LOUDSPEAKERS 1.
Content of this page :-

The evolution of my speaker designs, the ugly side of retailing for the speaker maker,
Pictures of Sublime and Supreme 3 way full range speakers. Full description of speakers.
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Its now 2009 and it has been a long time since I hand crafted loudspeaker systems for supply to any audiophiles because
I have become mainly a specialist amplifier maker and re-builder.

The exact SEAS speaker drive units shown in the details of the speakers may not now be available. So I include this page as a guide only for anyone to make their own speakers. I myself have kept my sample pair of Supreme and  I sold the pair of Sublime to a local Canberra man who is very happy. Changes to the original configurations of crossovers have been minimal and for my customers Sublimes I re-built the crossovers entirely using Obligato polypropylene capacitors and  better quality resistors. The capacitors seemed to make a nice difference to the sound but the resistance change did very little. The speakers are gold standard for performance within the little group of guys here who I deal with. 

Over the last 9 years nobody has placed an order for loudspeakers.
Since I run a small business I have never had the capital to invest heavily in the costs and time for promotion of loudspeaker sales.
To sell loudspeakers successfully, the promotional costs must be probably equal at least to the cost of the materials, ie, perhaps 25% of the retail price, and one has to have a lot of stock in hi-fi shops and obtain reviews in audio magazines in which one pays for advertisements. The shops play a part because where else can customers listen and compare the sound of different brands?

Unfortunately hi-fi shops want 50%+ of the retail price as their margin.
The net result is that anyone making speakers in Australia can only survive by using the very cheapest of enclosure designs, cheapest of materials, speaker drivers and crossover components.
And then all they achieve is a product no better than imported speakers in the price range desired.
This is called "building down to a price", rather than what I try to to which is to build up to a quality, and not worry if most people cannot afford it..

Some history...When I developed my speakers 9 years ago I wanted them to perform better than all the speakers
I had heard but have none of the design compromises I had seen and heard with speakers in the shops
or elsewhere. It didn't take long to proove to myself this was possible during demonstrations of my speakers
to the Audiophile Society of NSW and by having my speakers displayed at a local shop in Canberra
for a few months for "evaluation".  I have to thank a very critical employee of Canberra's Duratone Hi-Fi who saw what I was up to at the time and helped my speaker making abilities improve with his robust critique of just about everything I was doing with speakers in 1999. Eventually Rob the Man began to like what I made in preference to the half dozen other Australian and imported brands. The price I wanted for my speakers was equal to many in the shops. A considerable number of brands were poorer performers, consisting of small enclosures on stands and needing a sub-woofer, or just not offering full range sound.
In 2000, there wasn't much that was worth buying from any shop here under aud $4,000, ( or about usd $3,000.)

Had the shop sold my speakers at the aud $4,000 price, the shop would have taken out their 50%, leaving me with only $2,000, just enough to pay for timber materials, drivers and other components, and almost nothing for my labour.
The same problem occurred with amplifiers; and so I withdrew my product from local shops and established the website enabling direct sales from me to the customer. I have never been one to adopt many of the practices of  the "marketing and promotions industry".  A website like this tells a buyer exactly what is the real story behind what my product contains.

After displaying speakers at this website between 2000 and 2006, I have received only 2 enquiries for a quote
on the supply of speakers, and all I can say is that people don't realize what they are missing out on.
But then people want to buy speakers when they see them and don't like a wait months while for the hand crafted product to be carefully constructed.

The hi-fi shops continue to be stocked with even worse quality junk than ever before, and I have ZERO intention to compete with what is available and I will not imitate any of it.

I am primarily interested and focused on hi-fi and performance, so I will describe what I did produce 5 years ago
because it is still a valid guide to what is really needed now for an exceptional hi-fi speaker performance.
Many local people who have heard my speakers know it is very difficult to find any better for any price at all.

Supreme speakers.                                                                                               Sublime speakers 

The enclosure top and sides are 38mm thick consisting of 16mm MDF board overlaid with 17mm of
structural plywood with 4.5 mm of veneered plywood for appearance. The resulting asymmetrical panel density tends to reduce resonances. There is a large amount of well placed internal bracings to prevent movement of the enclosure walls and to interrupt internal standing waves. The front and rear baffles are made from real timber hardwood planks of Victorian Ash, 42mm on the front and 33mm on the rear. The front baffles are fixed to the side and top/bottoms by many screws and slotted aluminium angles so that no fixing is visible from the outside, but the screw fixing does allow the real timber
to expand and contract. The front baffles and rear panels have foam sealing gaskets to ensure air tight contact but to
also provide a soft join between the panels and the sides and top of the enclosures, allowing the small amount of natural timber expansion and contraction and to give added reduced acoustic coupling in the enclosure itself.

The enclosures have narrow front panels and well rounded corners to diffraction and optimize stereo imaging.
Internally, the sound from the rear of the bass and mid cones is absorbed by high density polyester
wool which is used in acoustic sound proofing where a high level of attenuation is needed.

The bass units and mid/treble units have been built as separate enclosures to prevent midrange
sound from vibrating the larger bass enclosure woodwork. There is a layer of felt on the bottom
of the mid/treble units, and because of the weight of the units, ( 85kg for Sublime, ) they have plenty of inertia to prevent box movement and there is no need for floor spikes or other point contact supports to improve the sound.
After a previous career of 30 years in the building construction industry where I worked as a carpenter and joiner while supervising others around me I was and remain better qualified and equipped than most to build
speaker enclosures which are second to none.

The bass units are 55 litre ported reflex with a box frequency below 35Hz and hence all frequencies above 40Hz
are delivered by the front of the bass cone without the ill-effects of enclosure resonances which occur with
enclosures being too small and Fb being too high.
The mid/treble enclosure is a sealed box.  

The crossover frequencies are at 300Hz and 3 kHz, and bass extends down to 22Hz
so no subwoofer is needed, and the bass sounds well integrated and fast without the tendency of  sloppy bass
and woolliness that subwoofers so often generate.

All the speaker drivers are Seas units because I liked their accuracy, lack of colouration, low distortions,
smooth response within their bandwidth, lack of cone break-up behaviour, and their ease of use
since relatively simple crossover filters were required.
Bass drivers are SEAS L21RNX/P
Midrange drivers are SEAS MP 14RCY/P
Treble drivers are SEAS 27TF
Details of these drivers are at the SEAS website.

The crossover filters are made using hand wound air cored inductors and well rated polypropylene capacitors non-polarized bipolar elcaps and wire wound resistors.

Any type of amplifier can be used.

Sensitivity is 90 dB per watt at one metre for each channel.
Impedance :- Sublime is 6 ohms nominal, with a minimum of 4.5 ohms at 300Hz, Supreme is 9 ohms nominal, with a minimum of 6 ohms at 300Hz.
Frequency response is 22 Hz to 22 kHz.

Top quality silver plated cabling used throughout.
Recessed gold plated 4 mm banana sockets are provided as speaker terminals.
Any type of speaker cables with 4 mm banana plugs may be used between the bass speaker and amplifier, and a cable supplied to connect the mid-treble unit to the bass unit.
Each mid/treble and bass unit has its own pair of input terminals, so they may be bi-amped or bi-wired.

Recommended minimum amplification is 25 watts per channel.
Maximum power handling is 100 watts, which will produce an SPL = 109 dB.

Total weight for Sublime is 85 kilograms, Supreme is slightly more.
Overall Dimensions, Sublime = 310 mm wide by 1,070 mm high by 450 mm deep,
Overall Dimensions, Supreme = 310 mm wide by 1,175 mm high by 450 mm deep.

From what you can see the bass units for both Sublime and Supreme are identical in appearance and are also very close in acoustic performance.
However the Supreme mid/treble unit has an extra midrange driver which makes large difference to the impedances of the two designs, since the two 6 ohm midrange drivers are connected in series and give an overall impedance that is easier for an SE amp to drive.
This arrangement lowers the SPL output slightly in comparison to the output from the bass for a given voltage, and it suits higher output impedance amplifiers. The Sublime has only 1 midrange driver and so for a given input voltage the acoustic
level of midrange is higher. But I have two pairs of input connectors, one pair for direct connection to the mid/treble to get a slightly "dry" sound, and the other has a series resistance to drop the SPL of the mid/treble by 3dB
and raise the impedance, so a better balanced sound can be had but without wasting much power in a resistance. There are no switches for level changes, or L-pad adjusments.

The speakers I have pictured are not to everyone's taste because many prefer a plain black finish or a smaller size. I make no apology for the fact my speakers are larger than all the others in the shop for the same price, and the laws of physics prevent me trading away low bass to get a lower visual impact, lower costs of production, higher slaes and higher profits.
I make full range speakers, not fashion statements.
The current fashion of shiny black piano finish won't make Chopin sound any better.
The cheapest and easiest finish I have done on another pair of speakers I made prior to those
pictured have acrylic satin enamel house paint applied, and it looks fine. Colours can be selected
to match the room walls! I apply it with a plastic foam roller to get a satin finish so there are no brush marks and
people have asked me if the speakers are somehow moulded into shape.  It is a finish which can easily
be repaired and/or re-painted.
Frankly, no amount of expenditure on finishes will improove the fidelity, and people should buy their speakers (and amplifiers) based on the integrity of what physical factors are summed together in the design.

In the speakers above there was much time spent on getting a high standard of timber grain finish
to the enclosures but the same sonic performance is available using
33mm+ thick medium density fibre board, (MDF) panels for all 6 enclosure sides. The construction of MDF
enclosures  is something  I can safely subcontract out to a local joinery so I myself am not spending
time on woodwork and you will benefit since the price will be lower.
Should anyone wish to build their own enclosures they would find the recipe above will work very well.
See my page on DIY speaker designs for other good performers.