Santa's pair have just been listed!

Here is the link the eBay auction:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/224237028790

Ha ha.  I just put in the first bid.  Normally I'd wait till the last seconds to bid but I want Steve the have a Merry Christmas and get a ton for these!  

Thanks Steve, I'll keep an eye open for the lenses. I'm being told by PE that the drivers will be shipped on 11/20. Fingers crossed

Melvin,

I listened to these speakers for months before I ever heard them with a sub ; )

And you're right, tweaking around them pays off big time.  They can go from amusing, to amazing with the right amps, wire, etc., and I believe it is actually well worth it.

In the near field, with great components and wire, it is astonishing what they can actually do.

Steve

The Bubinga pair coming soon is just about done.  I'll be installing the drivers and testing this week.  I have been waiting for more lenses.  While the wood lenses or my 3D printed lenses are nice, they require an hour to sand and paint.  The nylon lenses I am having made are laser sintered where a nylon powder is melted in layers by a laser.  These come with a prefect textured finish and are made from black nylon so no finishing.  Just take them out of the bag and glue them on.  Plus you can't break one.  They are expensive, but since they eliminated an hour of labor, they are worth it.

So here is the block cut into 8 equal panels... each pushing 3/4 inch before getting machined flat.  This is going to stress the system, but I think it can do it fine.

The router operations are just going to take 3 Times as long since it has to be set so deep (high).

 

So that's a trip... they are so thick that the corner posts disappear inside the walls!!!

Yup, they're feeling pretty heavy.  Bocote is heavy to begin with, and this feeling great.  It's not as heavy as Bloodwood, but I'm mad at Bloodwood right now.

Those square red oak dowels go all the way through the speaker.  These are what the plinth is glued ( or screwed) to.  

My guess is that these will either sound like crap or better than ever.  Can't wait to find out.

Here is what they look like without the plinths and right now they are playing with the hard wood corner posts just acting as feet.

While the thickness of the wood is the obvious factor, having no plinth with this kind of density may actually be more appropriate.  We will see.

I can tell you after listening to 50 pair from this same exact spot these are noticeably better in every category.  My sub is temporarily un connected while some repairs to furnace are being done here in the shop so I couldn't listen to it with a sub if I wanted to.  

As always I am listening to electronic music to move that woofer for a fast break-in and man it's really nice sounding. Frankly when this project started I thought, "yea, nice novelty speaker that doesn't actually suck...
" but now we have gone safely beyond that.

These speakers with zero break-in sound noticeably improved, so knowing me, things will migrate in this direction. Talk has already taken place about carving one from a solid block of wood using a CNC router, which would end up being the same max thickness as this one I made.

Of course, unless I buy a CNC router myself there is no guarantee anything will come of it, and I can already say that probably buying a shaper  or two to replace the routers would be far more effective and save God knows how many hours of dicking around with a CNC machine. My laser cutter was enough for me... a lesson in how to make a 2K eBay special cost more than an 8K American one.

These sound so refined I'd be willing to bet the difference might be able to be measured.  I might do that when the steel plinths arrive... measure the stock Tiny Radial with the wood plinth vs the steel plinth and so on.

One thing I noticed, on a normal Tiny Radial paired with a 2 watt Zen Triode amplifier, turned to clipping (usually 3/4 volume) the speakers will dance on the table they are setting on.  And the cone excursion is at least 1/8 inch.  On this pair, I can't make them move, and the speaker cone only moves half as far and I can turn the amp up louder.  Probably at least 1.5 to 2 dB louder.  A more powerful amp I can see easily 3 dB which is to say the density of the enclosure has literally doubled the power handling.

Sorry it's a sickness... I always get sucked into finding out what the window boundaries are (how thick vs. how thin for example) and continually jack with it until it can't get any better without becoming something else.  So in the case of Tiny Radials two ideal peaks have emerged... one for the best thickness for manufacturing and one for best sound quality that takes three times longer.  

The thing is that before this experiment is over I wouldn't be surprised to find that the 5/16 thickness panels which the vast majority of Tiny Radials have been built to lend themselves to heavy bass settings on a subwoofer which is to say if you are going to be using a subwoofer it's possible that the standard 5/16" thickness may blend better with the sub than these thicker versions.

But as a stand alone speaker, with no bass augmentation of any kind, clearly this is the top edge of that window where the best sound can be had.  Interesting, since this thicker version will add somewhere between 100 and 200 dollars American to the price, and the subwoofer is only 100 dollars American, which would sound better, the sub with 5/16 Tiny Radials or a pair of super heavy Tiny Radials without a sub....

That's a question that for the majority I already know the answer to. : )

Donnie, you're welcome to visit any time.  I didn't have a pair made, I had a lot made.  Already know it's going to work well, so I want to be able to put them into production. : )

Thanks Nick,

Are you using a sub with them?

Steve, question on the dimensions. With the thicker wood, the outside stays the same size and the inside gets smaller? Does the inside need a certain volume? From your picture with the driver it seems the outside is the same size on all thickness of wood, is that correct?
Thanks,
John

Could you achieve some of the same results by filling the void in the cabinet with lead shot?

I forgot about the passive radiator. I finally get my hands on a pair this Wednesday. I have Bubinga, Padauk and Canarywood on the way as well. I'm going to build each of the kids a pair for xmas.

I am also still waiting for drivers and the lens order was delayed due to QC issues so I am also waiting for those... meanwhile  

Today, while going through my scrap wood shelf I found some Wenge panels I started once and abandoned because the Wenge didn't like the pattern router.  Now I also have jigs for the table saw so I can cut the panels with no splintering, so I did.

They went together without any issues.  I'll see how they look tomorrow.

Sounds like a "Heavy Metal" speaker if there ever was one.

I have 73 people on the wish list, most waiting for their first pair!  Suffice it to say I'm looking at ways to deal with that.

Steve

Hi Brian,

The short answer is not yet.  However I will be adding the 3D lenses to the page over the holidays so that people can purchase them separately.

My long term plan is to have 3 sizes of lens so that the stack remains tapered.

Sadly what relaxation time I usually spend making Tiny Radials was lost because I was 6 days with the flu and got absolutely nothing done anywhere, so of course now I am behind on everything.

Drivers arrived this week from Parts Express- just need to take some brave pills now and measure three times before cutting the expensive Walnut once.

Wanted to add my observations after a couple of days with my new Tiny Radials.

I work as a testing technician at The Music Room, and test and listen to lots of hifi gear every week. I received the speakers on Thursday and immediately began burning them in with bass-heavy music. I was also burning in a new set of speaker cables I made for them after reading Steve's experiences with different cabling and the TRs. I had made a set of 40mm copper foil ribbon cables and decided not to group them together but let the positive and negative leads fall where they may.

The first night was not too impressive! Both elements needed to break in properly, the speakers perhaps a bit more than the cables.

By the next day, they were starting to open up, and I listened to the TRs on a variety of amplifiers, including a Willsenton R8 tube amp, an Inspire tube amp by Dennis Hadd, a Pass Labs amplifier, a pair of PS Audio class D (A input stage) amps, etc.

What I noticed was that the speakers really like tubes and linear amplifiers, and aren't the biggest fans of class D, although the 3D imaging was still interesting if not impressive with those class D amps. I noticed that on my desk, I liked the frequency balance of the TRs best when they were just forward of my elbows on the desk, i.e. quite close to my ears. The soundstage was very impressive, floating high above the speakers and quite spherical in shape.

Where things really got interesting was when I turned on my main desktop speakers as well as the TRs, driven from the same class D amplifier, and spaced the TRs very wide, so they would not confuse the direct sound coming from the main speakers, but add to the dimensionality of the soundstage. My main speakers are very good, and set up well to cast a great center image and decently wide stage, but with the TRs in place it was.... other worldly. The largest soundstage I've ever heard in my life, with huge separation between images, cement-lock of images in space and still a very lifelike and focused center image.

To anyone adding these to your desk who may also have other speakers in the mix, I urge you to give this a try!

Later in the evening I went over to my engineer friend Darren's house (he's a hifi product designer), and we listened for a couple hours to his analog system. He's got a very nice VPI table, and he put his 4th or 5th best cartridge on it (the Lyras live on his Kuzma table in the other room) and it went balanced into an Audio Research PH5, balanced into a PS Audio BHK preamp and then to a PS Audio BHK amplifier. Giant Dunlavy SCIVa speakers finish the system. Suffice it to say, this system can vividly reproduce vinyl, even though the cart (and the arm) left some to be desired in his opinion (I'm a digital guy - my mouth was hanging open no matter what was on the table!)

At the end of the listening session I pulled out my Mini Torii and the Tiny Radials and set them on the floor, and we got down on the carpet and fed the amp a signal from the upcoming PS Audio TSS DAC (his is a two chassis prototype - finished product will be in the ~$25K range) via the BHK preamp with NOS tubes.

Despite getting our asses kicked for hours on his main system featuring 6.5-foot tall floorstanders, he and I were spellbound and dumbfounded by what the Mini Torii was able to do with the TRs. We had to be careful with the input volume because that Mini Torii was struggling a little to power the TRs well, but we just sat there for another hour or two listening to track after track and "bathing" in the 3D sound.

We tried one other amplifier with them - another Class D thing with a Bluetooth connection - and it was very unpleasant compared to the Mini Torii fed by that amazing source gear. The high frequency information was largely gone, the sound collapsed down to the individual speakers, and we both groaned and moved the tube amp back into position after maybe a song and a half? Maybe less.

Ultimately, this is what I came away with. When powered by a very linear, well designed tube amplifier, using excellent cables, these Tiny Radials are impressive enough to be almost a distraction on the workplace desktop. They're just about too good for words, doing things you can't hear anywhere else but in the close up zone of their omni radiation. At a distance, and from a lower height, I could see they would benefit from added high frequency radiation via extra lenses. But bottom line, they don't respond well to class D amplification, or cheap amplification in general.

Unless. Unless you're adding them as part of basically a 4.1 channel stereo system where they add soundstage width and texture detail to a pair of speakers that fares better on lesser amplification, like my desktop monitors. I'm still scratching my head about why they're so much more revealing of amplification than my desk speakers, which admittedly have external crossovers stuffed with excellent, expensive parts. But the valley of quality between a fine tube amp and a cheap class D is much smaller on my desktop monitors than the giant chasm that exists for the Tiny Radials between amplifiers.

My friend Darren was so enthralled by what he was hearing with the Mini Torii and the TRs with my ribbon cables that I had to leave them at his house this weekend so he could geek out some more.

Steve, you've made yet another head scratchingly other worldly product, and my hat's off to you for keeping this audio hobby interesting and exploring new ideas. They also look superb, and match the walnut of my Mini Torii well. Thank you!!

So nice!
Steve, you got the skills to pay the bills!

The steel plinth... turns any Tiny Radial into a Super Heavy.

Steve

Finally got time to start my build - been gathering tools and materials for months but the delay on the tangbands held things up a lot.  Fueled on Turkey and Xmas pudding I made very good progress today.  I had a very small mitre lock router bit too small to use it the way Steve has with the dowel in the corner but perfect used as intended to create the mitres in the corners - fingers crossed the corners will look good when I start sanding.  I've chosen some 30mm beach block-board offcuts for bases and tapered it to match the main body.  Should give it some weight in the base and stop them toppling over in a modest shake here NZ.  Havea for the lenses.  Bottoms of the lenses ripped up when I cut the bevels on them - too close to the centre hole - but I'd made them from 18mm  so no problem sanding them back to the thickness on the original plans (about 12mm).  More tomorrow.

Very pleased with how these turned out, two identical pairs completed.  I made a lot of work for myself using surplus stainless standoffs and cap head screws to secure the base and driver.  I used a hard wax (Osmo Poly X high build hard) for the first time.  Several coats have given a very smooth but satin finish.

I'm giving one pair to my sister with a very simple cheap chinese 1969 John-Linsey Hood designed Class A amp chosen because it's relatively child friendly.  Crazy that they could design sweet sounding transistor amps back in 1969 yet only a decade later most mainstream transistor amps in the shops sounded terrible.  I bought my first valve amp to celebrate my 21st birthday a long time ago!!!.

I bought anti cables to give away with them, that was a mistake they sound great but if there was much more spring in them the cables would lift the speakers off the table.  They'll need bending into shape to prevent that when installed.

This little combination I'm testing (before giving away) is warm, fast and gets your toes tapping niceley.  Non fatiguing - will be a long listening session tonight.  Cheers Steve for putting the plans up, bit of challenge but well worth the effort.

Steve, ever consider boring out a block of wood?