Affordable Accuracy Monitor Review

[2go]

I've also did mod of all Pioneer speakers of the whole set and pretty happy with it. With this I came to a new question: how big is the difference between Dennis' BMRs vs AAM ? If anyone have them in SF Bay Area I can bring Pioneers to compare. I do see difference in measurements but just curios how big is the audible difference for me ?

P.S.
I'd like to thank @Dennis Murphy. You're real genius and have absolute hearing and engineering skills

 

[Enchy]

Took me a while to find this particular post, but I needed the emphasis because I ended up doing this with @Dennis Murphy 's instruction.

It started with the C22 for which I had Dennis build me the crossover as I'm not electrically inclined and hadn't soldered since high school (far too many years ago). For that one I could have just twist, crimped, and taped, but I did get a cheap soldering kit because why not. I didn't have to give the C22 a +3dB bump anymore and voices sounded cleaner and a bit fuller. Now I have a soldering kit too.

The disparity in tweeter quality gnawed on me while watching things, however. So I asked Dennis about the FS52 mod and he sent me the schematics. I decided not to do it at first because it did seem like a lot of work I wasn't ready for. I also didn't want to bother him about building more for me. That gnawing though... Ok let's just order the parts ... and wait a month and a half because of Parts Express back orders. I spent about two hours carefully following the instructions to build both crossover boards. For someone who has done this before it would definitely take less time. For the C22 notching the speaker frame to fit the tweeter's opposed terminals without a saw I used a drill to make concentric holes. For the FS52 I bought I dremel and made that bit much easier. Cutting up the wires in the speaker and splicing them around the new crossover took me a good long while because even with two sets of instructions I didn't want to screw it up. The final bit of securing the crossover board I went with 15lb Velcro strips instead of screwing into the cabinet. I did one tower first, partially closed up, tested it, finished it off. Second one went a lot quicker and tempting fate I didn't bother to test before securing and fully closing it - it went just fine. All in all about 5 hours for a novice.

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Gotta say just wow. I set my AVR to direct mode and just listened to music to test and ended up doing that for two hours before my SO said it's 9 on Sunday, let the neighbors have some quiet. Absolutely blown away by the new life these speakers have taken on. My SO even joked that we could get rid of our PB-12 NSD. At least I think it was a joke, she does want that space back... Speakers sounded much clearer, had a stronger center image but also just sounded bigger too. I'll need to re-run Audyssey soon to get their impression for HT use. I'm sure I'll be similarly impressed.

Now I excitedly await Mr. Murphy's BR-1 kit for my desk...

This post is super inspiring! I already have Dennis's C22 mod I bought a few years ago, and he recently sent me the instructions for the FS52 mod. I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the process but it looks like a very fun build. I have some soldering experience, but last time I soldered my friend watched and said "oh you have no idea what you're doing" so that was helpful

I'm also planning to mod my 2 pairs of BS22s to make a 7 channel setup for my theater build I'm about to undertake. Eventually (probably later this year since I suffer from upgraditis) I plan to replace the front 3 channels with DIY BMRs, but I'm doing these Pioneer mods to prepare myself for the significantly more expensive BMR build.

Going to try to get amir to measure my modded C22 here in the coming weeks as well!

 

[milan616]

This post is super inspiring! I already have Dennis's C22 mod I bought a few years ago, and he recently sent me the instructions for the FS52 mod. I'm a little bit overwhelmed by the process but it looks like a very fun build. I have some soldering experience, but last time I soldered my friend watched and said "oh you have no idea what you're doing" so that was helpful

You can do it! Feel free to reach out if you need more encouragement I hadn't soldered since high school (20 years ago yikes!) and I know the ones I did aren't great, but I got the job done. Just don't zoom in on my picture... Also super jealous of your future BMR builds, I hope I can do those in a few years.

Going to try to get amir to measure my modded C22 here in the coming weeks as well!

Very cool! I look forward to seeing the results. As much as I'd like to send the FS52 in my SO would kill me if I sent away her speakers for a few weeks, sadly. Dennis' BR-1 kit for my desk came in today and I'm really thinking about sending it to Amir, but again the cross country time and expense puts me off.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Going to try to get amir to measure my modded C22 here in the coming weeks as well!

Hi Enchy I obviously can't stop you from sending your C22's to Amir, but it is kind of a problem for me. I have no intention of offering it again and I haven't documented the mod. If Amir likes it, I'm going to get flooded with requests to build them or send documentation, and I would like to avoid that. The fallout from Amir's BS22 review kept me occupied for months. The C22 mod is kind of a band-aid fix in any event. The BS22 mod is more justified because Andrew did such a great job with the box tuning. The C22--not so much. The box volume needed to have been twice as large to preserve the monitor's tuning, but I guess that would have meant a bigger center than the marketing department wanted. As a result, the bass is pretty heavy and not very extended. Frankly, I think people would be better off replacing their C22's with something better like the Infinity Amir reviewed rather than going through the unpleasant process of tearing the stock unit apart and replacing the vital organs. Just saying....

 

[Enchy]

Hi Enchy I obviously can't stop you from sending your C22's to Amir, but it is kind of a problem for me. I have no intention of offering it again and I haven't documented the mod. If Amir likes it, I'm going to get flooded with requests to build them or send documentation, and I would like to avoid that. The fallout from Amir's BS22 review kept me occupied for months. The C22 mod is kind of a band-aid fix in any event. The BS22 mod is more justified because Andrew did such a great job with the box tuning. The C22--not so much. The box volume needed to have been twice as large to preserve the monitor's tuning, but I guess that would have meant a bigger center than the marketing department wanted. As a result, the bass is pretty heavy and not very extended. Frankly, I think people would be better off replacing their C22's with something better like the Infinity Amir reviewed rather than going through the unpleasant process of tearing the stock unit apart and replacing the vital organs. Just saying....

For your sake, I will hold off

 

[Dennis Murphy]

For your sake, I will hold off

Thanks--I appreciate it. Another thing I didn't mention is that Amir probably wouldn't like it. The spins will always be ugly for a conventional side-mounted MTM like this. There's no way to avoid the nulls that develop off axis unless you resort to a WMTW or mitigate them slightly by moving the tweeter up so you can get the woofers closer together. Which brings up still another issue. Everyone seems to be accepting as gospel that uneven off-axis horizontal response means a colored or otherwise handicapped sound when listening on axis in mono. If you have a decent MTM with reasonably smooth on-axis response lying around (like a, cough cough, AA center), you might perform a little test to see whether that's really true. Listen to some music with the speaker vertically oriented. Then flip it on its side (you may have to put a book or something on the stand to raise the tweeter level) and play the same music. Do you year a difference? You should, but do you?

 

[Beave]

Funny you mention that "test," Dennis, because I did that very thing a couple of years ago when I had a couple of MTM centers I was playing around with.

I couldn't do a "blinded" test because I was the one who was getting up and flipping the speaker(s), but I found that there was barely any difference in sound when listening on axis. I think I could tell when the speaker was horizontal vs when it was vertical, but it wasn't obvious at all.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Ding Ding I wish I had the raw Harman data set so I could do some sensitivity analysis. I'm pretty sure that severe off-axis flare-ups are audible, but my experience has been that early arrivals dominate our impression, followed by positive impressions if the off-axis response is very broad (but not necessarily all that even). Anyhow, I think my way of testing for that is valid, particularly if it's blinded.

 

[Mike Lima]

Right--I have about 8 pairs of the stock 22's left . I don't intend to order any more because the mod is something of a pain, but I have enjoyed listening to them again. The Vifa tweeter is a case study in just how early diminishing returns can occur in audio.

Do you have any more modified ones?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Do you have any more modified ones?

I wish I did. But I can't find any more stock 22's. They've been discontinued for some time.

 

[Mike Lima]

I wish I did. But I can't find any more stock 22's. They've been discontinued for some time.

Too bad. I have like 6 of them!

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Too bad. I have like 6 of them!

Well, you can always to the mod yourself. There are plenty of Vifa tweeters around.

 

[Mike Lima]

Well, you can always to the mod yourself. There are plenty of Vifa tweeters around.[/QUOTE
Unfortunately, I am not that handy. :-(

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Neither am I. But I didn't let that stop me. Never look inside one of my speakers.

 

[Vertical]

Neither am I. But I didn't let that stop me. Never look inside one of my speakers.

Lol. They do sound smooth though the looks of the internal mods may not be up to your standards, Dennis.

 

[thebabyparrot]

I just wanted to go out on a limb here and say, I actually own a pair of these, but I don't know what model. @Dennis Murphy has built what I believe, to be the best, price to performance speaker with this.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I just wanted to go out on a limb here and say, I actually own a pair of these, but I don't know what model. @Dennis Murphy has built what I believe, to be the best, price to performance speaker with this.

This thread is about the Pioneer 22 mod. The other Affordable Accuracy models are mods of the Parts Express BR-1 kit. If your speakers have curved cabinets, they're the Pioneers. If they have plain-Jane box cabinets with mirror-image offset tweeters, they're the BR-1 mods. The most recent AA (the AA+) used a Morel tweeter along with the BR-1 woofer. The tweeter has gone up in price to over $100 a pop, and that did in the AA+ I've been fiddling with a mod using the much less expensive Dayton "Silky" tweeter from the BR-1 kit, and I'm fine tuning that now. If I decide to offer it, the price will be in the $250 - $275/pr range.

 

[thebabyparrot]

This thread is about the Pioneer 22 mod. The other Affordable Accuracy models are mods of the Parts Express BR-1 kit. If your speakers have curved cabinets, they're the Pioneers. If they have plain-Jane box cabinets with mirror-image offset tweeters, they're the BR-1 mods. The most recent AA (the AA+) used a Morel tweeter along with the BR-1 woofer. The tweeter has gone up in price to over $100 a pop, and that did in the AA+ I've been fiddling with a mod using the much less expensive Dayton "Silky" tweeter from the BR-1 kit, and I'm fine tuning that now. If I decide to offer it, the price will be in the $259 - $275/pr range.

Sounds good to me, I believe it's the BR-1 mod. Is it comparable to the other two you listed?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Sounds good to me, I believe it's the BR-1 mod. Is it comparable to the other two you listed?

I'm not quite following your question. There are only two categories of mods--the Pioneer and the BR-1. The BR-1 had two versions--one with the stock Dayton Silky tweeter, and the other with the much more expensive Morel. Perhaps you're indicating you have the first version with the Dayton tweeter? That one sold for around $200/pair and came completely assembled. The Morel version sold for $350/pair and was in kit form, albeit a very simple one. If I offer still another BR-1 mod, it will be a kit with factory-wired crossovers and the Dayton tweeter. The tweeters and cabinets are out of stock, and I have to deal with the upcoming arrival of the new order of BMR's and BMR towers, plus arrange to have the kit crossovers manufactured. So a new BR-1 kit is several months off.

 

[Gilles H]

Hello! I intend to proceed with the Dennis Murphy modification on my Pioneer BS22 per https://audiokarma.org/forums/index...-pioneer-sp-bs22-lr-diy-modifications.610820/

The part list includes a Jantzen 0.50mH 20 AWG Air Core Inductor https://www.parts-express.com/Jantzen-1034-0.50mH-20-AWG-Air-Core-Inductor-255-036?quantity=4

Here in Canada I found a place where I can get a 0.51mH https://solen.ca/product-category/inductors/standard-inductors-20awg-0-80mm/page/2/

I would need to know if replacing the recommended 0.50mH inductor with a 0,51mH is acceptable?

Many thanks!