Mar-Kel70 in Sweden

Last week I did something I have wanted to do for a long time. I took the speakers to the local hi-fi store to try them with fancier amplifiers and also to get a second opinion on them. I mean, they are quite unusual. The guy who runs the store has been working there for like 20 years and knows a fair bit about audio. Apparently he has a pair of B&W 802D speakers at home.

First we set them up in the big room in the store. It's maybe 25sqm but has a massive opening to the rest of the store to the left. They were placed really far from the back wall and didn't sound that great to be honest. We used a Denon AVR-X6300H receiver (~$2200). I said that we should try them in the smaller room, place them closer to the back wall, and sit closer to the speakers. That worked a lot better, and we used the Lyngdorf TDAI-2170 digital stereo amplifier (~$4000). The store owner said the speakers had a quite "nasal" tone, with upper mids being a little too strong and lacking a bit in the lower midrange. We decided to try the Lyngdorf's room-perfect function to see if it could make it any better. After 10-15 minutes of setting it up and doing all the measurements we came back to a much nicer sound. However, the Lyngdorf had tried to boost the bass way too much which meant that we couldn't play loud at all and it had some negative impact on the sound as well. This is why doing it the manual way is better, because then I can leave <100Hz untouched, and maybe even put on a high-pass filter at ~40-50Hz because they don't really have anything to do below that anyways.

And while I was there I listened to some other speakers as well.

tMyv3Zv.jpg


The white speakers, B&W CM8 or CM9 S2 (don't remember which ones they were), costing around ~$2000-2500 IIRC. I have never been a fan of B&W speakers, I find the Dali speakers to have a much nicer sound, but still there are other brands out there that make better speakers for the same price (or even less) I think. We tried the B&W with and without the room-perfect correction and it was a massive difference. It went from sounding "****" to actually sounding pretty good. Without room-perfect I'd say they were worth maybe $1000, not more. At least I wouldn't have paid more than that for that sound. With room-perfect they sounded like some $5000 speakers, or maybe even better. I guess this shows how important it is with DSP to get good sound.

Since I moved a couple of months ago I have been using my MiniDSP with my big stereo setup since that was what I used most at the time. Today I decided to take it back to my computer stereo setup and see if I could tame the upper midrange of the EL70 and get a calmer sound. With plenty of tweaking and trying different settings for the EQ I managed to find something that sounds pretty good.
 
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Last week I did something I have wanted to do for a long time. I took the speakers to the local hi-fi store to try them with fancier amplifiers and also to get a second opinion on them. I mean, they are quite unusual. The guy who runs the store has been working there for like 20 years and knows a fair bit about audio. Apparently he has a pair of B&W 802D speakers at home.

First we set them up in the big room in the store. It's maybe 25sqm but has a massive opening to the rest of the store to the left. They were placed really far from the back wall and didn't sound that great to be honest. We used a Denon AVR-X6300H receiver (~$2200). I said that we should try them in the smaller room, place them closer to the back wall, and sit closer to the speakers. That worked a lot better, and we used the Lyngdorf TDAI-2170 digital stereo amplifier (~$4000). The store owner said the speakers had a quite "nasal" tone, with upper mids being a little too strong and lacking a bit in the lower midrange. We decided to try the Lyngdorf's room-perfect function to see if it could make it any better. After 10-15 minutes of setting it up and doing all the measurements we came back to a much nicer sound. However, the Lyngdorf had tried to boost the bass way too much which meant that we couldn't play loud at all and it had some negative impact on the sound as well. This is why doing it the manual way is better, because then I can leave <100Hz untouched, and maybe even put on a high-pass filter at ~40-50Hz because they don't really have anything to do below that anyways.

Och medan jag var där lyssnade jag på några andra talare också.

tMyv3Zv.jpg


De vita högtalarna, B&W CM8 eller CM9 S2 (minns inte vilka de var), kostar runt ~$2000-2500 IIRC. Jag har aldrig varit ett fan av B&W-högtalare, jag tycker att Dali-högtalarna har ett mycket trevligare ljud, men ändå finns det andra märken där ute som gör bättre högtalare för samma pris (eller ännu mindre) tycker jag. Vi provade svartvitt med och utan rums-perfekt korrigering och det var en enorm skillnad. Det gick från att låta "****" till att faktiskt låta ganska bra. Utan rum-perfekt skulle jag säga att de var värda kanske $1000, inte mer. Jag skulle åtminstone inte ha betalat mer än så för det ljudet. Med room-perfect lät de som några $5000-högtalare, eller kanske ännu bättre. Jag antar att detta visar hur viktigt det är med DSP för att få bra ljud.

Sedan jag flyttade för ett par månader sedan har jag använt min MiniDSP med min stora stereoinstallation eftersom det var det jag använde mest då. Idag bestämde jag mig för att ta tillbaka den till min datorstereoinstallation och se om jag kunde tämja det övre mellanregistret på EL70 och få ett lugnare ljud. Med massor av justeringar och att prova olika inställningar för EQ lyckades jag hitta något som låter ganska bra.
Very fun reading this to me.
With Alpair 10 maop. You dont need DSP
 
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While Dave has a very detailed explanation of the etymology posted on his commercial thread in this forum, in short;
the “F” in Fonken derived from the Fostex brand. The very first model employed in the mini-onken series was the CSS FR125, followed shortly thereafter by the Fostex FE127.
With modelling and iterative experimentation, the flexibility of the high aspect ratio slot ported configuration proved itself with a variety of makes and models of drivers, and the ”mini” onken family tree grew to an almost dizzying number of designs - not all of which I think have been implemented.
 
Many thanks to Dave and Chris for helping me with this build and getting me started in the diy audio world. I will be forever thankful for that. I was only 15 years old when I started this thread and now I'm 26 so a lot of things have changed in life. I still own these speakers (how could I ever get rid of them?) but unfortunately they haven't been used for a couple of years since I moved to the house. I would like to be able to spend more time building speakers but unfortunately there's not enough time for it at the moment with work and renovating the house. But maybe some day in the future. My next project (not sure when it will actually happen) is to build a set of cabinets for the two CSS SDX12 I've had for over two years now. Next after that I would really like to try some of the larger Markaudio drivers in something like a Pensil cabinet. Seems like a simple enough build to get some practice with the woodworking before moving on to the more complicated ones.
 
Many thanks to Dave and Chris for helping me with this build and getting me started in the diy audio world. I will be forever thankful for that. I was only 15 years old when I started this thread and now I'm 26 so a lot of things have changed in life. I still own these speakers (how could I ever get rid of them?) but unfortunately they haven't been used for a couple of years since I moved to the house. I would like to be able to spend more time building speakers but unfortunately there's not enough time for it at the moment with work and renovating the house. But maybe some day in the future. My next project (not sure when it will actually happen) is to build a set of cabinets for the two CSS SDX12 I've had for over two years now. Next after that I would really like to try some of the larger Markaudio drivers in something like a Pensil cabinet. Seems like a simple enough build to get some practice with the woodworking before moving on to the more complicated ones.
Nice to have you back. 😉