Ideally I could do a diy for something slightly better than the 602s for less than the price of the 602s, the issue is international shipping just kills me as I live in south america. And I am wondering If I might be able to deck out a cdc machine that my buddy is buying and just crank out some speakers and test the market...
The MB27s, as I built them, cost $490 a pair in August 2012 prices in the USA. That included a pre-made and pre-finished cabinet with curved sides. The same speaker in a similar cabinet with rectangular sides cost $442 per pair.
Send me your email address in a Private Message (PM) and I'll send you the full write up with many build photos. Even if you build a different design, you'll learn a lot from this.
Looking for something I can match with an
@TLS Guy 's 18" dayton ported sub build. So I am thinking something that gets high passed at 60 or 70.
These speakers go down to 55 Hz, so they would work well with any 12" or larger sub.
I am not good at describing speaker sounds, I really like the forward slight brightness of the B&W's. I cant explain it though, I just like what I like.
I am familiar with the 602s. Many people like that "forward slight brightness" at first, it gives the impression of great detail. With time, most people experience "listeners fatigue" and start disliking it. It's caused by B&W's Kevlar woofer and their use of a very high crossover frequency. The Kevlar woofer has some high frequency resonance that, with the right music, can sound harsh and noisy. B&W's crossover doesn't filter that noise out.
The MB27, in my opinion, is a better 2-way than the 602. Dennis Murphy designed it, and it looses nothing in the all important mid range – the frequency response across that range is essentially flat. But it avoids the harsh upper mid range/lower treble of the B&Ws. I also believe, the 5½" woofer in the MB27 makes more widely dispersed mid range than the larger B&W woofer. The helps create better imaging.
The biggest issue I currently have is deep male voices in movies get muddied when they talk deep which I am guessing is around the 75hz mark from googling male voice range
I am hoping htat adding a sub and a highpass will clean up this minor snafu, but we will see
Also a problem with the 602s. B&W got too greedy with the cabinet bass tuning. To get more bass, they overemphasized the frequency range where the male voice can sound too bassy. This also makes some music sound muddy.
