Opus Mini Loudspeaker

[smnjn]

Presented below is a new 2-way mini monitor featuring Seas ER18RNX mid-woofer and Scanspeak Discovery D2608/9130 HDS tweeter (formerly Peerless HDS 810921).
ER18 RNX is a paper reed cone 7” mid-woofer from Seas Prestige line. It has a relatively smooth response and mild break-up at 4.5 kHz. It also has a copper sleeve on T-shaped pole piece which translates into lower distortion in the lower midrange. This driver has a good bass extension upto 45 Hz (-3db) in a smallish 14 litre vented enclosure. But this mid-woofer has to be crossed as low as 1600 Hz as distortion of this driver rises above that 1000 Hz. So Scanspeak Discovery HDS tweeter has been selected for the design.
I have used 15 AWG steel laminate for the main woofer inductor and 18 AWG air core elsewhere. All capacitors are polymer based and resistors are metal film type. You can swap R3 and R4 if you find the speakers little bright.
The enclosure is Madisound MD14 back ported with no tweeter offset. The port is 2” flared port 7” long.
You can also build your own enclosure with 1” MDF. External box dimension should be 8.5” (w) x 12” (d) x 16” (h) and the port is to be placed right behind the tweeter.
This is a decent performing mini monitor with good bass extension which generally not found on any loudspeaker of this size. Midrange is nearly as good as my Rediscovery tower. Drivers are relatively cheap. This is a budget high end audio.

[perfknee]

Good work Suman.

I have been looking to build a center channel speaker to match my scanspeak 9900/8530k01 main bookshelf speakers. I am weighing the madisound rediscovery kit (which they pointed me to when I asked for suggestions!) but building it in a sealed md14 box instead of the towers. Since I'm crossing over to a sub around 50Hz I don't need much low end. The reason for the smaller box is that I only have about 9" of height between the screen and stand, so I would lay it on the side.

Even though your Opus Mini is designed from the start for the smaller md14 box, I think I'd prefer going with the rediscovery kit due to the better value and better drivers.

I'm still looking at different options, also considering the Zaph/Madisound sr71 which seems to have more of a following but perhaps not quite as high quality drivers. I'm also considering the parts express Usher based UA701MK kit, but concerned about quality control on those drivers. The advantages of these kits are that baffles are available precut.

What do you think about the idea of building your rediscovery kit in an md14 enclosure instead of the opus mini?

[smnjn]

Originally Posted by perfknee

What do you think about the idea of building your rediscovery kit in an md14 enclosure instead of the opus mini?

Building Rediscovery in a 14 litre enclosure (even if sealed) is not a good idea. You can do it 20-22 litre sealed.

SUMAN JANA

[DcibeL]

That's a fine looking speaker there. You must like that tweeter as much as I do!

[DcibeL]

Hello again. I was just looking at the ReDiscovery at Madisound and I noticed that the crossover that you've come up with for the D2908 is strikingly similar to what I came up with for my speaker a few years back. I used the Peerless 8" HDS woofer instead though which is now NLA.