Just wanted to share with you guys what all I did last year and the future plans for this year. I was a total newbie with diy at the beginning of last year. My only experience was a sub and I wanted to make some speakers as thats the fastest way to sonic nirvana.
Alpair 7 - That was my first project, for my desktop system I wanted a full range speakers as these are easy to make, even easier than subs as all I needed was the drivers and binding posts. I just made a simple cabinet sealed around 6L in volume. Later I added some damping and stuffing materials. Driving these with topping tp20, I liked the amp in the beginning but now I am quite bored of it and want to make something better, but thats for later. I was very happy with the sound quality of the speakers, the vocals, tonality of the instruments, soundstage is great with these. These are not your general purpose speakers. Where these excel, they beat most of the other speakers, but not for all genres. Good for vocals, light music, jazz, blues, light classical etc. Not very good for complicated music where there are a lot of instruments playing at the same time. Sucks with bad sources, mp3 etc. You definitely need another pair of speakers to go with these.
Overnight sensations:
These are my first 2way speakers. Real cheap, good quality. General purpose speakers. I had almost stopped listening to rock, metal etc when I only had alpairs till I got the OS. These do good with most of the music genres. Good bass for such a small speakers (4.5L ported). I use it on my terrace also with the topping as these are small and almost portable. In the long run, you will need a sub with these. With a sub, these can handle about 20w. oh and these do well even with my ipod as source, or with 128kbps mp3s.
Continuums:
These are inspired from the harbeth ps3esr, designed by Jeff Bagby. Looks also the same, but I couldnt go for removable front baffle as my wife didnt like the screws in the front as that looks very industrial, so I had to seal the front baffle and no screws. These use the aurum cantus ac130f1 and dayton rs28a. These play most of the genres very well and come very very close to alpair 7 in the performance. Stunning stunning speakers, absolutely amazing sound, probably the best small 2way speakers I have ever heard in my entire life. Little low on bass as its 5.25" woofer in a sealed cabinet, but very good and tight bass though. Initially I was planning to use these for surrounds for my home theater, but when I heard these, I was like, wtf, cant use such awesome speakers for surrounds, moved these also to my desktop. Now I have two pairs there. Perfect:yahoo:
BTW, these are also sold by salk sound for around 1200$. For diy, it costed me a little over 300$ for parts. I believe meniscus audio will soon have a kit for these. Currently the design is not open source, you have to send an email to the designer to get the design, its free of cost though.
This year, I am planning to do these projects:
ER18MTM
This is a design by dennis murphy and paul kittinger (salk sound designers). This one falls somewhere in between the songtower and ht2tl in terms of sound quality and parts price. I got the parts recently but I am yet to move a finger for these. Hopefully soon.
These will eventually goto my main ht system. I am really looking forward to hearing these.
Sub:
I wanted to make a sub for my desktop system, got the tb 1363sb driver also, still waiting for my amp which is lying with my friend in california. Sometimes there are disadvantages of getting stuff from US. I might get it in march, so lets see.
I think I will give a bit of a rest for speaker making. Eventually I want to make a scanspeak system, something like zrt2.5, jazzman or ekta/ekta grande, but so far, no money for these or permission from wifey.
This year I plan to tackle the electronics mainly. A 2 channel power amp for my desktop system, I will use the topping just for portable purposes. A pre-power amp for the main system and probably a dac too. That should keep my busy for a while. I will be posting threads to get some recommendations for these from you guys.:lol:
Alpair 7 - That was my first project, for my desktop system I wanted a full range speakers as these are easy to make, even easier than subs as all I needed was the drivers and binding posts. I just made a simple cabinet sealed around 6L in volume. Later I added some damping and stuffing materials. Driving these with topping tp20, I liked the amp in the beginning but now I am quite bored of it and want to make something better, but thats for later. I was very happy with the sound quality of the speakers, the vocals, tonality of the instruments, soundstage is great with these. These are not your general purpose speakers. Where these excel, they beat most of the other speakers, but not for all genres. Good for vocals, light music, jazz, blues, light classical etc. Not very good for complicated music where there are a lot of instruments playing at the same time. Sucks with bad sources, mp3 etc. You definitely need another pair of speakers to go with these.
Overnight sensations:
These are my first 2way speakers. Real cheap, good quality. General purpose speakers. I had almost stopped listening to rock, metal etc when I only had alpairs till I got the OS. These do good with most of the music genres. Good bass for such a small speakers (4.5L ported). I use it on my terrace also with the topping as these are small and almost portable. In the long run, you will need a sub with these. With a sub, these can handle about 20w. oh and these do well even with my ipod as source, or with 128kbps mp3s.
Continuums:
These are inspired from the harbeth ps3esr, designed by Jeff Bagby. Looks also the same, but I couldnt go for removable front baffle as my wife didnt like the screws in the front as that looks very industrial, so I had to seal the front baffle and no screws. These use the aurum cantus ac130f1 and dayton rs28a. These play most of the genres very well and come very very close to alpair 7 in the performance. Stunning stunning speakers, absolutely amazing sound, probably the best small 2way speakers I have ever heard in my entire life. Little low on bass as its 5.25" woofer in a sealed cabinet, but very good and tight bass though. Initially I was planning to use these for surrounds for my home theater, but when I heard these, I was like, wtf, cant use such awesome speakers for surrounds, moved these also to my desktop. Now I have two pairs there. Perfect:yahoo:
BTW, these are also sold by salk sound for around 1200$. For diy, it costed me a little over 300$ for parts. I believe meniscus audio will soon have a kit for these. Currently the design is not open source, you have to send an email to the designer to get the design, its free of cost though.
This year, I am planning to do these projects:
ER18MTM
This is a design by dennis murphy and paul kittinger (salk sound designers). This one falls somewhere in between the songtower and ht2tl in terms of sound quality and parts price. I got the parts recently but I am yet to move a finger for these. Hopefully soon.
These will eventually goto my main ht system. I am really looking forward to hearing these.Sub:
I wanted to make a sub for my desktop system, got the tb 1363sb driver also, still waiting for my amp which is lying with my friend in california. Sometimes there are disadvantages of getting stuff from US. I might get it in march, so lets see.
I think I will give a bit of a rest for speaker making. Eventually I want to make a scanspeak system, something like zrt2.5, jazzman or ekta/ekta grande, but so far, no money for these or permission from wifey.
This year I plan to tackle the electronics mainly. A 2 channel power amp for my desktop system, I will use the topping just for portable purposes. A pre-power amp for the main system and probably a dac too. That should keep my busy for a while. I will be posting threads to get some recommendations for these from you guys.:lol:
hyeah:
. This year am planning to do some thing bit more interesting like an amp based on lm3886 (my ref c or Xcalibre), a peerless based bookshelfs and subwoofer. 
