Have you built an all-active speaker?
DSP or analog crossovers, and one amplifier for each driver range.
Your budget would allow good equipment in place of a large collection of premium grade passive crossover parts.
Digital driver time alignment would allow you to construct a vertical Ardent baffle. You still need a clever baffle design(bevels or rounds) to minimize edge distortion, but DSP power can smooth many baffle edge SPL bumps. DSP will allow you to use fast-transient sealed box woofers, and also equalize room effects for smooth deep bass.
DSP would allow you to accurately equalize at the listener the minimal front tweeter bezel B&W uses on its tapered tube tweeters.
DSP or analog crossovers, and one amplifier for each driver range.
Your budget would allow good equipment in place of a large collection of premium grade passive crossover parts.
Digital driver time alignment would allow you to construct a vertical Ardent baffle. You still need a clever baffle design(bevels or rounds) to minimize edge distortion, but DSP power can smooth many baffle edge SPL bumps. DSP will allow you to use fast-transient sealed box woofers, and also equalize room effects for smooth deep bass.
DSP would allow you to accurately equalize at the listener the minimal front tweeter bezel B&W uses on its tapered tube tweeters.
The B&W have a characteristic sound that follows from crossing a large midrange to a tweeter at a high frequency. The on-axis response deviates significantly from flat in order to help compensate but a characteristic sound remains. The other two speakers differ significantly in this respect.
The Bordeaux has a characteristic sound from the use of a ribbon tweeter and spraying the rear radiation from the midrange over the front wall.
The Ardent appears more conventional but some of the detail design choices are non standard leading to, for example, an abnormally low sensitivity. It is very expensive.
All three of the speakers lack some of the things that would be done if a high sound quality in a technical sense was a strongly weighted factor. The radiation pattern is not well controlled and this has a significant influence on the sound quality perceived in the home. Passive crossovers lack the flexibility, control and technical performance provided by competent active DSP crossovers.
What gets DIY speaker folks juices flowing varies widely which is on balance a good thing but it can lead to some confusion when the criteria by which folk judge speakers varies strongly. My views may or may not be relevant to how you see things.
Thanks for the replies! Andy, I like what you had to say. I may have worded my goal wrong though. I don't necessarily want to emulate the B&W sound, I would just like to have of the same quality sound. I see that the Ardents were an improvement over commercial speakers costing over 50k per pair, so I'd assume it would be of the same quality or higher! And yes, I was planning on using DSP for crossover vs passive. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction for a guide and good equipment; what to look for is DSP? Thanks!
Hmmm... Improvements depend on a person's criteria. There are certainly commercial boutique home audio speaker costing over $50k that by my criteria are significantly inferior to the Ardents. On the other hand, there are also a number of commercial speakers costing less than $50k that I would prefer to the Ardents.
The Ardents are far from being poor DIY speakers but... they are built from pretty much the most expensive drivers on the DIY market, very expensive but passive crossover, modestly engineered cabinet, modest control of radiation pattern, some oddities like low sensitivity,... This is partly about technical performance but mainly about my values compared to the values of the designer of the Ardent and those that consider the Ardents to be an improvement over speakers costing $50k.
For me quality is reflected in using what is sufficient to do the job with nonfunctional excess that raises something unwanted like price, weight, size,... being poor design. Many, probably most, don't judge luxury products like this and they are not wrong to do so just different.
I also weight technical performance more strongly than most home audio enthusiasts and sounds good less strongly. Again there is nothing right or wrong about this when it comes to luxury products. Note that pretty much all audiophiles consider the speakers they like high performance but what they actually mean by performance is the tricky, and at times baffling, bit.
Yes I agree with what you're saying. I agree with what you consider quality except for technoical performance. I weight heavily what sounds goods. I dont care what the data sheet shows IF it shows problems in the inaudible range.
I think I would rather DSP vs passive cross over design. I'm waiting to hear what Jon has to say about DSP Wavecor Ardents. However, I'd like to get your advise on a DIY DSP build. Do you know of any proven designs? Any build guides? Or is it as simple as following a passive speaker design, omitting the passive crossover, and use DSP instead?
I think I would rather DSP vs passive cross over design. I'm waiting to hear what Jon has to say about DSP Wavecor Ardents. However, I'd like to get your advise on a DIY DSP build. Do you know of any proven designs? Any build guides? Or is it as simple as following a passive speaker design, omitting the passive crossover, and use DSP instead?
That makes guidance from others less useful. It can only be up to you to determine which characteristic sounds you find good but you are likely to find little on the topic of what is responsible for creating them. B&W for example are unlikely to include discussions in their marketing on why they have opted to cross a large midrange at a high frequency to a tweeter because it will draw attention to the fact that a characteristic sound is a deviation from a more neutral sound and for many will look like a form of distortion and hence a negative. They will have solid commercial reasons for doing it but I don't what they are. Anyone?
One could reproduce a passive crossover with an active one but why would you want to? The components in a passive crossover interact with each other, have passive slopes, struggle with the time delays between drivers, have discrete slopes, etc... and whatever you come up with is then fixed. An active crossover has none of these problems and can be adapted to different rooms or a different positions in a room by reprogramming at zero financial cost and little in time and effort. Their ability to have a variable slope allows for significantly better control over beam width with frequency which is one of the main areas today where real rather than marketed improvements in technical sound quality are happening. Not much in the DIY speaker world yet but it will grow.
Yeah this is the problem with DIY. Im VERY nervous about dumping $5K into speakers I never heard before!
The main thing I want in a speaker is a huge soundstage, with very detailed sound. That 3D effect. I love it!
Do you have any DSPs that you'd recommend? I saw miniDSP HD. But I looked at the measurement reviews and it doesn't perform well. About as well as $50 DSPs
The main thing I want in a speaker is a huge soundstage, with very detailed sound. That 3D effect. I love it!
Do you have any DSPs that you'd recommend? I saw miniDSP HD. But I looked at the measurement reviews and it doesn't perform well. About as well as $50 DSPs
Well like I said, I'm not trying to emulate B&W. I was just trying to give you guys an idea of the sound I like. I only have one high end audio store which is Magnolia. Really, the only high end stuff they have was B&W, and some martin logan, one KEF pair. I loved ML electrostatics!
Anyway, I'm mainly looking for a huge sound stage with very detailed, crisp sound.
Anyway, I'm mainly looking for a huge sound stage with very detailed, crisp sound.
They dont carry 603 
Nubert shipping would be outrageous. I'm in the US. I've seen your posts while searching through thee forums. It seems like you're an advocate for DSP instead of passive cross over. Do you have and recommendations? I was looking at Hypex FUSION AMP FA253. Seems to measure very well.
Nubert shipping would be outrageous. I'm in the US. I've seen your posts while searching through thee forums. It seems like you're an advocate for DSP instead of passive cross over. Do you have and recommendations? I was looking at Hypex FUSION AMP FA253. Seems to measure very well.If you sit close to speakers the direct sound will be louder than the indirect sound making things clearer. Prevent sound from diffracting off sharp edges and that will also help. Various characteristic sounds can give an impression of detail so finding out which may be helpful.
As mentioned earlier, I am at the end of the wide spectrum of people interested in home audio that believes science and audibility thresholds hold rather than that everything sounds different in the manner of many enthusiasts from the other end of the spectrum. I have little interest in minidsp hardware because it is closed proprietary and expensive. I would want to pay less than $50 for 2 channels of DAC because I would be using quite a few channels. I doubt any recommendations from me would be relevant.
You would also need to reproduce to some extent the "baffle" around the midrange and tweeter in order to reproduce the radiation pattern since DSP cannot influence how sound radiates from a speaker.
So...
It looks like I may be the only person who has actually heard the Bordeaux?
They are a fantastic sounding speaker. I have heard them several times.
They are super detailed without sounding harsh. And they are very open sounding.
The only thing I might not be able to live with over a long period, is the mids, although very open and expansive sounding, they do lack some image specificity. Probably due to being open back.
So, if you like extreme pinpoint imaging, they lack a bit of that. But some people consider that aspect of audio reproduction, to be kind of fake, when compared to live sound reproduction. YMMV.
I would say, they compare favorably to commercially available speakers at $10K-12K.
As others have said, DSP could be a great way to go in your budget.
You might want to take a look at Linkwitz LX521.4. Really fantastic.
LX521.4 Store
It looks like I may be the only person who has actually heard the Bordeaux?
They are a fantastic sounding speaker. I have heard them several times.
They are super detailed without sounding harsh. And they are very open sounding.
The only thing I might not be able to live with over a long period, is the mids, although very open and expansive sounding, they do lack some image specificity. Probably due to being open back.
So, if you like extreme pinpoint imaging, they lack a bit of that. But some people consider that aspect of audio reproduction, to be kind of fake, when compared to live sound reproduction. YMMV.
I would say, they compare favorably to commercially available speakers at $10K-12K.
As others have said, DSP could be a great way to go in your budget.
You might want to take a look at Linkwitz LX521.4. Really fantastic.
LX521.4 Store
You are correct.
But they are so accurate, dynamic, detailed, that they might appeal to many anyways.
It all depends on how willing one is to give up pinpoint imaging. I wasn't stating they might be a good choice of me, long term, but they sure would appeal to many others.
I do tend to put an unhealthy amount of priority on pinpoint imaging, even though it may diverge from reality. But it just helps suck me into the music.
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