Equivalency?

[NWLanding]

I recently previewed a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RX8 speakers that pretty well capture the baseline sound I'm interested in. If anyone is familiar with these speakers and could recommend an equivalent DIY build that would be equal to or better than these RX8s and in the $600-$800 price range for drivers and crossover parts, I be grateful for the input. I've been looking at the Mini Statements, Swope 3-Way and ZRT 2.5-Way Revelator (I know, roughly double my stated budget) designs.

[madmac]

Ohhhhhhh........"Equivalency"........Nice post title!!!.......This could get interesting !!!

[fbov]

Only if he defines "equivalency." Otherwise, this has all the hallmarks of a troll.

The fundamental problem with the question is context - speakers have no "sound" in and of themselves (outside the anechoic chamber, a very unpleasent place for listening, btw). Rooms and speakers located therein are a single entity. Change either in seemingly innocuous ways and the sound changes.

One may call a speaker a "baseline" but one must them expect significant changes in perceived sound based on room characteristics and speaker placement, as much as the speaker itself. That's not what most of us mean by a baseline...

Have fun,
Frank

PS if you auditioned them in your home, you have a baseline, albeit one that no one on this forum can comment on. If they were in a dealer's showroom, see above.

[NWLanding]

Ah semantics... Definitly not a troll but new to this forum. Perhaps it would be more direct to say I just previewed these speakers in my home and appreciated how they sound. Not having the technical knowledge yet to express objective statements or questions I was hoping that someone could read betwwen the lines and ask me to clarify what I was asking . Maybe I picked the wrong forum. Not feeling the love here.

[---k---]

I hate this question.

In my opinion, spending the equivalent amount of money on a reputable DIY will result in a speaker that measures/test better and is technically better. However, all speakers have different tradeoffs, pros, cons, and voicing. These isn't a single measurement of what is best. And then there are degrees of preferences.

It has been a while since I listened to Monitor Audio. My memory may be failing me here, but I recall they had more of a richer, warm, full body sound. A little of your stereotypical boom-sizzle. Not the same voicing approach as CJD, JonMarsh, Zaph. So, if that is what you're looking for, you might be dissapointed, even with a technically superior design. It is going to depend on your music, priorities, room, etc.

I would feel guilty if someone were to build a design based on my recommendation and didn't like it. So, maybe I'm too cautious these days in recommending stuff. Lots of people have dove in to the deep end and loved the results. Others feel the need to tweak until they get there.

You can either dive in the deep end with an expensive design, build a cheaper design by the same designer to get the feel, attend one of the DIY events, or post your location and see if you can get a private audition (i've demoed mine for a couple random people).

Paul Carmondy's speakers are generally designed for rock, while CJD designs for classical. It leads to excellent speakers with a slightly different result. I really enjoy my CJD designs, but with your Monitor Audio preference you might want to look at Paul's designs. There are others around the web that I haven't heard.
(BTW, Ascendaudio.com produces speakers which have a very similar voicing to CJD. So, if you by chance have heard those....)

[NWLanding]

Thanks Ryan. Your response is very helpful and useful. I understand that everyone relates to what they hear differently and the influence of musical interests.

I live in Washington State, South Puget Sound area and would appreciate an opportunity to privately audition one of the mentioned builds, or something else.

I'd also be interested learning about the best way to learn about DIY events.

[dar47]

Ya what K says!

Friend was looking at those he is a country buff, but I offered to help with the cabinets if he wanted to try DIY. He liked these so we tried to mimic them.

Image not available

I thought the Modula MTM would be nice crossed to his 12" sub. He likes them and they are smother (better power response) and cleaner (low distortion), so what's not to like with any good music as long as it's well recorded. They came in close on the cost too.

Images not available

[NWLanding]

Those are very attractive! I appreciate hearing about someone's experience that includes something I can relate to (the RX8s) and a DIY outcome that exceeds that point of reference.

Besides wanting an excellent listening experience I'm equally interested in applying my advanced cabinetry skills to produce an aesthetic outcome.

Thanks again for the pics and info.

[JonMarsh]

I hate this question.

In my opinion, spending the equivalent amount of money on a reputable DIY will result in a speaker that measures/test better and is technically better. However, all speakers have different tradeoffs, pros, cons, and voicing. These isn't a single measurement of what is best. And then there are degrees of preferences.

It has been a while since I listened to Monitor Audio. My memory may be failing me here, but I recall they had more of a richer, warm, full body sound. A little of your stereotypical boom-sizzle. Not the same voicing approach as CJD, JonMarsh, Zaph. So, if that is what you're looking for, you might be dissapointed, even with a technically superior design. It is going to depend on your music, priorities, room, etc.

I would feel guilty if someone were to build a design based on my recommendation and didn't like it. So, maybe I'm too cautious these days in recommending stuff. Lots of people have dove in to the deep end and loved the results. Others feel the need to tweak until they get there.

You can either dive in the deep end with an expensive design, build a cheaper design by the same designer to get the feel, attend one of the DIY events, or post your location and see if you can get a private audition (i've demoed mine for a couple random people).

Paul Carmondy's speakers are generally designed for rock, while CJD designs for classical. It leads to excellent speakers with a slightly different result. I really enjoy my CJD designs, but with your Monitor Audio preference you might want to look at Paul's designs. There are others around the web that I haven't heard.
(BTW, Ascendaudio.com produces speakers which have a very similar voicing to CJD. So, if you by chance have heard those....)

+1

It's a slippery slope finding a design that mimics the voicing of a specific commercial speaker; good advice here from K

Even designer's intent may change over time (mine is), and some of the current projects I'm working on will have a different "sound" from earlier ones, based on my work on the Ardent's and Modula Xtreme, based on the psych-oaccoustics of stereo reproduction.

Now, if I can just get some weekends off from work... :roll:

[NWLanding]

I'm beginning to get it!

Thanks John! Through the feedback I've received on my OP I'm developing a better understanding of how to frame my questions in a way that will enable folks to help me solve my problems.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

[---k---]

This thread might also give you some insight into why the question you are asking is so hard to answer....
http://www.hometheatershack.com/foru...assvogels.html (Ignore the cabinet bracing crap.)

There are people on the net who are more than willing to give very specific recommendations.... but, they often haven't learned yet how many trade offs go into a speaker design.

[fbov]

Ah semantics... Definitly not a troll but new to this forum. Perhaps it would be more direct to say I just previewed these speakers in my home and appreciated how they sound. Not having the technical knowledge yet to express objective statements or questions I was hoping that someone could read betwwen the lines and ask me to clarify what I was asking . Maybe I picked the wrong forum. Not feeling the love here.

Please pardon the troll repellent; they tend to avoid the harsh light of day, while you came back.

Home preview is certainly a good place to start because that fixes (as in "unchanging" rather than "repair") a lot of the variables on your end. I didn't want to assume what was between the lines as I find assumptions lead to poor communication and bad advice if they're not spot on. Better for you to tell us what you're looking for, even as we, as a community, teach you the language of speaker design.

Then there's the reason for Ryan's hate; it's hard to design for someone else's preferences and application. Speakers and their acoustic boundaries form a system, and DIYers work at the system level - a speaker at a specific location in a room relative to room boundaries, furnishings, etc., with a specific pair of ears listening to them. The link to the Khanspire vs Spassvolgel is a classic case of both differing personal preferences, and differences resulting from similar preferences, optimized for different rooms.

That said, some design approaches reduce room interaction by skillful speaker interaction. Others exploit room reflections to broaden the apparent width of the instruments' sonic images and envelope the listener. The big difference is in their off-axis behavior. To my ears, the preferred approach depends on the program, multichannel or stereo - neither approach is better than the other until I define the application.

Part of room interaction is boundary proximity, affecting the degree of baffle step compensation needed in speaker design. "Free-standing" and "on-wall/in-wall" are descriptions of the two extremes, with most designs somewhere inbetween. The audible issue is tonal balance; placing speaker closer to walls increases the apparent bass output, due to reinforcing reflections from the wall. A speaker designer can adjust BSC in the XO design, but only for a subset of possible locations. That was one of the issues in the Khanspire vs Spassvolgel comparison.

These are the big and obvious issues that a relative newcomer like me can explain. Voicing is a whole 'nother bag of tricks. My HT is Jon Marsh MTMs, NatP's not Modulas, but similar, and having had them out in public (Dayton DIY before it was MWAF), I know they sound really good. That tells me I like Jon's voicing, but give me no insight into your preferences.

Since you auditioned a pair, let's talk about stereo.

I love MTMs for multichannel, but not so much for stereo. MTM (aka D'Appolito config) design uses wave interference to create nulls aimed at the floor and ceiling. This is a link to an MTM with contours shown near the XO frequency in a vertical plane (i.e. parallel to the M-M line). At +45 and -45 degrees, there's a -30dB null present at 1KHz (and a little below) that's gone by 2KHz.



This results in a very uniform horizontal sound field at tweeter height, but one where 2-channel program results in individual instrument images that are very compact and localized. Multichannel program can spread instrument images in the studio and use the multichannel speakers to reproduce it regardless of room contributions.

Conversely, a different driver geometry yields a different polar pattern, again in the vertical direction:



This is a TM. It has nulls near teh XO frequency, but shallow and narrow banded, and more importantly, it has lots of energy going into the room above and below tweeter height. This kind of geometry greatly increases room interaction and in my experience, increases apparent source width and envelopment, which both correlate positively with preference.

These are speakers that will disappear, leaving a sound field with no obvious source. Now I don't have SR71, my favorite TMs are Jeff Bagby's Continuum, but the principles are the same.

Have fun,
Frank

[AdelaaR]

This thread might also give you some insight into why the question you are asking is so hard to answer....
http://www.hometheatershack.com/foru...assvogels.html

An interesting read indeed.

[cjd]

An interesting read indeed.

I forgot about that thread.

[---k---]

I forgot how much crap was in the thread. The speakers were designed for very different rooms and positioning. Which makes fairly doing A vs. B testing in the same room near impossible. I didn't try and argue this because some people involved in that test and on the net at the time were so adamant of A vs B blind testing. But, it makes some good points.

[AdelaaR]

Blind testing is often very revealing and this is the reason why many people do not like it.
Double-blind wine tasting, for instance, tends to bring out how little people actually sense and how much they make themselves believe they sense.
The problem with senses is that the mind has a very strong tendency to make you sense what you want to sense and it's very difficult to control the mind to stop doing that.
When big money is paid for a certain item, people expect that item to be superior and they also subconsciously do not want to feel like they overpaid for it, so the mind will do it's tricks and will try to let you believe that you perceive it as superior.

[---k---]

Ugh... I agree that blind testing is good. But it is nearly impossible to fairly blind test a speaker with full baffle step versus one with very little baffle step. Place them close together and one or the other doesn't have the designed for positioning. Place each in the properly designed for location and then they both interact with the room differently.

Again, blind testing is a very good thing. But, only if it is done properly. And it is very very much harder to do fairly with speakers than people realize.

[AdelaaR]

Indeed. The subjects of blind testing should be allowed to be in optimal conditions.
The problem with nearly any test is that there will always be some kind of reason why the test parameters aren't optimal for certain subjects and this will always give people all kinds of possible ways to interpret or question the results.

The thing is ... like with wine, beer, speakers and many other things ... in the end it comes down to personal preference.
I don't like sweet beer, for instance ... I like mine bitter and malty.