Owner`s manual

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Owner’s Manual for the

Anthony Gallo Acoustics

Reference³ SA

Thank you for purchasing our Subwoofer Amplifier (hereafter referred to as the SA). It is a high-quality

audio component meticulously designed and reliably manufactured to enhance the long-term enjoyment of your

favorite full-range music. To familiarize yourself with the SA’s unique flexibility and feature set, please read the

following instructions carefully before installing it.

But first, remember that the SA is a high-power piece of active electronics that runs warm to the touch and

can get moderately hot if you run its bass-boost EQ circuit in the max position. You should not expose the SA to

direct sun light, water or moisture. Getting fluids inside the SA could shorten out its circuitry and cause irreparable

damage that will not be covered under warranty. The SA does include short-circuit protection but you should still

exercise the utmost caution when you make all initial connections while the amplifier is powered off.

The SA contains a bridgeable stereo amplifier, a high-quality active crossover and a sophisticated equalization

circuit in one single chassis to

1. Optimize bass performance of our own Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Reference³ loudspeakers in both 2-channel

music and multi-channel HomeTheater movie applications

2. Power two of our own Gallo Acoustics MPSB/DV passive subwoofers

3. Bi-amp bi-wirable loudspeakers from other manufacturers or

4. Power one or two passive subwoofers from other companies.

5. Power a pair of passive speakers with the SA as the main amp.

Be sure to install the SA with sufficient ventilation space and no obstructions to its chassis vents to insure

optimal self-cooling of the internal heatsinks (a thermostat-controlled whisper fan will kick in automatically once

these heatsinks reach a preset temperature). We will now describe hookups for each of the stated applications in

the sequence listed above. Even if your application is #2, #3, #4 or #5 (e.g. not with our own speakers), do read the

entire manual. Much of what is covered under section 1 also applies to sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 and thus isn’t repeated

in the subsequent chapters.

1a/ Anthony Gallo Acoustics Nucleus Reference³ speakers + Reference³ SA xover/amplifier

(stereo music mode):

Our Reference³ full-range speakers offer a unique feature. They sport a separate pair of loudspeaker input

terminals for their woofer’s 2

voice coils. Because this feature is so unique and different from the norm, allow us

to explain it in detail. This twin set of binding posts on the lower rear of the Reference³s may look like a biwire

arrangement but it’s not. Note how the upper pair is labeled ‘speaker in’. The lower pair says ‘sub in’. ‘Sub’

obviously stands for subwoofer. But where is this hidden subwoofer? Wait a minute and you’ll see.

Summary of content (8 pages)

PAGE 1
Owner’s Manual for the Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference³ SA Thank you for purchasing our Subwoofer Amplifier (hereafter referred to as the SA). It is a high-quality audio component meticulously designed and reliably manufactured to enhance the long-term enjoyment of your favorite full-range music. To familiarize yourself with the SA’s unique flexibility and feature set, please read the following instructions carefully before installing it.
PAGE 2
The upper ‘speaker in’ terminals are conventional inputs. They connect the incoming full-range amplifier signal to the entire speaker. The 10” side-firing woofer, dual 4” mids and our unique 300° dispersion CDT² tweeter are all operated together from this one input. To enjoy music, that’s all you need. You never have to use the second input at all. But what if you wanted true subwoofer bass without a separate subwoofer? That’s where the ‘sub in’ terminals enter the picture.
PAGE 3
Where do I set the crossover control which is continuously adjustable from 40-200Hz? Remember that the natural acoustical roll-off of our Ref³ woofer occurs at approximately 40Hz. It still reproduces sounds as low as 20Hz but those are significantly reduced in output and thus barely audible. To boost those rolled-off frequencies in the lowest octave, you probably don’t want to set the SA crossover much higher than 40Hz. This avoids undue overlap and excessive warmth or bass heaviness.
PAGE 4
Why do you offer crossover points up to 200Hz if 40Hz is the natural speaker rolloff? Because you can also use the SA with other makers’ passive subwoofers or speakers which may require bringing the SA in well above 40Hz – more on that below. Do I need to worry about the phase controls? Usually you will set these phase controls to 0. This avoids bass cancellation and timing errors. The Ref³ loudspeakers are minimum-phase time-coherent designs.
PAGE 5
but does so only over a very limited frequency range where our human hearing is the least sensitive to timbre and tone. Using our SA within this unique twin-drive scheme doesn’t create any audible discontinuities or discrepancies even if your main amplifier was a low-power triode design with a very distinctive sonic signature. For once, you can actually implement the “tubes on top, solid-state on the bottom” ideal without suffering the usual compromises.
PAGE 6
What if I don’t have any pre-outs? This could be the case with an integrated amplifier. What you need now is a second pair of speaker cables or a biwire set. You connect to the SA via the high-level speaker inputs from your main amp’s speaker terminals, by ‘stacking’ two pairs of cables from the same speaker terminals (unless your integrated amplifier has two pairs of terminals per channel). One set of speaker cables will continue to go to your main speakers, the other one will connect to the SA.
PAGE 7
two individual speaker cables (one for each MPSB/DV) which are terminated with bare wire/bananas/spades on the SA end and a ¼” plug on the subwoofer end. You won’t be making a double connection (full-range + 2nd voice coil as on the Ref3s) but merely need a single cable to each subwoofer.
PAGE 8
Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference³ SA Specifications @4ohm Output power: Distortion: 240 watts stereo, 650 watts mono 0.08% stereo, 0.1% mono (low-pass @ 100Hz, level and xover at max, EQ at 0dB) 0.1% stereo, 0.