Talk:Dual CL 490

I've been listening to this box for years and still don't know, is it good or not, do I keep it or not. It definitely has some special good qualities and some peculiarities that I don't know how to judge. My diagnosis so far: The tweeter range sounds kind of shrill and a bit colored. The tweeters are, as expected for the time, not high resolution. This has the advantage that they are almost indestructible. Since I added new inexpensive 8 Ohm HTs in parallel to the existing HTs, they can be listened to. All drivers sound very powerful or very dynamic. (I really like to listen to cinema films with them). The bass driver sounds particularly dynamic, but not particularly clean (a bit very boomy but dry and well damped), is relatively linear. I would have liked a little more deep bass, but then the dynamics would certainly have suffered. As you know, very low frequency response and dynamics are physically impossible to achieve with bass. The resonance frequency of female voices was unbearable (I've noticed this often with older closed speakers, but especially with DUAL speakers), so I switched on an equaliser and set the 250 Hz to -8dB, the 2 kHz to +4dB. The speaker is capable of handling loads without end. Therefore, and due to its dynamic sound, I will try to use it with my Böhm home organ. To sum up: nothing for relaxing music, but very good for films, speech and spirited music. Maybe another midrange driver would be recommendable, but I haven't found a closed one yet. I don't want to use an open one, as the speaker can produce a powerful sound pressure and the cone of an open MT would be overloaded. Drums sound very good and very lively. I hope I was able to convey a convincing sound impression. I am not an acoustics scientist, but I have a very sensitive ear and a lot of sound experience. Maybe someone will come up with a test report from an expert. Kind regards from your xahom-hfrf