Good Floor standing design wanted and bi-wiring Diamond 9

[colinbythesea]

I have been reading around the forum for a while and thought I would ask some advice about a good design for a floor standing speaker design. And as a short term fix has anybody bi-wired a set of wharfedale diamond 9.0 speakers and what might I find when I go inside them.

First my expectations for a set of speakers come from a pair of Snell Type K's which I had for years originally on an Audio Innovations valve amplifier. As the modern world progressed the multitude of boxes for surround sound and audio have turned into a reasonable quality surround sound receiver with a Mac Mini as one source and a lenco GL75 turntable in a home made plinth with a Poul Ladegaard designed air bearing arm made by myself. So the DIY element doesn't scare me. Audio listening is usually done in the direct mode on the Yamaha receiver.

I recently sold my type k's because some time ago the bass cone surround rotted and I replaced them with a cheap unit. However the surround sound could never make much sense of the big Snells and they didn't sound good. The new bass driver made things worse and a set of Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers at £50 seemed too good to miss to see what happened.

Needless to say the Diamonds sounded surprisingly good, not marvellous, but good so they will do for now. I guess they fit into the system better. I would like to bi-wire them but they don't have this facility. What do you reckon I might find inside and what could be done to improve crossover components and separate the wiring to each drive unit.

Finally I would like to build a good set of floor standing speakers as the front speakers. Does anybody have a suggestion for designs which uses drive units which can be bought in the UK. Not big budget at the moment in case it goes bad, possibly no more than about £150 on drive units. Has anybody made sense of of the cheap Maplin units?

[Inductor]

Hi, shop for two Volt (UK) drivers for monitoring those Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers and give a low frequency component that you need. Make a box for them and/or ask about it in the forum. (On the cheap side there are many more alternatives to spend money. As a new complete set of a speaker system you mention I will leave for other's ideas.) Maybe you can leave the xover out of the enclosure to adapt more easily.