I want new bookshelves, but I don't need them. UGH!

[MalVeauX]

Thanks all, super helpful! So I'll cup it in the bottom chamber, and looks like none of it goes in the upper chamber. I can always take it apart and move it or add more and once it's sounding right, I'll glue it.

I plan to secure the crossover to the bottom of the cabinet so it doesn't flop around when moving the cabinet around. And will glue the material once its finalized to avoid it falling or moving and changing things.

Very best,

 

[ryanosaur]

Thanks all, super helpful! So I'll cup it in the bottom chamber, and looks like none of it goes in the upper chamber. I can always take it apart and move it or add more and once it's sounding right, I'll glue it.

I plan to secure the crossover to the bottom of the cabinet so it doesn't flop around when moving the cabinet around. And will glue the material once its finalized to avoid it falling or moving and changing things.

Very best,

Yes, use the screws and a little hot glue on the xo board to secure it.
I assure you that extra stuffing or affixing that taco of ecocore with glue is completely unnecessary: it will not go anywhere.

 

[MalVeauX]

Update,

Well, I couldn't wait. I'll lose some sleep. Alas. I put them together. I followed the advice given here. I did not screw in the crossovers, I instead simply used some hot glue to keep them on the bottom of the cabinet, centered approximately (per the instructions). I put the dampening material in as a symmetrical cup. It finally made more sense when I realized it's supposed to be up close to the woofer and the gap behind the material, so long as the woofer is as isolated by the dampening material as possible, the waves will not reflect back into the woofer from the cabinet. The rest of the install was pretty straight forward. I made sure both cabinets were assmebled the same and that the wires were correct in terms of polarity and that the placement, droop, etc, of the wires were identical. After securing, nothing moved or rattled. I won't get a chance to do a solid listen through, but I tested them on a 50 watt integrated amp and they sounded great for a quick play of a song to ensure I had everything right.

I'll update again with a more in depth review of them, unprofessional of course, maybe do some measurements to see how they respond in my current room.

Forgive the mess and placement; this is strictly just a build log not meant to show off the speakers as a display. My work desk is a hot mess, and the AA+'s dwarf the Monitor 30 II's that they're sitting on top of.

Terminal removal, to make it much easier to connect the crossover to the rear terminal and placed it back:

Placement (hot glue) of the crossover board:

Tweeter hooked up and placement:

Placement of the dampening material behind the woofer like a cup:

Hooked up the woofer and installed it:

First sound test on my messy desk. Forgive placement and the junk. This was just a test on my work desk to ensure I put them together correctly.

Will update soon with a more in depth review and thoughts.

Thanks everyone for the help!

Very best,

 

[ryanosaur]

Hopefully one of those glasses had some good Whiskey in it!

Congrats on getting them together.

 

[MalVeauX]

Hopefully one of those glasses had some good Whiskey in it!

Congrats on getting them together.

It was some Elijah Craig with a 3" ice sphere.

I listened a bit to a few tracks and they sounded great. I plan to do a full listen through with the CD Dennis sends with the kit as the test and then listen to some tracks that I'm very familiar with. After that I'll do some measurements with my calibrated mic in REW and share how my room responds to them and look for any issues that may be correctable with build. My biggest fear was a rattle or things moving around inside like the wires or popping from wire contact in and out and other stuff. But they took current from my amp with no weird sounds, no rattles, just replicating my sine waves fed in from the DAC.

The test bed will be an Emotiva A-100 Mini X 50 watt inegrated amp fed from my Maverick TubeMagic D2 DAC, I'll use the solid state pre-amp out stage first and then see how the tube pre-amp out stage is later with music.

Very best,

 

[Swerd]

It was some Elijah Craig with a 3" ice sphere.

I listened a bit to a few tracks and they sounded great. I plan to do a full listen through with the CD Dennis sends with the kit as the test and then listen to some tracks that I'm very familiar with. After that I'll do some measurements with my calibrated mic in REW and share how my room responds to them and look for any issues that may be correctable with build. My biggest fear was a rattle or things moving around inside like the wires or popping from wire contact in and out and other stuff. But they took current from my amp with no weird sounds, no rattles, just replicating my sine waves fed in from the DAC.

The test bed will be an Emotiva A-100 Mini X 50 watt inegrated amp fed from my Maverick TubeMagic D2 DAC, I'll use the solid state pre-amp out stage first and then see how the tube pre-amp out stage is later with music.

I was glad to see how easy it was to assemble the kit.

The overall build quality of the crossover board & wiring looks very good. The wires look like 16g in your photos. Not bad for a cheap kit.

It looks like those QDs worked well at firmly attaching to the male QD tabs on the drivers and binding post cup. And I noticed that you drove those black screws in without leaving any marks, scars, or torn woofer cones . The hardest part may have been describing in words how to put the Eco-Core lining/stuffing into the cabinet.

Thanks for the very good photos. I hope you enjoy how these speakers sound.

 

[zieglj01]

The hobby can cause one to lose some sleep ... you did a good job ... I have some experience with the work of Dennis ... enjoy the audio adventure

 

[lovinthehd]

I saw Dennis mention elsewhere that he's sold out of the kits and will look to have someone else source them in the future so he can concentrate on BMRs....can't remember if he said Meniscus or Madisound....

 

[MalVeauX]

Well I'm so far very pleased with these for the cost, so I'm glad to have gotten them before they become unavailable again (if that's the case). I imagine he isn't make any profit from this and its more a labor of passion. Just pricing and sourcing the stuff to do this, it pretty much ends up barely breaking even at the end of the day.

The tweeter is approximately $84 a piece from what I could find. So two of those.
The woofers are $23 a piece, so two of those.
BR-1 cabinets are $72 for the pair.

That's $286 just for those materials. That's not even including tax/shipping.

The current AA+ are $370 shipped. So only $84 more to go, and $20 of that was flat rate shipping, so in materials, only $64 in materials to cover both crossovers and materials involved in that (wires and all that).

So even if you bought all that, in bulk, its not enough to make a profit. So these are pretty much at cost. It's truly a service to the community. I'm grateful!

It makes me wonder too, what, if anything, could be potentially gained from a higher quality 6.5" woofer. There's nothing lacking that I can tell, so far, but just looking at options, it seems like that is something that could be potentially replaced one day for a better woofer. But then again, maybe it would not make a difference as these do the job quite well enough?

Very best,

 

[Harrison Ranch]

Hey all,

Hope everyone has been doing well during this past less than delightful year.

Bring cooped up had its benefits for various hobbies though I suppose, such as audio listening for pleasure and not just background noise. I spend a lot of time at my desk on my PC workstation and generally like to have music playing while I read or write or do various work.

I think I want to get some new bookshelf speakers, strictly for music. I currently really enjoy my Polk Monitor 30's & 40's in near field on an Emotiva A-100 Mini-X 50 watt amp signal from my Maverick Audio TubeMagic D2 (tube pre-amp output). I don't need new bookshelves. I realize these are entry. But they're checking most of the boxes for me, so I've just not bothered to climb into something more costly over the years and I've had them for about 10 years now. But, I'm always "window shopping" like probably everyone here, curious how something might sound, be better, or whatever we get metaphysical about.

The problem is, I like too many things and it's probably mood based. Sometimes I want a clinical experience; I want to hear the most minute flaw in the recording or detail (such as inhalation before the next words, toe tapping with an instrument, the reverb of the hammers in the pinao, etc). Sometimes I just really enjoy the non-perfect extra sound that comes with the audio from a good recording that gives it a more human feel and is less of a perfect synthetic representation. And then to go to the other pole, sometimes I just want a syrupy gooey soupy warm experience without hearing edgy treble and everything just sounds casually good. It's hard to get that in one pair of speakers, without equalization (which I'm fine with doing!). I usually do not use a subwoofer when I'm listening to most music, so I think I would prefer a pair of bookshelves that are pretty competent for most music without a sub. This is near field listening in my office for context.

Things I'm listening to a lot lately: Queen & Journey's greatest hits, The Cranberries (and her side projects), Donald Fagen, Louise Rogers, Sonata Artica, TimeCop 1983... I know, it's all over the place. Everything is mood based right?

So I'm curious, based on that, does anyone have any recommendations either way? Reading reviews, some are so clinical that it's just measurements and that doesn't really represent the above perfectly. And then there are totally subjective reviews where it's just basically they like it or they don't and compare to things you may not have listened to (which is almost everyone). So it's hard to really nail something down. I guess that's half the fun?

I'm thinking $500 for the pair, give or take.

Things I've been window shopping from reading and from how they look (because that matters too!):

Canton 502's or 526's
KEF Q350's
ELAC Debut 2.0 B6.2's or Reference DBR62's
Klipsch RP-160M's or RP-500M's or RP-600M's
PSB Alpha P5's
Monitor Audio Bronze 50's or 100's
Polk Signature S20's
Philharmonic AA+'s
Chane A1.5's

In general, I prefer the look of warm darker woods, like Walnut finishes.

Of course, I cannot audition all these. Sadly.

If I had to just gamble it right now, I'm weirdly drawn to the idea of the Monitor Audio 100's. But I have zero basis for it.

I really should just get off the internet, and listen to what I have. Sigh.

Very best,

I have Infinity, Elac, and B&W 600. All bookshelf and the B&Ws purchased used from Hawthorne stereo in Seattle. The B&Ws have the richest and warmest sound of the three and came at a good price used.

 

[MalVeauX]

I've been listening to the Philharmonic AA+'s for a few days now. Still fantastic sound. Great imaging. Great sound stage. The dispersion of the tweeter is really great. Positioning is important, but it's not super critical to the point where if you move your head and you're out of the sweet spot it's super obvious, so that's great. I actually really like their look, very simple, to the point. They're quite large monitors and dwarf my previous monitors (they're sitting on top of them in this image!). Dialog and vocals sounds natural and real. They're not boomy, but they dig deep. So far, 34hz has not been a problem to dig down and hold a sustained tone. The demo CD that Dennis sends along is great for really hearing the full ranges of things with a great assortment in addition to my own personal tracks that I know very well and can compare with.

I hope to get some measurements soon. I still want to play with placement. My desk is actually too small for these at the moments with my monitors, so I need to look into building some stands or putting a new topper on my desk to extend it out more. And I'll take them out into my field for a "middle of a 5 acre field test" to be my pseudo anechoic chamber (strictly for fun for me to see).

The central landscape orientation monitor here is a 28" 4K IPS for reference to size of these monitors. They're not gigantic, but they're definitely on the larger size and deep cabinets. And I prefer all my speakers with grills off and these are no exception, their look is growing on me a lot. I dig the simple, elegant, no-brand look.

Very best,

 

[lovinthehd]

I'd get them setup better than that nearfield computer setup for a better test of their abilities.

 

[MalVeauX]

I'd get them setup better than that nearfield computer setup for a better test of their abilities.

They will be, the office is just a temporary spot for now. Space is limited as we get ready to build the new house.

These damn things take up so much space and spread their things everywhere. There's towers under all that.... sigh. They've taken over nearly everything.

Very best,

 

[panteragstk]

They will be, the office is just a temporary spot for now. Space is limited as we get ready to build the new house.

These damn things take up so much space and spread their things everywhere. There's towers under all that.... sigh. They've taken over nearly everything.

View attachment 46203

Very best,

I feel your pain. They get bigger and so does their stuff.

My oldest (7) has a damn CASTLE that takes up 1/4 of her bedroom floor space. She's happy though. They all seem to be getting more into music, but then I play stuff and they collectively agree that they don't like my music.

Granted, they have a dance recital and it has an 80's theme so I played them some 80's music I like. Apparently Slayer isn't the vibe their dance studio was going for...

I just hope they some day want me to build them some speakers. They already "helped" me build a pair. It was fun.

 

[MalVeauX]

Yessir!

My oldest is also 7, and she actually loves EDM and is a huge Daft Punk fan. She asks for the "robot music." And she used to dance & tumble to Kaskade lol. She has her own pair of towers on her gaming PC (Steam) and jams out and the games sound great. She's spoiled. Full size headphones on her tablet too, cause she's spoiled.

Just exposing them to this stuff, maybe when I'm ancient and they're older, they won't mind sitting in a room and doing a listen through to a good set of tracks with their old man and appreciate it differently than if they didn't get exposed to this stuff early on.

Very best,

 

[panteragstk]

Yessir!

My oldest is also 7, and she actually loves EDM and is a huge Daft Punk fan. She asks for the "robot music." And she used to dance & tumble to Kaskade lol. She has her own pair of towers on her gaming PC (Steam) and jams out and the games sound great. She's spoiled. Full size headphones on her tablet too, cause she's spoiled.

Just exposing them to this stuff, maybe when I'm ancient and they're older, they won't mind sitting in a room and doing a listen through to a good set of tracks with their old man and appreciate it differently than if they didn't get exposed to this stuff early on.

View attachment 46212

Very best,

That's awesome. I just got mine into retro gaming on the NES and SNES. They'll graduate to a gaming PC when there aren't three of them to fight over it.

Or if I decide to upgrade again and not sell my video cards that are now impossible to find.

Either way, yours are off to a good start.

 

[MalVeauX]

That's awesome. I just got mine into retro gaming on the NES and SNES. They'll graduate to a gaming PC when there aren't three of them to fight over it.

Or if I decide to upgrade again and not sell my video cards that are now impossible to find.

Either way, yours are off to a good start.

I did that too, NES ROMS were the gateway. The main appeal was multi-player games with game pads instead of mouse/keyboard. So our steam games, most of them are couch coop games with game pads and that way they can all play together, just like we did with consoles when we were younger. I had an Atari then NES, but never got anything after that and 40 years later we play console-like-games on steam instead lol.

Very best,

 

[ryanosaur]

decide to upgrade again and not sell my video cards

start mining cryptos!

 

[panteragstk]

start mining cryptos!

I have enough computers in my house generating heat. I want no part of that world.

 

[MalVeauX]

Sent the family to go dye eggs for the weekend at a grandparent's house and had the house to myself. So naturally, I took the Philharmonics into the living room and placed them on top of my towers out there and hooked up to my reciever out there. First, I left it completely simple, direct, no processing, no EQ/DSP, etc. It easily filled the room and everything sounded good, very neutral, not overly warm, but not anemic either. That room is pretty good for response and it held up there too. For fun, I set an EQ and warmed it up, a bit of a heavier house curve basically. Man, it was just gooey warm good. They were able to dig deep and be pretty comptent with all that extra warmth while still having natural sounding dialog. Action sounded great, not sloppy, good and tight, with good impact.

Currently listening to them on a tube pre-amp out DAC with a 50 watt power amp on channel A and with high level out to a 12" sub on channel B and blended them manually. Running through Dennis's demo CD and everything just sounds so realistic. Fantastic little setup.

Next project for them is to build some 36 inch +/- stands. Everything is so short commercially it seems. So probably will just get some wood at Lowes and cut it and sand it and bolt it together to make some heavy, sturdy taller stands for these.

Very best,