w/ power supplies at 134Kg! You’re going to get massive bass from that Ditton! ditto from Chord’s ULTIMA monoblocksat 780 w/Ch.
Most musical and fuller sounding amps i tried are by large margin harman kardon 330a receiver and nad 3020a, magical sounding. also litlle tandberg tr 200 is great too. Speakers are dynaco a 25,some pearless old spekers , and ditton 15 xr . this so far. great tuner in those receivers .
Thanks for another interesting video Kelvin. Sounds like you swapped out old "electrolytic type" caps for new "polypropylene type" caps. The brand of caps might make some difference but I think the type of caps used is more significant for the quality of the sound you will get. I used Dayton Metalized Polypropylene caps to replace the worn out Elcap electrolytic caps on a pair of original Kef Concerto crossovers. I even used them for the bass section, which worked out very well. Poly caps are more expensive but they sound better and don't wear out like electrolytic caps. I liked your comments about the type and amount of damping material inside speaker boxes. As you say, a speaker's sound qualities will vary according to what material and how much is used for damping resonances and how loudly you play them. Reducing possible resonances is considered better but not at the expense of restricting the ability of the speaker components to reproduce sounds to an optimal level. Once again it is about making a judgement based on personal sound preferences and acceptable compromises using listening tests. PS. I recently solved a problem with a pair of 3 way speakers I refurbished, which were not producing a satisfactory amount of bass. By replacing the 80 watt 12in. bass speakers with 225watt 12in. sub/woofers, the system now has excellent full and tight bass that can go very deep, while maintaining a well balanced overall output and frequency response in combination with the mid driver and the tweeter.
Hi Kelvin, enjoying your reviews, i guess you've already tried it, but the Celestion 33s sound brill with the NAD 3130... they really complement the NAD's punchy delivery... I've been using them together for years... Thanks and all the best, Steve T, Colchester.
There was a bit of craze (and controversy) in the HiFi Answers community in the 80s about removing ALL of the speakers wadding. Not sure who first suggested it, but I remember trying it and found my little Boston Acoustics speakers were, as you suggested, free-er and certainly more transparent. I don't remember any downsides! But an audio engineer who refoamed the bass drivers was outraged and insisted on putting some back in! Maybe a wadding-less speaker does break with conformity (though according to HFA many 60s speakers were designed that way) and maybe measures less 'accurately' or something, but who cares if it sounds better? It's certainly worth experimenting though many modern speakers with their fancy aesthetics are probably impossible to open up!
As you were talking I was thinking that I generally like the presentation of a 2 way and why that might be. When you started discussing the cymbals it clicked - compressed music made cymbals cringy for me so it might be that I prefer them to be darker as you say. Early mp3s were bad enough, but WMA compression was especially horrible with that "scraping tinfoil across your eardrum" compression artifacting. I don't listen to much compressed anymore, so hopefully this won't be a permanent ailment - I know, I should get myself some nice 3 ways for therapeutic reasons!
Not quite my favourite vintage British speaker but the 33 is still a viable product with it's own virtues like a somewhat up front midrange that highlights female vocalists. But I still prefer the liquid cleanliness of similar vintage bextrene cones like the Monitor Audio's MA4, Tangent TM1 or KEF Ref 103 or 104AB.
Great to see another awesome video from you, just wanted to throw my two cents in. I think that you should use quality capacitors in all of the recap. The price is very insignificant. The best ones are not that much more money anyways and you of all people would really appreciate that
12:00 Great point about the wedding and the loudness. Wadding only helps to a point, after that it kills the life of the speaker. Its much better to build a better cabinet in the first place like Russell K does.
where did you get the Solon capacitors from and how much! I would have thought mondorf in oil would be better for the tweeter and midrange in line, use alcaps for parallel connections. you don't really want to use a poly cap in parallel necessarily. is the bass a bit muffled? lacking definition. try getting say around hard to say without listening, somewhere between 38 - 42 kiloohms 3 watt resistor, put it in parallel with the inductor coil for the bass driver. it give you a bit more definition in the higher bass frequencies try 40 k ohms resistor.
A 3 way will almost always beat a 2 way due to its cleaner midrange performance. A lot depends upon the coherence via the crossover, and that's why some prefer the other extreme, a single crossoverless driver.
The woofer crossover, USUALLY there is an inductor in series (in the signal path) with the woofer, AND there is a capacitor in parallel with the woofer. Since the capacitor is in parallel with the woofer, changing it out won't do much for the overall sound. If the capacitor was an electrolytic and its capacitance has drifted due to age, then it will make some difference to the sound quality and should be replaced. The tweeter and the midrange, wherever there is a capacitor in series (in the signal path) with the tweeter or midrange, then they should be replaced with good metalized film capacitors. They sound better than anything especially electrolytics. And they will last virtually forever and never drift in capacitance like electrolytics do over time. Replacing the capacitors that are in parallel with the tweeter and midrange and the woofer with expensive metalized film capacitors will do nothing for the sound quality and is kinda a waste of money.
Hey I'm begging. Take those 2 ways add the Roger's set on top and listen together. You need a cone for each sound and you'll see more cone can be extremely delightful 😊
Solens safe bet for the price value , do like some NOS caps gems , 160V K42Y-2 , ERO MKC 1862 and MBGO-2 , just doing a full recap of a pair of Heathkit AS-9560 , all 70s kef drivers and twin b139s ,
Three way speakers are hard to design. The interaction between the mid and tweeter and to some degree between the midrange driver and the woofer are hard to get right in terms of spatial radiation pattern and crossover is really hard to master.
In the under $1500/pr. range with current speakers, don't expect speakers to "put it all together." Expect weaknesses along with strengths. Above that price you may start finding SOME speakers that do put it all together; that sound like they're doing everything right and nothing wrong. Of course there may be some out there that overachieve that I am not aware of. To the audience out there; have you found any speakers at $1,500 or less that don't do anything wrong? It sounds like Kelvin wishes he could make the 33's have some of the bass qualities of the two way, and vice versa. Combining the strong points of each. That's the reality of life in the sub $2,000 price range, in my experience; speakers that do some things really well but lack in other ways. Making you wish you could combine qualities. Don't expect most speakers above $2,000 to be jack of all tade specialists in every way either. Only the exceptional ones do everything right.
Nope, I had to buy some ProAc response 3’s to get everything right, they are 25 years old and cost me £1350 this year. I think they were £5k ish new. Previous I had most of the good royds, ruarks, RK red 100’s, acoustic energy, cheaper spendors, chario, every speaker had an issue of some sort. The response 3’s are stunning, well worth the money.
Re: your comments here on Stereo Review X. I heard Proac speakers a long time ago. Best midrange and highs I ever heard on a rock lp that was one I played over 100 times through the years. Bass was slow though, but they were using Quicksilver mono tube power amps that were not the most controlled in the bass. The Quicksilver amps were the ones that prompted Harry Pearson, formerly The Absolute Sound owner/editor, to take a year sabbatical from reviewing audio. He couldn't understand why they were by far his favorite sounding amps, regardless of them sonically doing quite a few thing sub par. I think you have been convinced of the necessity of spending too much money on speakers. I mess around with many different speaker "drivers"; mainly midranges and tweeters, and there are both good and mediocre drivers at BOTH medium and high price points. There are even some really good inexpensive vintage drivers. In most $5k retail price speakers these days, you are only getting around a $80 to $100 midrange driver and a less expensive than that tweeter. Chances are, you are not getting Accuton drivers, or anything like that. However when I say "speakers that don't do anything wrong" I mean speakers that don't sound like they have serious limitations in any way like, slow, or peaky, or lacking lower midrange warmth, or lack of tone colors etc. Compared to real expensive speakers with drivers like Accuton etc., the Accuton based speakers will be preferred of course. On the used market, you can pick vintage speakers up on ebay that don't do anything wrong to any even close to serious degree, for sometimes as low as $500. Their original list price might have been around $900 and adjusted for inflation might be $1600 now. They're not speakers generally that go down to 20 hertz, but they go plenty low and may or may not need a sub. Don't be afraid of subs; mismatches are way rarer than good matches. Chances are in your favor. Subs let you move your main speakers 6 to 7 feet out from the wall behind them for twice as spacious a sound, and leave the sub(s) back further to reinforce the bass. If you tried moving big floorstanding speakers that far out into the room, you wouldn't have near enough bass, or hardly any.
@@sidesup8286 The drivers in the response 3’s are scanspeak. Very fast and agile with amazing midrange, same for the tweeter, scanspeak. They play down to mid 20’s. I use exposure pre power SS to drive them. Like you mentioned, any more than 3ft into the room and the bass starts to lose its weight. I thought the Russell K red100 was a fast speaker but no match for the ProAcs. Like i say these were £5k 25 years ago so they would be the equivalent to the d48’s today (minus the ribbon) A good example of a poor speaker is the new dali rubikore 6. I heard these at a show recently, £4500, tremendously bland and boring.
Proacs are a speaker I'd look at and.definitely consider if I am in the market for more speakers. I have slight to moderate hearing loss in my left ear. I need a speaker about 3 db louder in the left channel. I can shop ebay for single speakers, which are usually about 1/3 or 1/4 the cost of a proper pair. Or I can fool around with the drivers I have here and mix and match, if I'm not using an amp where I can adjust balance balance.at the time. My image focus is no problem surprisingly .But I wouldn't use a 6 and 1/2 inch midrange on one side, and a 1 inch dome midrange in the other channel. Transient response of the drivers shouldn't be too far apart for a focused image. image.That leading edge of note transmits a lot of information to our ear/brain system.
For the placement fuzziness maybe it's because of the non alignment of the components. Are they mirrored? I love enclosed speakers but if you love bass you need the ditton 66 🤟😜
I think you are right about the wadding I'm not too fond of the idea of it being pushed hard up to the magnet on the back of the woofer. A thought, would they work better in conjunction with a subwoofer?
@@stereoreviewx sounds likely if its not great in another speaker, have you ever thought about hunting down a pair of royd minstrels? They go for £100 ish normally. Pretty fun speaker, bit toppy but very clean mids but yeah fun, great for instruments.
@@stereoreviewx have you tried old exposure too? xx/xv/xxv I had an xv this year, 40w, lovely sound. Im on an exposure pre power now from hearing the xv.
