I remember when Danny introed these. The scientific principal is, eliminate some changes in interface as we go from cable outside the box to inside the box. Having used as similar technique often when trying to quickly connect things up, it is not without its issues and sort of tries to emulate the diy trick of connecting the amplifier diecrtly to the speakers with no connections.
There is a diy version in these CHN50 bookshelves: Markaudio CHN-50 small bookshelf
dave
He sells a lot of his special damping material. I had some. Gave it all away or just tossed it.
dave
Hmmm… perhaps a reaction to the huge number of invalid “blind tests” out there. Doing one properly is not easy.
Rictchie should talk to Floyd about what it takes to do a well executed blind test. And, unlike medicine, the results that are measured are second hand accounts of what a person interprets he hears, and not a direct reading of what is being heard — i strongly suspect as more useful, more portable brain scanners come we will be able to lose the interpretation step and be able to conduct much more useful, accurate, and telling blind tests.
dave
All too often more expensive ones are not better. I have gone thru a ton of posts similar to those System7 posted and IMO, work better.
I avoid anything with lots of metal and metal nuts.
dave
It should probably be mentioned that Scott himself should be among those. We don’t often see his multiway designs, most are FR, and now more WAW, which i see as a mix between mutiway and single FR.
dave
Given the huge range of compromises that have to be made in any loudspeakerm the word “better” in the last sentence has no context.
The context makes a huge difference, What are the loudspeakers design goals. No one loudspeaker can fill all roles. Our tech is still to primitive.
I have heard many JBL speakers, but there are many, many i haven’t heard. I have yet to hear a pair i could live with. Doesn’t say they don’t exist.
dave
No. DIYers can do that if they want to play with sound fields -- which I do -- but speakers are predictable regardless of room or program material.
No. Getting it right the first time is extremely easy today. Getting it wrong takes a lot of work.
The only reason someone would need to spend a lot of time searching for good speakers is if they were given bad advice. DIYers need to spend a ton of time trying to design good speakers but that does not carry over to someone who is interested in listening to good speakers.
That's not true. Every Revel speaker has a waveguide.
Why is everybody giving Danny Richie a hard time here? He's entitled to his views. 🙂
If you can afford it, I expect his B&W 601/602 fix is OK:
B+W DM602 Upgrade
We have had this sort of thing at this forum:
B&W Bowers Wilkins DM 601-S3 Crossover Upgrade for Better Midrange Perfoprmance
Addressed the problems. And hardly broke the bank.
If you can afford it, I expect his B&W 601/602 fix is OK:
B+W DM602 Upgrade
We have had this sort of thing at this forum:
B&W Bowers Wilkins DM 601-S3 Crossover Upgrade for Better Midrange Perfoprmance
Addressed the problems. And hardly broke the bank.
That is a laugh. Most diy speaker builders do not stp at one. Largely because they learn so uch with the first build they then have a much better idea of what they really need.
dave
Better just means once you hit a certain level of sound quality there's no longer much difference between listener preference ratings. Nothing stands out as obviously better anymore.
There's an upper limit on what a DIYer can expect to achieve in terms of sound quality/dollar. Thankfully, it's to the point where commercial product sound quality/dollar is hard to beat.
That's a big advantage for DIYers because now they can buy reference speakers for cheap and work around them. You can make more powerful versions that retain the sound quality or create different sound fields that still sound as good as the reference. DIYers benefit from inexpensive reference speakers more than audio consumers.
Agreed. It's a laugh to think DIYing good sound quality is easy -- even more so in a first attempt.
Now that context is properly understood, maybe you'd agree buying a good quality commercial product is easy today. You don't need to go to stores and listen to products and find amplifiers or whatever other nonsense people had to struggle with in the past. Those days are gone thanks to science and capitalism.
That’s total nonsense. Anyone who has auditioned multiple speakers in the stores as I have will quickly conclude that you can easily build a DIY speaker that will match or surpass the performance of a commercially built speakers for about 1/5 to 1/10 the cost.
I went through this exercise thoroughly a few years ago and after listening to all kinds of top brand speakers, including a $5,000 pair of Monicor Audios that sounded like crap, I finally, and somewhat reluctantly, decided to go the DIY route. And I’m very glad that I did.
So, no, you are wrong. The quality/dollar value for DIY far surpasses commercially built products. It’s not even close.
As I’ve said to you before, why in the world are you spending your time over here on a DIY forum that you don’t believe in to begin with. I think you would be much happier on one of the HT forums. Particularly since you don’t believe in stereo anymore. I thought nothing less than 3 channel will satisfy you.
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Given that those tests could well be limited by the “all decent amplifiers sound the same”. Speakers limited by the amplification used.
One can take a good sample of those speakers that are considered pinnicales of modern engineering, they will produce different sound, be better suited to A room/listener, and the rest of the system is equally important, while amplifier/Loudspeaker/connection have to be looked at as system.
Toole/Olive provide very important views and work but it has to be considered within th elimits of the space they are working in.
Ignoring what it takes in resources to gain the knowledge and all the previous experience that goe sinto a design, the best diy systems can often do things commercial stuff struggle to do.
It may be the case that a rookie can go out and spend his way to a good system, it takes a lot of time, successes and mistakes for a DIYer to be able to achieve high levels.
Now, as the thread started out, who do you trust to give you advise.
There is a TON of talent here and on other forums. No-one knows everything. Everyone has a point-of-view.
If someone has not yet gained that experience, they may get lucky and find the expertise they need for that point-of-view.
There are lots of very solid loudspeaker designs that can be found here and elsewhere. Sorting thru them and figuring out which is best suited for you is not an easy task. Especially when you don’t really know what you want or have the level of experience, training, learning to tease out what is useful for you and what is not. And with so much useless disinformation obscuring the good stuff does not make it any easier.
That could well be quite different from someone elses needs.
Let’s call that your opinion. There are many here who would disagree.
dave
$5k is a pretty low bar. I can walk into the local hifi emporium and audition many speakers over $10k.
The last ones i liked were $20k. And at least one of the $10k ones was not very good (but highly regarded). And a few in between tha didn’t do it for me.
dave
Related to some comments i made earlier.
Even if a DIYer chooses a solid design, one has to execute it properly for it to work well.
Here a thread that shows a diyers journey to happiness:
Alpair 12pw/7.3/12pw MTM
I doubt he will stop there ;^D
dave
Even if a DIYer chooses a solid design, one has to execute it properly for it to work well.
Here a thread that shows a diyers journey to happiness:
Alpair 12pw/7.3/12pw MTM
I doubt he will stop there ;^D
dave
I don't think you fully understand DIY. There are two approaches and they both qualify as DIY.
The first is to build a proven design by one of the very talented people who have contributed it. You can sometimes find the design available as a kit, which makes the procurement of parts very easy. The DIYer doesn't have to do anything about design and yet for a very modest cost build a speaker with outstanding performance. Typically much better than any commercial product costing 5 to 10 times as much.
The second approach it to design the speaker yourself. And that does involve the need for a considerable amount of knowledge and experience. Nevertheless people who have those qualifications can achieve speakers with outstanding performance again at a fraction of the cost for commercial speakers. And they can even tailor them further to match their listening environment and tastes. Something that can't be done with commercial products.
The designer of a commercial product has to choose a set of potential customers. A diyer has one customer (and often an SO).
dave