Various
Performance

I must admit that what I am saying now is very subjective and coloured since it is me who have built the speakers (but I will try not to make a fish story out of it!).

This is my first speaker project and my goal was to make a speaker who fit my types of music. The speakers have a very definable stereo picture both sideways and in depth. They are quite easy to place and you can sit close to them (compared to the distance between the speakers) and still have no problem picturing yourself where the musicians and singers stands. They deliver a lot of punch in the lower frequencies (compared to the size). How much is of course dependent on where you place them and the size of the room. Transients are well defined and there are a lot of air around instruments and voices even if you push them really hard.

Once I tried my speakers in a large loft (70 m²). Choir and orchestra became realistic both in size and soundpressure and Duran Duran had an attack I seldom have heard before. You could feel the bass in the floor although the floor was made of concrete. (Unfortunately my amplifier went up in smoke after this event).

The speakers lean tonally to the dark side. Someone might find that the tweeter sounds a bit hard and cold sometimes and is not as good as some Dynaudio and Technics dome-tweeters I have heard (but compared to the price I think this dome-tweeter is a real bargain). The tweeter also has a little problem with s-sounds (but this may be caused by the cd-player I am using).

All in all I must say I am quite satisfied with the performance of my speakers and I must admit that I am quite proud of what I have been able to make.

How much did it cost? To build one speaker I had to pay:

TABLE: Cost analysis

Vifa D25AG-35-06 (tweeter)        277 NOK
Vifa P17WJ-00-8 (woofer)          369 NOK
Crossover inductors             75,50 NOK
Crossover capacitors               97 NOK
Crossover resistors             25,50 NOK
Spot spikes                       100 NOK
Wool stuffing (akustilux)          24 NOK
1 m 2x1.5 mm˛ Intertechnik wire    10 NOK
1 m 2x2.5 mm˛ Intertechnik wire    15 NOK
Binding posts                     106 NOK
Woofer reflex port                 27 NOK
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Total                            1136 NOK
(10 NOK is about 1 English pound and 7 NOK is about 1 US dollar.)

Hasn't he forgotten to list the wood price for the birch he used?, you may ask. No I haven't. I was lucky having an uncle who just happened to have som birch laying around (actually it had been laying around for about twenty years). He didn't want to get payed for it, so I was quite lucky (I have no idea how much birch costs if you have to buy it from a sawmill).

Floor stand The floor stand is also build from birch. To make them heavy I have used a slate at bottom. One floor stand weighs approximately 11 kg and is 45 cm high.

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