Tuesday, March 1, 2016

DIY - Experimental Open Baffle speakers (Part 2)

(continuation from Part 1)

After some plastic surgery, the ugly duckling was transformed to the below. Woofers were salvaged from the original Pioneer S-D77. Replacement midrange are AIWA and tweeters Celestion.

The resultant open baffle
Initial layout after hooking up the misc components

Frontal view
How does it sound?

In short - blew my socks off (... can't find them)!!! I NEVER expected such promising results. The resultant open baffle (aka OB) sounds extremely open and natural. Using the setup in the living room, I could hear additional details from my favourite CD(s) I never realised were in the recordings ... till now! Even so, bass reproduction seem to change drastically between CD(s) which could be due to the resulting impedence or matching of the make to do components. Nevertheless this seem to be the common sore point for the many OB(s) on the net.

Was originally planning to dispose of these cabinets after some mucking around ... I now intend to order some decent components for further exploration. Much followup would be necessary before I can finalise the replacement crossover for the OB ... guess will require a Part-3 for the OB in the near future.

In the meantime, I started performing "trial and error" tests using the many components in my collection. Changing the DAC in the above setup produces large differences in the quality of reproduction.