A pleasing upgrade to some very cheap speakers

[mhouston]

For fear of being stoned by anyone who considers themselves an audiophile I would like to relate my pleasing experience with a cheap set of book shelf speakers from Disk Smith Electronics here in Australia.

The speakers (which look good – all in black and removable grills) only cost $AU39 the pair. They are about 12litres, are rear ported with gold plated binding posts 5” woofer and 1” soft dome tweeter. The woofer has a double magnet and is shielded. It wasn’t too bad!

Inside is the thinnest layer of synthetic dampening and what was meant to be a cross-over. The dampening material covers the port on the inside (?) and the Xover has a few resistors to quieten down the crappy tweeters. The magnet on the tweeters was the size of a small coin and they look real bad.

They sound was very flat and too bassy for me. I replaced the tweeters with some inexpensive shielded 1” dome mylars with dispersion plugs. The Xovers were replaced by a -12db 3.5Khz symmetric two-way. The caps in the commercial Xover were replace with quality Xover speaker caps – the chokes were air cored and OK.

I replaced the terminal blocks but stole the better “goldie” binding posts from the original terminal blocks. The hook-up wire and plugs of the originals were heavy and good quality so I re-used these with the new modded Xovers. I used the original dampening material (doubled over) for the bottom of the box (not covering the port) and put heavy dampening around the inner walls of the boxes.

The wood used is cheap but thick and heavy enough. If you want to take this a level further – pitch the insides – I didn’t. I used foam under the drivers and extra dampening over the Xover which sits on the back of the terminal block and protrudes into the box. If you want to take THIS a step further – put your Xovers outside the box. Also I cut the grill out of the ports from the inside to stop obstruction of air flow.

HOW DO THEY SOUND?

Linked to my Class A MOSFet driven direct by a NAD C542 – they sounded very good – not stunning just very good. 100 times better than the originals. Good imaging with a small box and no box colouration at moderate listening levels. On a number of tracks (Quiet Jazz with strong female voice) the sound extends a metre either side of the speakers. Bass is OK but if you like stacks you may be disappointed. The bass was not one-noted as small ported boxes can be, there was fair definition and range in most bass lines (slab bass). Treble is bright and you may like to drop it 3db. Voice is clear, tonal and strong and stands out – I like it like this that’s why I run Class A SE.

The total cost is about $AU180 and takes about two hours from start to finish. They look and sound good and for compact speakers perform well. Well worth the effort. All extra bits from Jaycar Australia. E-mail or forum if you want more details. But keep your stones to yourself

[Original Burnedfingers]

Let me see if I understand you....

You spent 3 times more than what they cost you new and you have a total of 180Au in them and they sound better now.

Can you imagine the speakers you could have bought for that AU 180? Probably 100 times better than your 39AU purchase without any labor.

Your one heck of a shopper!

[ShinOBIWAN]

Originally posted by burnedfingers
Let me see if I understand you....

You spent 3 times more than what they cost you new and you have a total of 180Au in them and they sound better now.

Can you imagine the speakers you could have bought for that AU 180? Probably 100 times better than your 39AU purchase without any labor.

Your one heck of a shopper!

And where is the fun of buying a $180 off the shelf speaker? The creativity? The feeling of achieving something?

Last time I checked this was a DIY forum and most folks on here really don't give a **** about time and labour

mhouston:

Good man, for the adventurous spirit

[Relax]

Bravo!

I would be more than willing to bet that those $39 plus $141 sound better than buying $180 anyways, maybe not but I am a bettin man!

[Cloth Ears]

Originally posted by ShinOBIWAN
Good man, for the adventurous spirit

I concur. You'd probably be needing $600AU to equal what you've done (and a bit more to upgrade the xover).

Originally posted by burnedfingers
Can you imagine the speakers you could have bought for that AU 180? Probably 100 times better than your 39AU purchase without any labor.

More likely the same crappy tweeter with a 7" woofer and the same crappy xover - but in a bigger box (and as we all know, larger is always better).

[mhouston]

I purchased some English designed Chinese made small book shelf speakers for $AU600 and they were awful. My Valve amp hated them and even my 70 Watt pc Sansui just approves. They look good though and on the labelling the word England appears – big deal!

Those who didn’t throw the stones know the satisfaction involved in taking something ordinary and making it better even great. You can add your own personal twist/style/taste and guess what – they are unique.

I have looked at better small book shelves in the past and they were $AU1200. I didn’t want to pay this for speakers I may only use occasionally. I can’t even get crap blank boxes for $AU39!!

Thanks for the support. By the way DSE is asking $AU60 a pair but argue that they were on sale at $AU39 and they’re yours.

Any Aussies want more details??

[Original Burnedfingers]

Quote:

Bravo!

I would be more than willing to bet that those $39 plus $141 sound better than buying $180 anyways, maybe not but I am a bettin man!
****
And what do we have for proof? Do we have a graph of the response of the speaker before and then after the remarkable changes?

No, I don't believe we do. We have...Quote: Linked to my Class A MOSFet driven direct by a NAD C542 – they sounded very good – not stunning just very good. 100 times better than the originals


That in itself must be our proof.....plllllease....

Quote:

And where is the fun of buying a $180 off the shelf speaker? The creativity? The feeling of achieving something?

Last time I checked this was a DIY forum and most folks on here really don't give a **** about time and labour

*****
Maybe we don't give a S*** about time and labor but I would have guessed we would have liked to have seen some documentation of the said changes.

Please, post a before and after frequency response graph and I will be the first one to pat you on the back.

[Relax]

Yeah, those numbers and response charts that rarely show the qualities our ear measures and what each individual would classify as an improvment.

In any case, pics would rock!

[mhouston]

A truer word has never been spoken – Good for me – bad for him. I think they sound better and I’m the one that has to listen to them. I’m happy. They were inexpensive and TO ME they sound good and look good.

If you believe in specs you wouldn’t buy or build anything – which measurement in what equipment is better than what measurement in which equipment. Are you band-width man or THD woman.

With our eyes, ears, nose and intellect man has lived and multiplied to this point without a single spec. Anything which is subjective makes a mockery of specs.

Music, art and beauty – spec that?

[Cloth Ears]

Originally posted by burnedfingers
That in itself must be our proof.....plllllease....

I take your point. But for $180 (under $150US), do we need proof?

For $141, the tweeters were replaced, the xovers were replaced, the caps in the new xovers were replaced, the terminal blocks were replaced and the dampening material was altered and added to. The owner thinks they sound better...

Quite a few people on this forum would consider the full (modified) price of these speakers as 'reasonable' for a single tweeter (Aurum Cantus, LCY, Seas Excel, Accuton, Raven, ScanSpeak 2904 series).