CBRworm
11-21-2007, 07:53 AM
I have dilema.
First of all I am fairly picky about my music - as is everyone here. Secondly I have amassed a good collection of drivers that are not worth selling.
I built some SEAS kit speakers for my main system which sound great. They sound really good for their size, but they were not cheap.
My old Infinity RS series 3 ways also sound great. I realize that the current infinity offerings are not the same as the old ones. I like the fact that they came from the factory with Solen caps and large monster wiring - and that they are solid, sealed enclosures, but the mid and tweeter adjustment pots are noisy and I have replaced the drivers with CA21RNX, DLS IR3 and Peerless HDS tweeters. I made some minor changes to the crossovers pretty much just to account for the impedance changes - they measure pretty flat but they aren't voiced very well, and in fact probably don't sound as good as they did stock - although they play much louder now. They certainly don't look good after 20 years of me carrying them around with me.
Anyway I need to replace them with something smaller. I was looking into using a set of my P18RNX/P's and either the Seas 27TDFC or the Peerless HDS tweeter - since I have extras of both. Madisound has a crossover for the seas driver and nice looking cabinets. The Madisound crossover does not look to be very well thought out - just a very basic crossover with good components. Which may be fine.
I can not build cabinets - I have no tablesaw and just cant make a straight cut to save my life. The dilema here is that if I use the drivers I have it will cost me $400 in madisound parts to finish them. I am sure they will sound pretty good as I like the sound of the individual drivers.
My goal would be to have a smallish speaker (I even considered an 8 inch 2 way) that can crank out the music and take a lot of power. Preferably a 6 or 4 ohm total impedance, which I can't do with the P18's unless I do an MTM - which I don't generally like. The speakers will be powered by an old Pioneer SX-1050 which is kind of like a muscle car amp. It will easily deliver over 100wpc without breaking a sweat all day. And it does run all day every day.
Another possibility would be to take the CA21RNX and the HDS's out of the infinitys and build a small 2 way - sacrificing the infinitys - although I would like to keep them together.
Or I could take that $400 to best buy and buy something. The speakers that I saw that I liked the best in that price range were some Klipsch MTM's which sounded better than I expected, but not as good as I would expect my DIY speakers to sound. I went to the $88 store and looked at the current infinity bookshelf speakers and was not impressed.
Finally - these do not have to sound perfect - they would be going in my weight room, but they do have to sound good enough for me to enjoy and there has to be enough clean bass to keep my workout going.
The truth is that I would rather spend $200. I don't really want to spend $400 just to be able to reuse drivers that I have on hand.
Or the final option is to give up on the small and put my old Cerwin Vega VS12's in there. Lots of bass, shreiking highs and I think they have some mids. Would definately not be my first choice primarily due to shear mass. Sound quality would actually be sufficient for the workout room. I could probably stick a nerf ball or something in the ports to tighten up the bass.
I don't know. Obviously I have no idea what I want to do.
Input would be appreciated.
First of all I am fairly picky about my music - as is everyone here. Secondly I have amassed a good collection of drivers that are not worth selling.
I built some SEAS kit speakers for my main system which sound great. They sound really good for their size, but they were not cheap.
My old Infinity RS series 3 ways also sound great. I realize that the current infinity offerings are not the same as the old ones. I like the fact that they came from the factory with Solen caps and large monster wiring - and that they are solid, sealed enclosures, but the mid and tweeter adjustment pots are noisy and I have replaced the drivers with CA21RNX, DLS IR3 and Peerless HDS tweeters. I made some minor changes to the crossovers pretty much just to account for the impedance changes - they measure pretty flat but they aren't voiced very well, and in fact probably don't sound as good as they did stock - although they play much louder now. They certainly don't look good after 20 years of me carrying them around with me.
Anyway I need to replace them with something smaller. I was looking into using a set of my P18RNX/P's and either the Seas 27TDFC or the Peerless HDS tweeter - since I have extras of both. Madisound has a crossover for the seas driver and nice looking cabinets. The Madisound crossover does not look to be very well thought out - just a very basic crossover with good components. Which may be fine.
I can not build cabinets - I have no tablesaw and just cant make a straight cut to save my life. The dilema here is that if I use the drivers I have it will cost me $400 in madisound parts to finish them. I am sure they will sound pretty good as I like the sound of the individual drivers.
My goal would be to have a smallish speaker (I even considered an 8 inch 2 way) that can crank out the music and take a lot of power. Preferably a 6 or 4 ohm total impedance, which I can't do with the P18's unless I do an MTM - which I don't generally like. The speakers will be powered by an old Pioneer SX-1050 which is kind of like a muscle car amp. It will easily deliver over 100wpc without breaking a sweat all day. And it does run all day every day.
Another possibility would be to take the CA21RNX and the HDS's out of the infinitys and build a small 2 way - sacrificing the infinitys - although I would like to keep them together.
Or I could take that $400 to best buy and buy something. The speakers that I saw that I liked the best in that price range were some Klipsch MTM's which sounded better than I expected, but not as good as I would expect my DIY speakers to sound. I went to the $88 store and looked at the current infinity bookshelf speakers and was not impressed.
Finally - these do not have to sound perfect - they would be going in my weight room, but they do have to sound good enough for me to enjoy and there has to be enough clean bass to keep my workout going.
The truth is that I would rather spend $200. I don't really want to spend $400 just to be able to reuse drivers that I have on hand.
Or the final option is to give up on the small and put my old Cerwin Vega VS12's in there. Lots of bass, shreiking highs and I think they have some mids. Would definately not be my first choice primarily due to shear mass. Sound quality would actually be sufficient for the workout room. I could probably stick a nerf ball or something in the ports to tighten up the bass.
I don't know. Obviously I have no idea what I want to do.
Input would be appreciated.