This is a real time product development log of a possible hi dollar speaker that will only happen if after a year of listening to the final results we think it would be worth the trouble.  That is to say don't get your hopes up or start asking when you can get on the list, because that's not what this is about.  This is about seeing things happen behind the scenes as designs are made and tested and evaluated for their merit.


I call this one  The out of my comfort zone speaker.


Any guru worth his salt will tell you that what he knows is meaningless compared to what he doesn't know.  To that every now and then a good challenge is in order.  Since I can admit starting to grow biased towards single-driver speakers and speakers that are extremely simple, like our two-way designs that run the main woofer wide open and hang a single capacitor on the tweeter...  it's time to see if I can knock myself off of my own pedestal...

I'm going to become my own alter ego and see if we can come up with a lower efficiency crossover-laden 3-way loudspeaker design using the best parts I can find. Yup, you heard it right. What better way to keep yourself honest than to split your ego in two and have a real competition with yourself!

With lots of basking in single-driver bliss from Lii Audio, some of the drivers being $700.00 each, it's not going to be a fair fight unless we pull out all of the stops. The goal is to see if we can find a magic window where DECWARE and mainstream audio can cross... and we need some $30K speakers to find out.

You see the problem lies in the fact that mainstream audio speakers are about 84~88 dB sensitivity with multiple drivers and cross-over networks and that requires a lot of power to drive.  So my thought was simply this;  Using our 60 watt monos, the largest Decware amp made that retains the Decware sound and imaging, can I come up with a top-end hi-fi speaker that would reach my normal listening level with good headroom.  If so, it might be possible to exceed the performance we have currently enjoyed for so many years from our products using hi-efficiency speakers... it's a narrow window if it exists... I call it the overlap zone.

My focus here has been not so much about efficiency but to see if a three-way loudspeaker can out-perform any of our references over the past 20 years.  It's a real question.  Why?  Because when you listen to these types of speakers at the shows, they are never connected to a Decware amp, so you don't know what they really sound like.  I realize that most of 20-30K speakers that are 3 -way designs that I've heard at various shows are still a mystery until I hear them in my own room on our own amplification.

My biggest argument for efficient single-driver designs has been two fold - efficiency and speed.  Mainly having the speed be the same for all frequencies, top to bottom always seems like a good thing.  Certainly the bass is far faster than a hi-fi speaker in most cases.

Trading this even speed from a single driver design for faster speed in the mid range and treble, and slower speed in the bass, as will happen in a 3-way design, seems like a viable tradeoff so we're going to try it.  More fascinating to me is the "filter" as the combination of these drivers and crossovers will become one when compared to a single-driver design. Really this will be no different than designing and voicing an amplifier so that is how I intend to approach it.  I'll be listening to a baseline and then creating better ones until I can't make it sound any better.







The drivers for this holy-grail design are as follows:

ScanSpeak Revelator R2904/7000-09 Tweeter. - $345 ea.

Scanspeak Illuminator 12MU/8731T-00, 4" Midrange - $316 ea.

ScanSpeak 22W/8851T-00 8"Revelator Woofer - $360 ea.

The crossover design for this has already exceed a parts cost in excess of $500. (UPDATE $750.00 for caps and inductors only)



My only goal is to get this design loud enough to enjoy it with our 60 watt monos. So, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I will be deliberately burning up the first watt into heat with an elaborate crossover network.  Unlike the rolling phase angle of a single driver that is what it is, with three drivers and some cleaver crossover work, it should be possible to take complete control over the phase angle of the drivers which means opens the possibility for a more precise sound stage and imaging.  And frankly, this seems like the only category where this approach can exceed the performance of our past references over the years... but we shall see.

The front baffle is being machined from solid aluminum to fit each driver with tapped screw holes. There will be grooves cut in the face to prevent surface standing waves. The speaker will be stand mounted. The stand will be part of the design. Some of the best sounding things in my collection over the years in the way of speaker cabinets have had challenging shapes, so expect to see some of that.

It shouldn't be hard to figure out that if it's successful, and it probably will be, that the price of a speaker to best our past references is going to be 5 figures and that alone is going to place our past references at the top of the value for the dollar making them the overall winners in this contest.

Again, my curiosity and focus with this project is to achieve I N S A N E imaging and hopefully a near perfect frequency balance that combines extreme resolution with a forgiving demeanor... gee that's not asking too much is it?

So with this little tease, you know what I'll be doing this winter.

Do you need the aluminum polished? I enjoy polishing things to a mirror finish.

Quote:


The process is what teaches.  I have no idea what I'm about to learn... do you?   So, yea, why not share it!

This design is about high mass.  So starting from the ground up, lets have some high-mass threaded spikes that can support some real weight : )



Eight custom machined spikes... $$$




Here is one installed in the upside-down steel stand to make it easier to see.

And here is what the stand looks like right side up...



I had it made with the DECWARE LOUDSPEAKERS badge machined flush into the surface.  7/16" steel plate, no worries about being thick enough : )





With a lot of luck, I may be able to get the black base coat on the cabinets tomorrow...  They have been a lot more than I bargained for because of the shape.  The shape requires a lot of hand work getting the radius and round overs to look right.  It was good and then the bondo cured and shrunk leaving it wavy in places so I am having to redo it.

Crap I can barely lift them because they are so thick.  Actually I can barely lift the stand.  

I'm going for extreme focus and refinement which is what attracted to me to this driver compliment.  This reminds me of a time (27 years ago) when I knew a lot less than I do now, but still managed to turn Lonely Raven to stone in my listening room.  A lot of that was the room, but the cabinets I built for the speakers in that room were co-mass-layer damped with 76 internal braces that were placed using accelerometers on the cabinet walls to measure resonance at every frequency and at every location to find the hot spots.  The resulting cabinet was dead and it used a top of the line Scan Speak tweeter at the time. I know Lonely Raven remembers the experience...  well FWIW these new speakers will shame those things right under the rug... in fact I expect those original speakers will eventually take themselves out to the burn pile voluntarily out of humiliation... but at least they were built with great precision.

And the Zen TORII MONO's are beaming with anticipation : ). It will be good to see them have a purpose in life here in the Decware Listening Room where the low power stuff dominates.

- Steve

OK, Before we go on with this speaker design thread, it's time for some B A C K S T O R Y !!!

With all the attention that came with recent reviews and two Stereophile Class A ratings Decware is drawing the attention of a lot of new people. Because of this I have been pondering a way to better demo our Zen TORII Monoblocks to potential customers. The problem is this... everything in our listening room, some almost 20 pair of speakers that can be pulled for demo at any time are all basically high efficiency. There are really no stereotypical high end hifi speakers in the house that would need the TORII Monos to drive.

A customer who would be looking at our TORII MONO's would have something like Wilsons, Sonus Faber, Focals, Magico or Gamut... all five figure speakers with 86dB ave. sensitivity. When he or she comes here they won't be able to bring their speakers with, because they can't lift them.

Having a similar speaker here would give them some familiar territory and more confidence in the amps ability to drive their own speakers at home. As it is, hooking these 60 watt amps up to most of our speakers tells you very little because a 2.3 watt amplifier can drive them fine. I think you can get my drift here...

Problem is, buying any of the aforementioned speakers would only create conflict because -- why weren't they Decware speakers -- or why is Decware using Focal to demo with... are their own speakers not up to the task?  

SO I HAD THIS IDEA - lets come up with a speaker design using familiar components that would solve the problem without branding conflicts... and off I went.

I decided on the Scan speak driver compliment listed at the top of this thread because those particular drivers spoke to me during my online research and ScanSpeak was a favorite of mine some 30 years ago when I first got serious about speaker design but had not yet discovered 2.3 watts. As far as I can tell, this midrange is going to be unbeatable... when you look at the design of it and the materials.

As I was working out possibilities for cabinets and doing searches on the drivers to see what others have done, I ran into the most drop dead gorgeous speaker I think I have ever seen and it was actually using this exact driver compliment. Well the artist in me took over and stole all reason from this point forward.  It's a lot like falling in love with the worse possible women you could have ever picked...  if only during those moments you could have actually heard your higher self screaming at you "DON'T DO IT !"

 
The builders were very kind to include photos of the speaker in various stages of the build... and have so far been very good to work with.

They included this photo of the final product prior to it's being packed and shipped to us so I knew after it was too late to do anything about it that it wasn't going to look like the picture...




The picture above was taken during the crossover design phase that once I got past the high gloss baffle frankly scared me a bit...  

The speakers were completed and shipped.  Naturally they took some heavy damage including two deep knife marks in the top from customs inspections. These speakers had powder coated cabinets that were baked in an oven. There is no way to fix this except to repaint both cabinets.



I thought they did a great job of packing the speakers. This is before they left the manufacture.  Once I got them they had clearly been dropped several times.  In fact one of the crates had a completely crushed bottom.

I half expected this so despite the fact that both speaker cabinets had loose shit inside rolling around, I hooked them up for a quick listen.  I was stunned at what I heard.  I could tell the crossover was designed by testing and measuring rather than modeling because the time alignment was at another level. These things had a sickly huge and focused sound stage. It was unbelievable. Very encouraging all considered.

I couldn't get much farther however because of the loose stuff inside each cabinet rattling around on the bass notes and while the bass was gloriously musical it was somewhat slow, it had a lack of control that I have come to expect over the years.

Also the stands, like the baffle, were painted with high gloss clear coat that you might see from someone who painted their car in a barn... it looked really bad so time to take them apart and refinish the cabinets and stands so we can have something to demo.

The pictures of the stands earlier in this thread were after I re-painted them.  The high gloss / dirt finish was hideous unless you were in candle light, then it looked great.

And then when I started to remove the drivers I saw this:  



You really can't make this shit up.

This is just a frame from a video I accidentally took when trying to take a picture in a traumatized state...

I had to fight a dark cloud that came over me in the shop... and I believe what got me through that moment was the amazement that it sounded so good when I previously tested it!  

I've been in this business long enough and seen enough to know at this point exactly what the score was and the good news is I wasn't going to have to build a cabinet from scratch : )

Since the wood didn't match the original picture in finish shape or size and since to me that was the focal point on the original image, I beat it off with a hammer and then removed the aluminum baffle and ran it through my drum sander about forty times since aluminum against aluminum has no give each pass was fractions of a 1000th/inch.


click to enlarge

After running it through my drum sander I was able to remove the high gloss finish, restore the flatness to the panel and restore the perfectly straight brushing that I found so appealing in the original picture. I mean how cool is it to have an anodized aluminum baffle that is machined to the drivers? This is one of the many things that really impressed me about this particular cabinet design.  

So with a clean slate an ultra thin coat of flat lacquer we have that ultra-flat brushed look that we're looking for.  


click to enlarge

What is cool is that this is going onto what will be a 2 inch thick baltic birch plywood baffle for a total baffle thickness or nearly 2.75". Co-mass-layer dampened and severely high mass. The drivers will be connected to the .75 aluminum plate that is both screwed and glued to the remaining 2 inches of plywood.  

Having nearly a 3 inch thick heat generating baffle in an enclosure with sidewalls that continuously carry from 1.5 inch to  3.0 inches is just a very inert chunk of mass that will be a delight to listen to. The solidity will be exceptional. This is why the stand is so heavy. You can't have one without the other.  

To me, the whole design starts with the driver compliment and then a way to couple the drivers to the mass of the cabinet in way that makes wood screws seem like the serious disappointment they actually are... so seeing this even from the original picture I was so impressed I had to get one.  

As you can see there are machined slots in the face to break up the standing wave the appears on the face of the baffle of normal speakers.

It looked simple enough but this is actually the part as well as those damn radiuses that took 6 more days...  : )

Steve,
Just think of the sanding as a Zen moment!
One takes the high points to meet the low points, gaining unity.
A small piece of perfection then spreads out and takes over the project!

Life starts out as a big mess and you take control of it and make it yours, such is your speaker project.

I polished a intake manifold for my plant manager a few years ago. When I started out the possibility of it turning out well was questionable. But I kept doing what was in front of me that day and eventually I achieved what I wanted from the project.



What you call your stubborn nature is your ability to take that little spot of perfection and make it bigger and bigger every day.

I can't wait to hear these speakers, they are going to be world beaters after you spread your perfection over them.

The bad thing about perfection is that it doesn't exist! But it sure is fun chasing it.

It is amazing what some people will pull. I often can not understand how they can have so little self respect.  

I hope it will go well from here.
Brian

I am not a fan of dead air spaces in a speaker box because they resonate so I drilled two holes, one to inject expanding foam into and one to let the expanding foam out. This eliminates all the air in the chamber which then eliminates that resonation. Also it creates a composite structure that will eliminate movement of both panels.

The inside of the cabinet contains a sealed cavity for the midrange and tweeter that is separate from the main cavity for the woofer.  All cavities were full of EPDM foam insulation - which I like, however they were stuck to the interior cabinet surfaces with double stick tape.  Since I think I mentioned the interior surfaces had no prep and were full of sawdust, much of the tape did not stick.  What did stick left a gap behind the foam large enough to trap sawdust, which I frankly don't want inside the cabinet for a variety of reasons, mainly driver health.



Anyway with these little detours managed, it should be time to get on with the re-finishing.

I thought I was ready to continue on with the finishing and found another problem with one of the enclosures port duct.  The bottom of the duct had come unglued (which we know is impossible) and was loose so that when you knock on it you hear two boards clap together...  just like the crossover boards vibrating around in the bottom of the cabinet.  With some super glue and polyurethane resin I was able to fix it.  At the same time I rounded over the ends which meant getting the router out and making more finishing work on the rear.  Anyway, that narrow vertical slot is the port duct and I went with a 1/4 inch round over.



This is the part when you think you're almost done - and then for days you keep finding shadows and imperfections in the finish. Finally after just one more fix, I am ready to paint.
 

The price of perfection is high!

I don't feel like the Lone Ranger anymore.
Sanding off all of the paint and starting over has been a long time Modus Operandi of mine.

I went out into the shop this morning to look at the first one I painted to see if the top was going to have to be re-shot and yes, it had a dry spot right down the center.  I'm really gaining a lot of respect for painters...

Anyway, I mixed up another batch of paint and sprayed the other cabinet, as well as another coat on the top of the first, and bang -- I think I nailed it.



silky perfection










I really couldn't be happier considering I'm not in a paint booth. Just as my mind thinks a lot about Bob Z., my woodworking guru, while I do wood working in my shop -- I think a lot about my high school pal Andy K. who turned into a world class painter, while I try to teach myself to paint. I've seen both do miracles so I know what's possible.

This just shows anyone can do it so long as they are willing to do it over until they get it right. The secret recipe is to be too stupid to know it's not going to go right the first time and too stubborn to admit it when it doesn't.

You are making the speakers look great!

Brian

Steve,

I've read this thread twice but I'm still confused.  I take it that you saw these speakers and hoped they'd be speakers that you could maybe tweak and brand as Decware speakers.  So what happened?  What you received and paid a fortune for seem like crap -- at least the workmanship.  At this point are you just trying to see if they can be the model for a whole new build?  You're killing yourself to makeover this pair and I don't see this as a basis for the next pair -- if these turn out to be all you hope.

Or did I miss something?

Quote:


These speakers were offered to us already branded if we want them.  As you can see, the workmanship was not acceptable.  This satisfied my curiosity.  I now know that it would not be possible to have these speakers built by this company.  If it's not Bob Z., or my local wood worker, it's not going to happen.

So at this point, I am just trying to salvage the investment for my own personal pair which I can still use to demo our TORII MONO's.

Perhaps I will be so taken with the end result that when all is said and done I will consider manufacturing something similar.  Time will tell.

Thanks Steve.  That's kind of what I thought then.  What a shame some people either can't see quality or think the customer can't.  Watching your process makes me appreciate my high gloss piano even more.

Fantastic thread Steve! This is what has made Decware products in a class by them selves and Steve a designer without peer. Amazing read, really amazing. All written while our Decware / Omega system is producing fantastic music. Thanks Steve.

I have constructed the solid Bolivian Rosewood frames and while I wait for clear coats to cure and before I get into the crossovers and other stuff, I want to say that a lot of effort went into building these speakers by the manufacturer before I got ahold of them and the design is very solid.  It's not a factory built speaker, like Focal for example, but rather just built one or two pair at a time. This pair was no doubt built with pride and I do not believe there was any lack of caring about the result. There were just a few mistakes along the way, and the poor paintwork and soldering undermines the quality. While not happy about it certainly, I have seen the actual shop when this pair was built and it's not the tiny dream shop that I have -- so on many levels the work was very impressive.  

With better coils, comes larger size which compounds the problem of layout. I was unable to find a way to get the tweeter components  in this space so I will be building a separate board for the tweeter crossover and mounting on standoffs 4 inches above the two you see here. The coils on that board will be laid out in 3D space so as not to couple with the ones below it.  

In the picture the board on the right is going to be the woofer and the board on the left is going to be the midrange.







The only things that matters with crossover layout is how you manage the magnetic fields of the coils. I just lay out the coils the way they have to be and then I'll work the rest out around that.   I have plans to make it pretty.  My concern will be wire lengths, and vibration.  I presently have them floating on a bed of silicon, but plan to possibly pour them into place with liquid rubber to damp out all the resonances.

"This pair was no doubt built with pride and I do not believe there was any lack of caring about the result. There were just a few mistakes along the way"

In that case, I apologize to the maker for my earlier unkind remarks. I spoke without knowing.

Brian

Quote:


This is key here. I think when the speakers left the hands of the builder in good shape the trip to Decware was not forgiving and left it's mark for Steve's precision eraser.

Those crossovers look like something I came up at the turn of the century as far as component count. I think you will combine components in your listening sessions. I'll have to find some pictures of my abominations

John

Archie,

I'm not happy about it and don't worry it's not over yet.  I am being generous towards the builders, but not the sellers.  I think the original picture may even be a Computer Generated Model.  I will test the merit of their honor by asking them to change the ad by using pictures of the actual speakers they made me so that buyers can see what they will actually get. I know I would have passed.  Also, had the shipping been listed at $3500+ like it is now, I would have also passed.

If the speakers actually matched the pictures and the original price, I could have sold at minimum several pair a year which is a lot more than they will sell, so they cut their own foot off.  

Steve

When I'm done... it seems like it's never going to happen : )  

Cabinets are finished now, crossover overs are in the works, so it's time to set the stands in place.

The bottoms of the cabinets are now without spikes or threaded inserts, so I purchased flat disks to couple the cabinet to the stand.  Each disk is made up of two halves coupled together with 3 balls that self-center.  It will be a large improvement because it was impossible to get the threaded spikes adjusted perfectly flat.

And here is one of the tweeter crossovers in progress...

 

All I can say is- Steve, you are an amazing man, and I'm glad I stumbled onto your website many years go. I look forward to the future and what you haver to bring to the audio world.

Here are the crossovers for the tweeters nearing completion.  I already installed the other ones in the cabinets and forgot to take pictures after the large beeswax caps were installed.  I spent a hour testing the new crossover and making adjustments to the resistor values to get it to match the originals.  I listened to the midrange on both the original and new crossover on an A/B switch and it was easy to hear the difference.

BTW, a great way to test the quality of a midrange and midrange crossover is to see how long you can listen to it by itself with no woofer or tweeter...  This process will rapidly advance the crossover design well beyond where it would be masked by the woofer and tweeter. The raw midrange can't hide and it has to be really good not to become fatiguing by itself.

The coils I used have less resistance so everything had to be tweaked back into spec.  I was able to match all the parts in this project to within 1% which I think is probably more important that the actual brand of parts used.  

All of these crossover components are bedded into a thick layer of silicon.  I also covered the coils with epoxy to lock the windings so they can't vibrate.

The cables have the same total gauge as the coils. The resistor for the midrange and the tweeter I created with four 5W resistors in parallel for 20W.  This will gracefully current limit the peaks and protect the drivers should someone decide to see how much power the speaker can handle by hanging a 1000 watt amplifier on them.  

I thought about pouring liquid rubber into a mould around each board to lock in the parts and reduce vibration, but after processing that for a bit I realized that will just lock the parts to the board and each other which will actually have more vibration than floating in the air fully isolated.  Also, having a brick in there won't help internal speaker volume.  The way I am building it now it will become a large diffuser for the back wave of the woofer.  So it will be exposed to direct sound from the woofer, but isolated from cabinet vibrations.

Next are the binding post plate and posts...



Nice thick high quality aluminum with brass posts and jumpers that were installed into holes that were too small so that the insulators couldn't fit inside the holes.  This didn't help the look, but more importantly the paint itself became the insulator on some of the posts.  This would be a very big bummer for some guy using a high power high current solid state amp turned up extra loud when the posts short to the plate.

Also notice that screws were used to mount the plate that were too large to fit into the machined holes. It seems like despite real efforts to impress they must have had a helper who wasn't on the same page.


A hi-end speaker design of this quality deserves a better binding post set up.  So after removing the posts, re-chamfering the screw holes, enlarging the holes for the posts for proper fit, sanding the paint off with a brushed finish, painting it black and updating to red copper posts like those used in many of our amplifiers, we have something that looks the part.



We're getting there : )

The speakers on the stands look great in that last shot! A bit intimidating...wicket.

John

Today I finished up the tweeter crossovers.  I had them wired wrong.  After fixing that and listening and adjusting values and matching I was ready to install them.  So far I have one installed but before I could install it where I wanted it, I had to "insulate" the interior of the cabinet. I chose pick'n pluck foam, 2 inches thick.  This allows me to poke out some of the holes which gives the waves some solid surface to load against, and increases the absorption by increasing the surface area.  Each hole adds 4 square inches of surface area.  

So it all started like this... with a single piece of foam in very back:




Then like this:

Above is a picture of the speakers I originally got with the shallow trim and mitered corners instead of butt-jointed like exhibit A. At some point before I got them the miters split like they are doing in the picture above. Someone got the idea to putty the cracks and then air brush a maroon paint over it. When I got the speakers the trim looked way worse than it does in the picture above.  I felt defeated.

Most of you know I have a thing for cool looking wood.  (Tiny Radials)  In fact it was the wood in exhibit A that attracted me to the design of the speaker in the first place so that's what prompted the major surgery. This wood rail should be floating so it can expand and contract independently of the cabinet and the aluminum baffle.

This one was buried into the cabinet. I had to beat it off with a hammer and then repair all the damage when it ripped the front of cabinet apart.

I was unable to get a good picture of the air brushed corners, but they reminded me of a solid hide stain on my deck. Am I being too harsh? Sorry, I don't think so. If you can't make it like the picture then don't sell it, or change the picture.

This is as close as I can get it to look like exhibit A.



Next step will be to put on the aluminum baffle while I work on installing the tweeter crossover and foam into the other cabinet.

Since you didn't miter the corners, you might have considered a dovetail or box cut.  Maybe for the next pair.  

Here is the binding post plate installed : )



So I learned with tube tots and these that the jumpers used to connect all the posts together effect the sound more than you would like.  Even good ones.  So in a situation like this where you have one speaker cable and a three way speaker with your choice of three places to hook your cable up where do you go?  Is there a difference?  

The answer is yes there is a difference, and you go to the driver that you want to sound the best.  That means the driver that has the highest resolution, which means the tweeter is where you would hook your speaker cables.  Of course if you have three pair of cables you wouldn't need jumpers.  Even with a single amplifier this would probably be an advantage.  

Despite being reversed because we forgot to check when we lifted them onto the stands, the sound is as I remember it which is a huge relief.  As things burn-in it will quickly surpass the original.  In fact after only an hour it already has.  Tomorrow we'll switch the speakers left for right and by the weekend I'll be able to do some serious listening.  

Remember getting bedtime stories before going to sleep as a child?
Steve’s late night progress posts on these speakers reminds me of those.
I look forward to them each night before going to sleep...

They really look greeaaat.
I cannot wait to read more about how they sound and how the sound evolves over time.

Alain

A picture of tonights magic as it happens...



I'm glad to be able to report that all is well!  I say that because up until tonight I was pretty sure I was going to pull the woofers and revisit the crossovers.  A nice source of stress for the past several days.  The sound I had was gone.  I craved my Tube Tots in a bad way, which BTW since I added the coil they have gotten 50% better.  They are like a drug.  Anyway that's another story for a different thread.

The new crossovers as I listened to them on the bench with the midrange in my hand and then with the tweeter in my hand were far sharper as I think I mentioned.  This worried me I'm not going to lie.

So over the past few days I have liked them and actually not liked them several times.  Of course in this room things are unhooked and changed constantly.  I think that's called foreshadowing...  

I had two things working against me... the tubes were lean but I didn't usually care because of the detail, and one of the speaker cables was miss-labeled on one end which means the positive and negative were reversed.  This is a page to Father Murphy that is so overwhelmingly loud that he will come from other planets just to make sure he gets you to hook a channel in phase and then out of phase and then in phase and then out --- all at the precise moment for ideal deception.  So at least 3 times I have listened to the speakers from the work area while they were out of phase.  I never went into the listening room because it sounded like crap from out here...if you get my drift...  I am used to a particular magic that comes from there and mostly I was getting confusing mixed and downright disgusting results.

Tonight I put the good KT88's back into the TORII MONO's and fixed the speaker cable, and guess what?  Murphy left and...

The sound is back : )

In a big way.

Now, you might think "surely he walked in there when it was out of phase and immediately knew... right? "

Actually I did walk in there a few times to see just how bad it actually did sound, and one of the spooky things about these speakers is that they can maintain a locked image in the center when out of phase... not normal.  No idea why, so don't even ask.  

The imaging of these speakers is in another world. I will eventually explain this with great understanding, but right now there's just too much going on.

The sound stage is no better or bigger than anything we have, but the specificity is just sick. I can say this already at this early stage, the tweeter is the best I have heard for precision and really everything else.  It's worth $400 a side and $300 a side for crossover parts...  It actually is.

Scanspeak Rocks.



-Steve

This is really getting me off, because I am now hearing how good these TORII MONO's actually are for the first time really.  It's a real thrill!  Think of it like you built your ultimate hot rod and for the first 5 years you didn't realize the back barrels on carb weren't opening all the way when you floored it... Then you dialed it in with the right linkage and splurged for the right tires while you were at it and still managed to get sideways in 3rd gear for the first time while doing a 11 sec quarter mile... something you only fantasized about until it actually happened! And when it happens on the street it's a white knuckle experience compared to a sticky track. That is how this combination is making me feel and that's after listening to some of the finest audio there is for over 20 years. It's a different kind of high resolution compared to the UFO25 on single driver speakers... in the same league though.  So there you go, two flavors of exotic ice cream.

Steve

Thanks for the road trip Steve.

Things are starting to settle in with the drivers and the first of my large polypropylene foil caps have arrived.  These are the original parts I ordered that got held up,  so I will be replacing all the caps in the crossovers as my next project.

Meanwhile the spike replacement were an epic fail, but it was my own fault.  They come with a self-adhevise which liquifies with pressure and vibration.  I knew to take it off, but got lazy.  I walked in the other night and noticed one speaker had slid more than 2 inches and starting to fall off the stand.



Tonight I cleaned up the mess that made and removed all traces of adhesives.  Then on the top I put some felt with it's own adhesive because I'm either brain dead or I plan to create a shallow hole the same diameter in the bottom of the cabinets to locate the spike replacements and make it
impossible to slide off.  The bottoms are now screwed into the stand so they are hard coupled and can't move.



They are magnetized and the three steel balls allow it to move within the confines of the slightly larger concave hemispherical holes that capture it.  The rubber O-Ring on the center guide of the top section (shown placed upside-down for the picture) damps the movement.

I have faith in this design.  It's so much better than the threaded adjustable spikes that came with the speaker.  Those were almost impossible to adjust perfectly so that the speaker didn't rock. Vibration and the spongy adhesive used in bottom part had me adjusting the spikes  every two days.

This is a set it and forget it approach with far superior results.  Remember the stand isn't going to warp because under that wood is 1/4 inch stainless steel plate that can't move.

A BEFORE and AFTER shot.






And for some reason tonight I got a good picture of the finished speakers.  It looks so much better with the aluminum brushed perfectly flat and painted flat than it did when it was shiny and wavy.

In fact it really looks damn close to exhibit A. : )

So, you were able to get it up on the stand after all!
Nicely done!

You need to change the power output specifications for the Taboo MK4, it says 1w into 4 ohms and 2w into 8 ohms.

HEADPHONE IMPEDANCE      POWER OUTPUT @ HEADPHONE JACK.
Figures double into loudspeakers.
4 ohms
     500 mw
8 ohms
     1000 mw
16 ohms
     1200 mw

https://www.decware.com/newsite/TABOO.htm

UPDATE

I think the crossover caps are pretty well burned-in and my biggest worry since deciding to rebuild the crossover with all new parts was what the resulting sound changes will be.  I'm not naive enough to think replacing all the parts with top grade stuff is going to automatically make everything better. There are almost always tradeoffs.

What I liked about the original crossover was 1) imaging. 2) smoothness  3) 1970's bass.  It all added up to a detailed but forgiving sound that was warmed up by the slower bass.   Interestingly, #3 was also the one thing I didn't like about the speakers since most of the single-driver stuff by comparison was more realistic sounding.

So here we are.  I can still remember exactly what it sounded like back in October when I first heard them.  I can play it back in my mind, then and now, and reflect on the changes.

1) Imaging.  Did not change, still very good.

2) Smoothness.  We lost some ground here because resolution is the edge on a sharp blade.  We now have a very sharp blade. So the speaker is less forgiving that it was when it had the spongey crossover parts and sloppy solder and crappy wire.

3) 1970's bass.  Something I enjoyed because I haven't heard it in nearly 50 years, but pretty much totally gone now.  The bass is easily twice as tight and twice as fast as it was.  And as a result it no longer draws attention to itself.  I find the change very refreshing and it has raised my opinion of this particular Scanspeak woofer.


If I was retired and bored, two things that will never happen in my life, I would update the woofer coils in the original crossover and leave everything else alone -- except the solder and wire -- and then I would compare that to what I have now.  I expect that I would probably like it as much or more because it had a touch less resolution and was more forgiving which is a way of trying to say it was slightly more musical.

The current crossover is no disappointment, but my instincts I shared when I tore into the crossover were largely spot on.  BTW, the final cost of two crossovers not including labor or installation was $1K.  Suggesting that when you see a 3 way loudspeaker for sale at a killer price, it probably doesn't have a 1K crossover in it.

So what does this higher level of performance do to an already impressive sound?  Well, the final result so far seems more than worthy.  I'm glad to have them, they make listening to the Zen TORII Mono's a thrill.  In fact the other night while flexing the system for the first time and really seeing how far I could take it, the bass shocked me on one particular track of electronic music, it was splitting the air like a knife and I could feel the concrete slab moving - literally.  I'm not kidding.  That got me off pretty damn hard, I'm not going to lie because nothing has ever quite done that in this way in this room before.  The only thing that has done it in a different way is the Imperial SO subs that I have in here.  Some DECFEST attendees will remember what that sounded like.  It was more than memorable.  But this was actually better, more visceral.  I was standing during this test, which is often the case because I am short enough to get away with that.  But feeling the slab moving under my feet and the crack going through the space was just priceless.

In fairness I should add that this was done at around midnight against the blackest of backgrounds, so the dynamic range was +10dB vs. during the day at work.  It was just grazing 100dB where I was standing.  This is the luxury of having a free-standing building with a listening room in it. You can rock out without pissing anyone off including your beautiful wife : )  And frankly it is the ultimate time to listen to music.  I recommend it highly.

To put that SPL in perspective you need to understand that it's not about SPL.  It's about dynamic range.  Quietest blackest (idle ear drums) to loudest and how fast the rise time is.  So at this time of night the noise floor in the room is about 31dB on an A-weighted scale.  That's 69dB of dynamic range, where most audio systems during the day playing streaming limited music resulting from volume wars, are lucky to have 20dB of dynamic range.

My only regret was ignoring the strong urge to make the crossover external, but honestly that's only because I have more exotic caps I would like to listen to and as you saw, I buried that baby so deep that the only way to make a change is to remove all three drivers, and the binding post plate and both crossover boards in each speaker... an entire weekend.  So it's obvious that the Flat Stacked Cryo Treated Beeswax bypass caps were going to be good enough I made it impossible to upgrade.

It would have cost a fortune to do it in an external crossover with enclosure and the speaker cables for each driver would have made the experience cost $3K or more.  I like the clean look and having it inside the speaker where I can't jack with it... ; ) so I probably made the correct decision, given the fact I have to run a business as well.

Steve


P.S.  Back to the discussion of dynamics... It's a lot like drag racing.  20 dB of dynamic range is like a 16 second quarter mile.  My moms station wagon would do that back in the 1970's.  69dB on the other hand is like being in a top fuel funny car.  It had me grinning from ear to ear that's for sure.  For those of you new to tubes, this is fun because there is ZERO ear fatigue or trauma. What wrecks the ear is bad harmonics from odd order distortions at high SPL. You could literally listen to this for several hours at this SPL and feel like you've never even listened to music that evening when you were done. This is important to understand. You can listen loud without consequences to your hearing when done in these conditions with these amplifiers and cables.

As a final followup to this thread you must be very careful when buying from AliExpress. You can see what was delivered to me and what I had to do to make the speakers right. We got zero compensation for these speakers and sadly 8 pair of other speakers we had also ordered for evaluation were lost in shipping and there has been 6 months of run around with zero compensation or refund. Once my patients clock finally ran out on the missing packages they changed their tune and decided to claim that 7 had been delivered with different UPS numbers and only 1 was missing. Big shock there.

The store name is circled in green.




And the owner's picture

So with some great irony while I update my personal pair of TORII MONO's, I have been using the House Speakers to evaluate the new 300B amplifier that is in development called Sarah.  It has 4 watts with reasonable headroom and turned up as loud as it can go without hearing any distortion, it gives me the perfect listening volume in this room on these 88dB speakers.  This has allowed me to listen to the amp in the high end of its range.

Anyway, the sound is very compelling.  I plan to use them to demo the amp at this years DECFEST.  As well, the TORII MONO's will get some more air time which is to say I expect these speakers to be well liked during the fest.  

I have also used them for several YouTube demos over the summer, so you can check our YouTube Channel and with some headphones get a good feel for what they sound like.

-Steve

appreciated!