Impressions of my newly finished North Creek CM-77 Towers

[dfdye]

Before I started building a new set of HT speakers, I looked around for a while and the North Creek CM-77 towers caught my eye. I liked the idea of Kevlar woofers and I have heard nice things about the inexpensive North Creek D25-06S tweeters, leading me to hope that these speakers would sound as nice as a few other pairs utilizing Kevlar woofers that I had listened to lately. After looking on these forums for opinions about this kit, and unfortunately not finding any, I figured I would risk it and build these speakers without much in the way of knowing what to expect other than what was on the NC website.

Long story short, I think these speakers turned out quite well and perform as advertised—they make very good front channel speakers for home theater use and sound nice throughout their range (down to ~80Hz or so, depending on the felts used in their aperiodic vents). For music, they also have a good sound, though I must admit that I do not have a killer system to compare them too.

Their low end is not strong and they definitely need a sub to reach their full potential, but the aperiodic vents allow tuning of the low end fairly effectively to extend the low end a little. I must admit that I do not like the sound of the speakers below 80 Hz, so I have them tuned using a very dense felt.

Of course they will be getting a sub soon (this weekend in fact!), but I figured I would post my initial impressions in case anyone else was thinking of building a set. I would recommend these if you are looking for a high quality HT set, and I am planning on rounding out the two front speakers with a full HT compliment (center and 4 surrounds).

David

(Hope this doesn’t sound too much like a commercial, I am just happy with a set of speakers I took a gamble on and wanted to add an opinion in case anyone else is thinking of building them.)