It's sad to see ATC raised the price so badly last 10 years, and now their decent models are over 10K. They are fine speakers, but current price is somewhat unreasonable to me.
Thanks for that. Deaf men in my city think the best speakers are made by Yamaha. The salesman wears a nice suit! Deaf men rule my world.
There are a pair of Acoustat 33 only 2500 miles from here, and some Meyer UPA1c 2000 miles away, a Meyer CQ1 only 1000 miles away. No MTS4a anywhere, ebay thinks mts is a diaphragm for an electrovoice driver.
Noppa...it's this guy... edit haha you beat me!
http://www.arlecchino-techno.ru/img_out/equipment_files/uploadt1xtvsam7mf.pdf
check out the specs!
You are only 4 hours from Chicago and there is always a nice selection of used speakers. I would skip all the "references" you mentioned.
What bothers me about DIY folks is their attitudes. Looser attitudes I would add. The thinking that if the speaker costs $40k it must be a scam, but a watch costing $100k or yacht costing $600k or mass produced cars costing arm and legs are not.(Not to mention framed poop of a famous artist on the display ). It's just reality of the world we live in. Out of 100.000 designed commercial speakers only a small percentage are memorable and hailed as achievement but of course 100% of DIY builds based on designs of two or three DIY speakers guru's are a resounding success to their builders.
Personally I hate High-End sound and do not strive to mimic that sound. It's kind of neutered and well behaved and I don't want it. What I witness here is that most strive to get that sound for 1/10th of the price.
I prefer colored ,tonally interesting speakers and this is a reason to DIY for me.
I have a narrow and long room , wooden suspended floor over a crawlspace and sheetrock wrapped walls. Is there any European speaker which are so popular in North America designed with those acoustic conditions in mind ?? I don't think so. My hearing collapsed around 3kz in recent years so what sounds good to others may not sound great to me . I posted many times here about DIY illusions but maybe wasn't as polite about it as OP is.
I only heard ONE DIY speaker which I would buy if it was for sale. My friend from a local audio circle made it and it was mid sized 2 way with I think 10" woofer. And maybe I think of this one with sympathy because it was a standout among other DIY mediocrity. I asked Marcus if he could work on crossover for the "one off drivers I had" He looked at me and said it took him two years to voice his own speaker to the point where he is mostly but not entirely satisfied and it was a relatively simple project.
Why bother if I can take JBL LE8 and it will be comfortably better than most speakers ever designed within a given context? I made a clones of a few tube amplifiers but they never really were on equal footing with the real things even though I used better parts. The difference wasn't big but it was akin to "close but no cigar" and it was a kiss of death really.
When I was growing up behind an iron curtain there were only a couple of speaker models one could buy (if lucky ) I thought in my naivety that they were the best there is so it's good to be aware of what's possible within given topology before making any claims.
The yamahas they sold my former church have no highs. Speech only. They ran the acoustic piano through it, a disaster. Perfect model for deaf old men, whatever it was.
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Yes. That is exactly the point of DIY speaker building and precisely what many people here have experienced. Including myself.
I didn't initially intend to build my own speakers, but after auditioning many name brand speakers in stores and finding them all lacking in sound quality, some costing as much as $5K per pair, I turned to DIY as the best way to get what I want. And that is outstanding, and I mean outstanding, sound quality for a very reasonable cost.
As I have posted in other places, I don't try to design my own speakers. I use designs by well known people who have the experience and tools necessary to get that outstanding sound quality.
These designs do exist and are easy to find. But I'm afraid that in many cases confirmation bias prevents people from even considering these options. Some people unfortunately believe that unless you spend $10K on a pair of speakers they can't really be very good. Nothing could be further from the truth.
@TS please stop being this vague. I start thinking you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Maybe you actually don’t.
The way society is arranged, of course there exists the idea that there is no problem too big that can’t be resolved by throwing enough money at it. It is practically gospel. So of course there exists those for whom throwing money at problems is a sacred practice of the truly illuminated. I’m guilty of benefitting from this, so by all means I am a hypocrite.
Thank you for the long and very enjoyable post
Curious which amps you chose to clone.
I've always liked Audio Note so I splurged on those tantalums and Pios and made a clone of Quests , OTO SE . I also did "Flesh & Blood " like everybody else and Yamamoto A-08 SET and Don Garber amp when they were all the rage on every forum. Being an idiot I sold my own pair of AN Quests because you know , I thought that I could clone them easily. The design is crude and there is nothing really to it and "everybody knows that P.Q is a greedy MOFO who overcharges multiple times for his average & poorly measuring transformers"
Those were humbling experiences. I still want to make some amps since I can't make myself to sell all those parts I acquired over the years but I'm aware that I won't be beating Andy Grove or Shindo at their game.
Oh , he does have the clue and very much so . He simply tries very hard not to hurt your fragile Ego ( and his speaker business ).
So far nobody said that your speakers suck although the probability that they do is high
There are a number of problems with elviukai's statements in Post #1, but the biggest is this:
..."However when we speak about high end level of performance DIY cant touch good comercial brands. And price performance ratio is much worse."...
He doesn't really understand DIY and is more impressed with brand and price than with actual performance.
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I'm fine with both options as long as I still can be vague and do not annoy anyone to the point of out of toppic.
I think we (I really like saying we rather than somebody or they-keep us more friendly) still do not get point of this thread. Its probbaly my mistake posting it on multiways rather than lounge.
Most of atention in this thread are made to technical aspects whose is not problem neither solution. My ofered solution to problem(or what I think is problem) lies not in speakers but in peoples point of view. I really like recent limono post as example. He has ability to judge unbiasedly comercial ofering he had vs his creation /clone and admit outcomes.
that is wonderfull- he likes Peter work more than his own and even are not angry neither at Peter (MoFo is a compliment in Detroit) neither on himself (people without medical degree diagnosing themselves as idiots is always wrong- they just try to hide good sense of humor)
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