I love the concept of this thread (thinking about ways to build a bad loudspeaker to shine a light on common mistakes and design tradeoffs) and was kinda flattered to discover that my 1989 Delaware Acoustics S10 design was mentioned in this dubious company. Personally I can think of worse speakers (and have probably built some myself!), but it's worth considering the problems and tradeoffs introduced by this novel design:
(1) The purpose of the rear-mounted woofer is to make the room response more closely mirror the axial response, and to counteract the response step (aka "diffraction loss") by contributing forward energy below about 1500 Hz. The unfortunate downside is a midrange coloration due to the unavoidably-delayed axial contribution.
(2) The jury is still out on whether a true first order crossover can improve perceived realism, but the downside is suboptimal vertical lobing behavior and a large overlapping frequency range between the woofers and tweeter.
(3) The SEAS 4" woofers have very well-controlled resonance behavior (as does the 3/4" tweeter) and enable the use of a rigid enclosure with very small cross-sectional area. However they produce a lightweight bass only partially compensated by the provided line-level equalizer.
I have great respect for John Atkinson's listening, measuring, and writing abilities and I think he captured these points fairly in the aforementioned Stereophile review. If, like myself, you consider stereo imaging to be highly important for the enjoyment of reproduced music, then you can appreciate the benefit of all these tradeoffs in JA's words: "superbly spacious presentation, with beautifully precise soundstaging". But I agree that the downside of the tradeoffs in this design are too great. (That said I still have a 30-year-old working pair which I use in a home theater system with a subwoofer.)
(1) The purpose of the rear-mounted woofer is to make the room response more closely mirror the axial response, and to counteract the response step (aka "diffraction loss") by contributing forward energy below about 1500 Hz. The unfortunate downside is a midrange coloration due to the unavoidably-delayed axial contribution.
(2) The jury is still out on whether a true first order crossover can improve perceived realism, but the downside is suboptimal vertical lobing behavior and a large overlapping frequency range between the woofers and tweeter.
(3) The SEAS 4" woofers have very well-controlled resonance behavior (as does the 3/4" tweeter) and enable the use of a rigid enclosure with very small cross-sectional area. However they produce a lightweight bass only partially compensated by the provided line-level equalizer.
I have great respect for John Atkinson's listening, measuring, and writing abilities and I think he captured these points fairly in the aforementioned Stereophile review. If, like myself, you consider stereo imaging to be highly important for the enjoyment of reproduced music, then you can appreciate the benefit of all these tradeoffs in JA's words: "superbly spacious presentation, with beautifully precise soundstaging". But I agree that the downside of the tradeoffs in this design are too great. (That said I still have a 30-year-old working pair which I use in a home theater system with a subwoofer.)
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Cement Block speakers with the Port in the chamber with the Tweeter -
Cinder Speakers is an innovative new use for cinder blocks | What Hi-Fi?
Steve/bluewizard
Cinder Speakers is an innovative new use for cinder blocks | What Hi-Fi?
Steve/bluewizard
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