Chicago DIY 2011

[jcpahman77]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

+1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUNOmN3YVL0

Already have that on my "Piano" playlist. I lost a few of the songs as I forgot to save the playlist before my browser crashed the last time (gotta figure out what's going on with that). I'd also like to recommend Matchbox 20 "3 am" the Piano version, but highly suggest against playing it on Youtube as the quality (or lack thereof) nearly kills the track.

[[email protected]]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

+1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUNOmN3YVL0

that was nice. thanks.

[---k---]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Paul must be mad that he didn't win the lowest WAF with his duct tape speaker so he is denying us the winners of the honorable mention awards. ;)


Also, where are all the impressions promised? Am I missing something?

[bkeane1259]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Paul must be mad that he didn't win the lowest WAF with his duct tape speaker so he is denying us the winners of the honorable mention awards. ;)

I was wondering about that myself..... What say you, Paul??

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

OK, here's my thoughts on some of what I heard Saturday. I got there a little late and was preoccupied with getting the tweeters installed into Ed's enclosures, so I missed getting a critical listen to a few of the early entries. As we were walking in, Wolf's Sophomores were playing, and my wife immediately commented how much she liked their look. They also sounded darn nice. Big sound from little enclosures.

The first one's I recall getting to actually sit and listen to were the Speedsters. Like most of what I heard that day, smooth transition between woofer and tweeter. Mids and highs were clean but the bass just wasn't as clean as the rest of the presentation.

I could easily see these in a small room, or as the top of a smaller 3-way.


The Ochocinco was a very pleasant surprise. Of all the truly budget systems, these impressed me. Nice balance again, but there was a lot of clarity to the bass and lower mids that the smaller systems just didn't quite reach. The NTN by comparison, while very similar didn't have the off axis character of the Ocho. The Ocho was voiced very nicely, and the NTN perhaps just a bit too hot on top.

Wolf's Destinations were quite unusual to look at. Very industrial quality to them. The Airborne woofer looked very nice, but the frame just didn't do it for me. Looks aside, they sounded good. The dual 8" passives seemed to augment the low end very well, but I thought they could have used a bit more damping in the lower mids . . . not enough stuffing maybe? I'm anxious to see Wolf's final vision for the enclosure.

PWR RYD came with the unfinished "Trials." After explaining the rummaged origin of the parts, the ancient Audio Concepts SV12 woofer and buyout mids, he started the music. Wow. Nicely done! Great integration of all the components. And as someone else mentioned already, they were just begging for all 1000W from those Emotiva monoblocks.

Scott's Vanadium entry was tops on my list to not miss. He used the same mid I have in a 3-way setup that is yet to be completed. His implementation in the shallow waveguide is almost a duplicate of what we have here. Those mids really delivered. Very clean, really detailed and smooth. Seamless blend between components. The only weak spot to me was the lower mids and bass, and like other entries, suffered from a bit of enclosurus incompletus. With a bit more bracing and judicious use of stuffing, the bass performance should tighten up, and make that system a knockout.

What can I say about Dan Neubecker's Contrapesso's? The very first DIY I attended back in Iowa in 2003 had an entry that looked like a plumbers nightmare, and pretty much sounded like one. But this?!!? Dan, you mad genius. What a contraption, and what a sound. By far your most non-speaker yet. I can only imagine what this would sound like with world class components instead of the buyouts. The sound was HUGE, very clean and quite uniform as I walked around for part of the track you played. Oh, and great music choice. You had me and the wife rolling with that Canexican song.

CJD's Ansonica was fabulous. The SB29 sounded great and makes me anxious to try it out for myself. Cabinetry was awesome, very inert, hardly a panel vibration during the track, and the bass performance that resulted was fantastic. Between the Trials, Contrapessos and Ansonica, I think the Ansonica was my favorite.

If I left anyone out, sorry, but I didn't get to sit and listen to everything like I wanted to. Got to hear most of it, but not always from the best of listening positions.

Thanks again Paul and Chris. Great event.

[Ron_E]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Pete,

Any chance you could post your playlist or have you and I missed it?

Ron

[bkeane1259]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Pete,

Any chance you could post your playlist or have you and I missed it?

Ron

Please.

I need to know the artist of "In the Nick of Time" .....I think that might have been the best speaker-auditioning song I ever heard.

[Paul Carmody]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Paul must be mad that he didn't win the lowest WAF with his duct tape speaker so he is denying us the winners of the honorable mention awards. ;)

I'm building suspense ;)

Honestly, it's just been a really rough week at work. I will definitely have the results up this weekend.

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Pete,

Any chance you could post your playlist or have you and I missed it?

Ron

Please.

I need to know the artist of "In the Nick of Time" .....I think that might have been the best speaker-auditioning song I ever heard.

I don't know who the lady singing "In the Nick of Time" is. But that is a nice track . . . Gotta ask DoubleTap to reveal that gem.

The "techno" was Echaskech's "Digital City".

Ella Fitzgerald singing "Good Morning Heartache"

Stephen Stills singing "Treetop Flyer"

Orchestral stuff was from the soundtrack to "Gladiator"

Tool's "Jambi"

Dire Straits "Why Worry"

"Mombasa" from soundtrack to Inception

Rachelle Ferrell "Sista"

Allison Krauss and choir singing "Down in the River" from "Oh Brother where art thou."

[bkeane1259]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

I don't know who the lady singing "In the Nick of Time" is. But that is a nice track . . . Gotta ask DoubleTap to reveal that gem.

Please.

Seriously... that was an awesome track. I'm dumbfounded that I'm the only one asking for this?? Like I said earlier, when you guys demo'd the Breeze, it was like I could reach out and touch the artist (in a way I have not heard before). Maybe it was our positioning?? However, at the time, my 17yr old was sitting right next to me and he said the same thing. He's got great ears....so I know it's not my old ears playing tricks on me.

At any rate, Pete, I'm positive my 17yr old wants a pair of the Breeze. If he only knew.......

[dlneubec]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

Oh, and great music choice. You had me and the wife rolling with that Canexican song.

Hi Pete,

I was almost not going to play that song!:D I had two CD's with me, one with and one without. You never know who might be offended by something simply meant as some fun to break up the day. I did see a lot of smiles out there as Tommy the Canexican was playing.

I plan to try a higher end version of the Contrappeso's, but finding higher end drivers that will work in these conditions is difficult. The mids will have to fit inside 3.5" OD. 3.25" ID aluminum tubes. the current pvc tubes are 4.5" OD/4.25" ID and I want to get them smaller to allow more flexibility in the mid-tweet crossover point. The best looking alternative I've found so far is the Fountek FE85, which I mentioned in an earlier post. Aluminum cone, reasonably sensitive and pretty flat response, but hardly a state of the art component. It looks like its flange might just slide over the outside of the tubes.

http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-3-fullrange/fountek-fe85-3-aluminum-cone-full-range/

Anyone have any other suggestions? It also has to work sealed with two drivers in about 1 liter of space and be able to cover down to around 200hz in groups of 4 (probably in a parallel/series arrangement).

[UGP]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

I would also just like to say thanks to all who made this happen! Wolf was right about doing his happy dance;)
I'm not going to really comment on the sound of the speakers as it was hard for me to not hear the room effect on the sound, but... a couple of standouts for me were the bass and the depth of the soundstage on both Dan Neubecker's Contrappeso which was probably the smoothest from where I was sitting, and also CJD's Ansonica had a nice solid bass, the NTN's were great for the time and price put into them, of course the RAAL was amazing but couldn't help think that the rest of the speaker had a hard time keeping up, The finish on the "Wave guide" speaker was very cool and sounded good also, Marty's speakers where also impressive looking, and I'm sure he'll get the network figured out, the other thing I would look at is how are you transferring/copying your CD tracks Marty? it almost sounds like they were normalized/compressed when they were copied.

By the way do we have to wait till next summer till there's another Midwest event?

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

I would also just like to say thanks to all who made this happen! Wolf was right about doing his happy dance;)
I'm not going to really comment on the sound of the speakers as it was hard for me to not hear the room effect on the sound, but... a couple of standouts for me were the bass and the depth of the soundstage on both Dan Neubecker's Contrappeso which was probably the smoothest from where I was sitting, and also CJD's Ansonica had a nice solid bass, the NTN's were great for the time and price put into them, of course the RAAL was amazing but couldn't help think that the rest of the speaker had a hard time keeping up, The finish on the "Wave guide" speaker was very cool and sounded good also, Marty's speakers where also impressive looking, and I'm sure he'll get the network figured out, the other thing I would look at is how are you transferring/copying your CD tracks Marty? it almost sounds like they were normalized/compressed when they were copied.

By the way do we have to wait till next summer till there's another Midwest event?

If you're near St. Louis, DoubleTap hosts a get together every couple months. There should be another pretty soon featuring a pair of new 3-ways using an Audio Technology 8" woofer and 5" mid, and RAAL 70-20 on top. There's usually, a slew of cool front end gear brought by attendees, nice tube amps, solid state, DACs, all kinds of stuff. He's usually got 3 rooms set up, one on each floor, and speaker swaps are really simple.

Oh, and the thoughts on the woofer not keeping up with the RAAL in the Breeze, that's the main reason we're working on a three way using the Breeze components for the TM section, along with a pair of 8" woofers underneath. When they're in the smaller confines of a typical listening room, there's no problem keeping up with the tweeter. It's really easy to push such a small woofer beyond Xmax and lose some resolution and detail. But that little woofer has such a nice suspension, with a much larger Xmech that it handles overdrive with grace.

bkeane1259, I'll see if I can find out who that was for you. It came off a CD put together by Chris over at Balanced Power Technology for his RMAF room a few years back.

[bkeane1259]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

By the way do we have to wait till next summer till there's another Midwest event?

InDIYana 2012 should be in April. Wolf runs that one, and it will be bigger than Chicago.

Here are the pics from last year if you're curious.

[martyh]

Re: Chicago DIY 2011

I would also just like to say thanks to all who made this happen! Wolf was right about doing his happy dance;)
I'm not going to really comment on the sound of the speakers as it was hard for me to not hear the room effect on the sound, but... a couple of standouts for me were the bass and the depth of the soundstage on both Dan Neubecker's Contrappeso which was probably the smoothest from where I was sitting, and also CJD's Ansonica had a nice solid bass, the NTN's were great for the time and price put into them, of course the RAAL was amazing but couldn't help think that the rest of the speaker had a hard time keeping up, The finish on the "Wave guide" speaker was very cool and sounded good also, Marty's speakers where also impressive looking, and I'm sure he'll get the network figured out, the other thing I would look at is how are you transferring/copying your CD tracks Marty? it almost sounds like they were normalized/compressed when they were copied.

By the way do we have to wait till next summer till there's another Midwest event?

I'm working out those voicing issues already (but thanks for the cabinetry compliment!) As far as copying the tracks, I just learned to use Audacity, so good catch as I realized that I did it wrong. Had I used someone elses disk or subsequent tracks on my disk (as only the first was 'Audacitied') then things may have gone better.

Thanks to all for the input - they'll be better in a year!