The personal planars
 

Has anyone on the forum tried building a pair of these? http://www.decware.com/panels.htm
They strike me as the perfect speakers for my computer.

I made them. The physical principle is so neat I had to try them. Greatly amused some of the engineers at work.

They were surprisingly good. Steve is right that they're very revealing of small detail. The replaced the satelites on my Cambridge Soundworks so I was using a cheap sub with them.

There are a few posts about them on the Decware board (some from me)

They've since been superceded by Jordan JX92's as my computer speakers.

Ok. Thanks. I thought it seemed strange that I never had heard of them if they were as good as the site claimed, but I guess I will trust you. You wouldn't care to give a estimate of the project costs and the difficulty of construction them?

Better than my Monsoons??? I gotta' try 'em any how!

Monsoons are pretty good. Most people have no idea because they only have them hooked to their 'puters.

I have a friend who i set up with a top notch Arcam CD player plugged directly into his MM1000s. It reveals just how good these things can sound.

dave

Dave D.,
Could you elaborate on the sound of the Monsoons? The distributed mode thing is interesting, but i figured if it was good it would have caught on by now, since there is a couple "high enders" using it.
Perhaps a new thread, or is this old hat (site search)?
Regards, Jason

Monsoons aren't distributed mode. They are push-pull magnetostats. Monsoon licensed the tech from Bruce Thingpen (Emminent Techology IIRC) and figured out how to manufacture them for almost nothing. Bruce's hi-end versions start at somewhere on the far side of $1.5k.

Like any planar they get kind of beamy, and they have some resonances (taken care of in the built-in amps) from cavity resonances that keep them from being S-of-T-A. And the amps & sub boxes can be cleaned up alot. But if someone wanted a budget home setup, two pair of these stacked with stereo woofers aren't bad -- even a single pr beats a similarily budgeted shelf-system. Each set comes with what is essentially a passive-pre so you just need to add a serious source and away you go.

dave

Hey DrDave,

If you can, i was wondering if you could give a estimate of how much it cost to make a pair of these. I"m a broke college student :) and am really interested in these but dont' want to waste $20 for a password if its gonna cost a couple hundred dollars to build a pair that i can't afford to build. i woudl appreciate it

thanks

i would actually be interested in building a pair of these for fun. maybe a bigger pair, like the size of a bookshelf speaker too....

but before i get the plans, it would be nice to now average time and cost to build them...

Come on guys. This is how Steve makes a living. This is not the kind of thing to be discussed on diyAudio.

dave :captain:
(in official capacity)