January 2014 SAC Meeting
We kicked off our 2014 season with a great DIY system from club member, Joseph Dillon. Joseph is usually into the electronics side of DIY, but this time he’s built all his own gear, including his own speakers!
Each speaker had seven drivers: 1 x ribbon tweeter, 4 x 6” midrange and high bass drivers, 1 x 12” woofer, and 1 x 15” passive radiator mounted on the rear baffle. There was also the ability to adjust the levels for mids and highs to suit the room. The crossovers are at 300 Hz and 3500 Hz. The finish was a rich Jarrah colour.
The new DIY integrated amplifier was all valve and included a built-in phono stage. It featured 60 WPC and utilized 4 x KT120, 2 x 6CG7, 2 x 6H30, 2 x 6922 (phono stage) and 1 x ECL82 (regulator). The turntable was the Project Genie II with the Rhondo Red MM cartridge. The DIY phono stage was all valves as well. The CD/SACD player was the venerable Oppo BDP-95.
The system initially sounded very bright but gradually settled down with warm-up time and adjustments to the midrange and treble on the back of each speaker. When pushed at higher volumes, it did sound a bit hard and bright. This could possibly be the integrated amp not having enough power, but I suspect it’s more likely that the room’s hard reflections started to become more obvious. As well, when pushed at higher volumes the system also sounded somewhat congested – voices and instruments would congeal together rather than remain audibly separate.
I thought the system had reasonable detail and reasonable transparency. But it seemed to lack coherency from bottom to top. Depending on the music, sometimes various instruments and voices would seem unusually prominent or reticent which gave an unnatural sound. Of course it’s hard to say that that wasn’t in the actual recording, which is a possibility.
The system was somewhat plummy and uncontrolled in the bass. The speakers might have sounded better if they were up off the floor to alleviate energy transfer reactions with the floor. They didn’t have spikes which may well have helped in this respect. This is something we’ll pay more attention to in the future – we’ll see what devices we can source to help alleviate this.
We then had our member’s music segment which was hosted by Steven Polley this month. Steven presented a variety of interesting hi-res music, primarily all downloaded from Linn. The audience showed their approval with a hardy round of clapping (and complimentary comments on their feedback form).
After our break, we had our usual BYO session. There was lots of great music with wonderful diversity once again.
Although I could hear flaws in the system, I thought it was a remarkably good effort from Joseph. If I’d have made it, it would have sounded terrible! Overall, the system had a musicality about it that made it very listenable. And it was very kind of him to make the effort to bring in the entire system for our listening pleasure. Thanks Joseph.
Tom Waters
Summary of member feedback:
Each speaker had seven drivers: 1 x ribbon tweeter, 4 x 6” midrange and high bass drivers, 1 x 12” woofer, and 1 x 15” passive radiator mounted on the rear baffle. There was also the ability to adjust the levels for mids and highs to suit the room. The crossovers are at 300 Hz and 3500 Hz. The finish was a rich Jarrah colour.
The new DIY integrated amplifier was all valve and included a built-in phono stage. It featured 60 WPC and utilized 4 x KT120, 2 x 6CG7, 2 x 6H30, 2 x 6922 (phono stage) and 1 x ECL82 (regulator). The turntable was the Project Genie II with the Rhondo Red MM cartridge. The DIY phono stage was all valves as well. The CD/SACD player was the venerable Oppo BDP-95.
The system initially sounded very bright but gradually settled down with warm-up time and adjustments to the midrange and treble on the back of each speaker. When pushed at higher volumes, it did sound a bit hard and bright. This could possibly be the integrated amp not having enough power, but I suspect it’s more likely that the room’s hard reflections started to become more obvious. As well, when pushed at higher volumes the system also sounded somewhat congested – voices and instruments would congeal together rather than remain audibly separate.
I thought the system had reasonable detail and reasonable transparency. But it seemed to lack coherency from bottom to top. Depending on the music, sometimes various instruments and voices would seem unusually prominent or reticent which gave an unnatural sound. Of course it’s hard to say that that wasn’t in the actual recording, which is a possibility.
The system was somewhat plummy and uncontrolled in the bass. The speakers might have sounded better if they were up off the floor to alleviate energy transfer reactions with the floor. They didn’t have spikes which may well have helped in this respect. This is something we’ll pay more attention to in the future – we’ll see what devices we can source to help alleviate this.
We then had our member’s music segment which was hosted by Steven Polley this month. Steven presented a variety of interesting hi-res music, primarily all downloaded from Linn. The audience showed their approval with a hardy round of clapping (and complimentary comments on their feedback form).
After our break, we had our usual BYO session. There was lots of great music with wonderful diversity once again.
Although I could hear flaws in the system, I thought it was a remarkably good effort from Joseph. If I’d have made it, it would have sounded terrible! Overall, the system had a musicality about it that made it very listenable. And it was very kind of him to make the effort to bring in the entire system for our listening pleasure. Thanks Joseph.
Tom Waters
Summary of member feedback:
- Enjoyment of the Meeting: 4.2
- Enjoyment of the Equipment: 3.8
- Enjoyment of the Music: 3.7
- Great work Joseph. Keep it up
- Great equipment
- Speakers are a great effort but need more refinement
- I love meetings like this. Fine equipment presented by a member
- Very enjoyable afternoon. Loved the amp
- Offenbach
- Saint-Saens
- Roy Orbison
- All