How does Wavecor Ardent stack up against high end commercial?

[jamespie]

Im interested in building Wavecor Ardent, Statement II, or Bordeaux. I'm assuming the best would be the Ardents. For those of you who have any of these, how do they stack up against high end commercial speakers? My favorite speakers so far have been Bowers and Wilkins 800 D3 Diamond. They are around $25k each. Do the Wavecor Ardents sound as good if driven properly? Thanks

[JonMarsh]

You should get independent opinions, of course, and as the designer I'm not truly objective. OTOH, I have nothing to gain or loose depending on which you build.

personally, I'm a bit surprised at the number of people that have built these so far, considering the not inconsiderable BOM cost. And there are several pairs in construction right now.

OTOH, I think maybe they hit a sweet spot for cost/performance, and the drivers are very low distortion (a significant factor in sonics) and the overall size is relatively petite compared with some other DIY builds in a similar price class.

Bob Ellis and others have built slightly close reduced version, by going to a lower cost tweeter like the Scanspeak Air Circ instead of the 9940 Beryllium, or Ron Bradleys build in which we design in a ScanSpeak cone midrange instead. Those are all documented here on the forum.

Ergo heard a set here in CA while he was here on business, and that inspired him to consider/start building too, though I'm not certain of the status of that effort, if they're finished or not.

The original first three were a construction collaboration between me and a Canadian father/son team, based on my plans for a design upgrade after the first generation Ardent, which was more similar to the Avalon Indra. I did the electrical/acoustical design and collaborated on the CAD design implementation with them- that was lots of fun, so if you have Solidworks, we can even give you those files.

The thread link I sent you has that story...


I mentioned in the PM that the impedance curve of these was much easier for an amplifier to drive than the original Indra, due to the overall design...

[ergo]

Mine are happily singing in family room for over a year now. Currently serving as reference for the ongoing OLA project... and they are doing that well as we have now 2 builds of physical crossover for OLA behind us and my friend is still not yet happy enough as they are not yet close enough to Ardent level in sound.... so we'll keep trying a bit more. Though reaching a same bar will probably be unobtainable even though OLA project uses good drivers too.

My Ardents are not 100% but rather like 97% ready. The xover still resides outside the boxes, but is built to fit the base and I should do put them in there before end of year I hope. I originally built the tweeter and mid xover with lesser components as I tuned the schematic a bit and basically built in Jon's "Voicing curve" that we listened as a line level tweak in CA back then.

As for comparison to multi kUSD pairs - I have not had a chance to do that side by side. Also Estonia being very small for population it means that HiFi resellers also skimp out and do not have high prices speakers on show too often.

But as much as I've heard and compare by comparison I would not be afraid to put them side by side with the pricey and acclaimed ones.

jamespie, depending where you are on globe I still have two more front panels on offer for Wavecor Ardent that I built out of quality BB ply....

[5th element]

It's not just price performance Jon, these are expensive DIY speakers by any realistic standards, it's not that they are easy to build either. Imo it's because they hit the sweet spot in terms of the performance they bring plus the form factor. These aren't big speakers but have big speaker sound in an attractive and accomodating form factor. The fact they are easy to drive is a bonus and lots of people prefer the lower sensitivity smaller designs, that have excellent bass extension, these days.

Due to the faceted baffle, form factor and driver complement the Ardents actually look like stereotypical audiophile bling. People love the Avalon aesthetic and looks matter both to the person building them and to their significant other. Good thing they actually adhere to form following function!