Carmody S2000 DIY Speaker Kit Review

[thewas]

I was talking about Toole's position, not Olive's. Amir raised Olive in response to my post about Toole, not the other way around.

As said Toole didnt do those test or from what I know never wrote about EQing the steady state at the listeners position, so he didn't have to evolve his position as you had stated above, thats what I meant.
Actually I was always very surprised about the opinion discrepancy of Toole and Olive on this matter as they seem to agree on everything else.

 

[Newman]

IMHO Toole has had a lot to say about steady state EQ over the years. Your statement contradicts the facts as far as I am aware of them.

Relatively recently he wrote "The Measurement and Calibration of Sound
Reproducing Systems, AES, 2015", and the concluding paragraphs include this:-
"....at this time there is enough information to think
about some universal guidelines for sound reproduction—
anywhere it occurs. The starting point would be the delivery
of an accurate, neutral, direct sound. The fact that there is
a rise in bass sound level in the short (<150 ms) interval
following the direct sound is a variable for which there is
no practical control—it is room and source-directivity dependent.
Humans may well regard this phenomenon as a
normal component of room sound, in which case it is not
an “error” in need of fixing but merely information about
the listening environment. It means that a steady-state room
curve should rise by some amount at low frequencies."

Also note that in the same publication he discusses several of Olive's EQ projects, with no hint of substantial disagreement.

Perhaps you can expand on the area of substantial disagreement that you mention. I'm guessing it is related to the use of steady-state target curves for mid and high frequencies? My reading is that Toole certainly supports it for low frequencies, but prefers to target the direct sound FR above the transition frequency band, and that it is much better for the loudspeaker designer to deliver on that target, along with desirable DI behaviour, than for the end user to try it with in-room EQ products. I suspect that he supports very judicious use of EQ above transition, mainly if the room cannot be set up in a very sound-friendly manner, but that it is not all that hard to set up a room well enough not to need it. Using EQ on quite poor speakers he sees as futile and fraught with mishap, and unnecessary in today's world where good-enough speakers are available at all price points.

I am not sure that Olive would disagree with that. I suspect he wouldn't.

cheers

 

[thewas]

IMHO Toole has had a lot to say about steady state EQ over the years. Your statement contradicts the facts as far as I am aware of them.

Which exactly statement of mine? I wrote that Toole didn't have to evolve his position as he always was supporting linear direct sound above transition frequency.

Perhaps you can expand on the area of substantial disagreement that you mention. I'm guessing it is related to the use of steady-state target curves for mid and high frequencies? My reading is that Toole certainly supports it for low frequencies, but prefers to target the direct sound FR above the transition frequency band, and that it is much better for the loudspeaker designer to deliver on that target, along with desirable DI behaviour, than for the end user to try it with in-room EQ products.

Yes, as said Toole supports linear direct sound (combined of course with smooth directivity) above transition region as he says humans adopt to room acoustics and hear through them, see also https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17839 and says EQ above is not necessary unless you want to correct the loudspeaker (which has smooth directivity), see also https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ut-room-curve-targets-room-eq-and-more.10950/
On the other hand Olive with his automated room correction comparison https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/11/subjective-and-objective-evaluation-of.html showed that the EQ was preferred that created the most smooth linear state despite it having not a linear direct sound due to the not smooth directivity of the loudspeaker.

 

[amirm]

This is a test only of summed-over-time response vs listener preference. It doesn’t say anything about direct sound, or its correlation to speaker preference. In fact, IIRC, the same speaker was used each time, so this test is actually quite silent on the issue of preference vs direct sound FR.

I don't know what any of that has to to do with the point of my post. The point was that saying on-axis needs to be flat doesn't mean to 20 khz which many of us don't hear. I showed you the highest bucket that the listeners were asked to evaluate and it was only 12 kHz. Furthermore, the Olive scoring is also limited the same as @MZKM showed:

So the notion that this speaker must fail the objectivity test because it is not flat to 20 khz is not part of any research. Heaven knows the guy making this music can't hear that high either so who knows what is up there.

In general it is important that we don't stick to objective research to the point of inapplicability.

 

[amirm]

Using EQ on quite poor speakers he sees as futile and fraught with mishap, and unnecessary in today's world where good-enough speakers are available at all price points.

After attempting EQ on some 100 speakers now, I can say with confidence that vast majority of speakers can be improved with EQ. An electronic fix should be no different than one in passive domain. Even Harman is on this bandwagon with JBL M2. It gets its superb on-axis response due to EQ, not because of some wizardry in drivers and such.

What Dr. Toole is going for is the latter part of your statement. He is saying buy good speakers because that option exists. And the anechoic information on how to correct the speaker response does not. But we have changed that equation. We now have both anechoic and predicted in-room response to make correction that is not fraught with problems of in-room measurements with reflections and such.

If you listen to Dr. Toole in person you see that his worry was about automatic EQ being able to make very speaker great. That is the situation with countless people but not in our audience and not here.

We really are advancing the state of sound reproduction with availability of tons of information about speakers. This leads to new conclusions not available based on facts years back.

 

[Newman]

@Amir, I assume your several posts to me stem from my original comment, in part, "....the direct arrival sound is distinguishable from the summed-over-time sound, and needs a flat, extended and smooth frequency response, if the speaker is to be highly rated in listening tests."

Firstly, I never actually said anything about 20 kHz, but I gather you are reading that into my word, "extended". I may have been paraphrasing Toole with that word (I don't recall his exact terminology, or if he ever used other terms), but I take it to mean all ten octaves. Extended high and low.

Secondly, in terms of octaves, the research that includes 12 kHz is including the top octave, so I am comfortable that its findings qualify as extended into the top octave.

If you actually want to exclude the range above 12 kHz from listener preference, however, you need to show me controlled listening experiments where they kept 20 Hz to 12 kHz constant and varied 16 kHz and 20 kHz quite a lot, and listener ratings were insensitive to it. I have not seen any such test (apart from Ooishi working with ultrasonic frequencies, which is a different case again, and would be a different discussion).

Thirdly, you say that a strong majority of speakers benefit from EQ (I assume you mean above the transition zone, and based on direct-arrival (usually axial) measurements). Very happy with that. But what I mean by "good-enough speakers are available at all price points" is that there is a small minority of speakers that are good enough in terms of direct sound FR not to need EQ above the transition zone to correct for direct sound FR.

I am very appreciative of the EQ that you report on applying to some speakers that compensates for something in your measurements. A great resource for readers who have or buy those speakers.

cheers

 

[amirm]

If you actually want to exclude the range above 12 kHz from listener preference, however, you need to show me controlled listening experiments where they kept 20 Hz to 12 kHz constant and varied 16 kHz and 20 kHz quite a lot, and listener ratings were insensitive to it.

Why? I showed you research that said they didn't care to evaluate above 12 kHz. Here is Harman's training forware for their expert listeners:

See? It doesn't go above 10 kHz. Here are the results:

So it is very clear that audibility approaching 20 kHz is not a concern in research.

 

[Newman]

IMO you drew a long bow.

It would be the same as if I pointed to all research showing 20-20k plots as evidence that researchers are concerned all the way to 20k. I would have more evidence for my argument than you have for yours.

What are the odds that the 10.143k 'band' on the graph above has low enough Q to substantially modify FR above 12k?

I mean, if 12k is the highest frequency the research is concerned with, why not stop all speaker plots at 12k or 10.143k? Please limit your future loudspeaker measurements and graphs accordingly.

I'll stand by my statement that it would take an experiment using EQ only at 13-20k (and young subjects with healthy hearing) to test the assumption that you made based on circumstantial evidence.

 

[AlexHempel]

I'm super late to the party here, but I built these speakers a year ago and always felt they were close to greatness but not quite there. I had a feeling it was the treble, and this confirms my impression. I was usually playing with EQ above 2kish, it's nice to know 3.5k is what I should be focusing on. I listen to a lot of metal, and I think it was the lack of those higher distortion guitar harmonics that bugged me; it felt like electric guitars lacked edge. My musician friends had similar comments. But the power handling is definitely amazing; I threw parties with these and they didn't break a sweat. Great to have the measurements, I want to have a second go at EQing these because I do like many of their qualities, but un-EQed I'd be wary if you are a treble lover.

 

[01svtL]

@amirm did anyone ever get you the MTM version of this? It has been on my radar as a L/R main option, crossed to a HSU ULS15-MKII at around 50-60hz for mostly music (rock/metal) purposes.

 

[UndergroundLare]

@amirm @Rick Sykora

I am interested in another one of Paul Carmody's designs - the Amiga MT Tower:

Paul Carmody's DIY Speaker Pages - Amiga

Home > Floorstanding Speakers > Amiga

sites.google.com

Home

Amiga MT Tower Speaker Kit with Knock-Down CabinetBasically, if you like the Overnight Sensations, then you'll like the Amigas. The tonal balance is similar with slightly relaxed voicing to allow for long listening sessions without fatigue. However, the quality of the drivers will definitely...

www.parts-express.com

Based on what you know from this S2000 build and review, do you think the Amiga will measure well? Are there any obvious conclusions that can be made by looking at the design?

 

[Rick Sykora]

@amirm @Rick Sykora

I am interested in another one of Paul Carmody's designs - the Amiga MT Tower:

Paul Carmody's DIY Speaker Pages - Amiga

Home > Floorstanding Speakers > Amiga

sites.google.com

Home

Amiga MT Tower Speaker Kit with Knock-Down CabinetBasically, if you like the Overnight Sensations, then you'll like the Amigas. The tonal balance is similar with slightly relaxed voicing to allow for long listening sessions without fatigue. However, the quality of the drivers will definitely...

www.parts-express.com

Based on what you know from this S2000 build and review, do you think the Amiga will measure well? Are there any obvious conclusions that can be made by looking at the design?

The Amiga is a rather old design and, while it is reasonably priced, there are better answers today. Notably, its bass does not quite live up to the flowery, superlative of a boutique speaker.

Let me know what you intend to use the speaker to do and whether you can do some woodworking or not.

 

[UndergroundLare]

The Amiga rather old design and, while it is reasonably priced, there are better answers today. Notably, its bass does not quite live up to the flowery, superlative of a boutique speaker.

Let me know what you intend to use the speaker to do and whether you can do some woodworking or not.

Thanks for sharing your impression of the Amiga.

I am looking to build my first DIY kit speaker for each of the following use cases:

1) A small 2.0 bookshelf that I can pair with the computer -or- a 1970s receiver. The S2000 looks ideal here.

2) A 2.0 or 2.1 floorstanding setup for the living room. Primarily for mainstream Top 40, Pop, Rock, and occasional jazz/vocals - Norah Jones, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra. I was drawn to the Amiga because I read the build and review of the S2000 and thought "if Carmody designed a good bookshelf, maybe his floorstander will also be good."

I'd like to avoid woodworking at this time, so I am looking at flat pack kits to keep things quick while also getting some satisfaction from building. The goal is to get high quality sound that is on par with a commercial offering for each type/class of speaker. I prefer more subdued treble, soft dome tweeters, and listen at moderate volumes.

 

[Mudjock]

The Amiga rather old design and, while it is reasonably priced, there are better answers today. Notably, its bass does not quite live up to the flowery, superlative of a boutique speaker.

Let me know what you intend to use the speaker to do and whether you can do some woodworking or not.

The first iteration of Dayton RS180 (woofer for the Amiga) came out around the time I got seriously into DIY speakers. From about 2007 there was about a 5 year run in which most of the best bang-for-the-buck DIY designs used Dayton RS series woofers, so I've heard quite a few similar designs. The best use of the RS180 was to cross to the tweeter as low as possible. The Amiga crosses at 2 kHz, which is pushing the RS180 a little above its ideal range. Rick is also correct that the bass from the RS180, while extending pretty low, somehow seems a bit underwhelming... From 100 Hz to 1,000 Hz, the RS180 is a great driver. The further you get away from that range, the more you are giving up in terms of distortion.

For not too much more money, there is the diysoundgroup.com Apollo MT kit (another two-way design with a 7" aluminum cone woofer). It offers much stronger bass, a better tweeter, but has even lower sensitivity and a standmount cabinet, which may be a plus or minus depending on your application.

I've run some of my small 3-way designs head to head against another RS180-based design, the Modula MT that my brother has a pair of. The small 3-ways, including the modified HiVi DIY 3.1 reviewed here, all win out in the midrange (more detail, but also more relaxed due to less of a directivity error at the low end of the tweeter range and lower midrange distortion). The Apollo MT addresses that issue as well with a waveguided tweeter. The Amiga, according to the designer's site, deals with it by having a considerable on axis dip between 2 and 3 kHz. This will get rid of excess sibilance, but at the expense of some detail resolution.

Rick, did you have some other designs in mind?

 

[Rick Sykora]

The first iteration of Dayton RS180 (woofer for the Amiga) came out around the time I got seriously into DIY speakers. From about 2007 there was about a 5 year run in which most of the best bang-for-the-buck DIY designs used Dayton RS series woofers, so I've heard quite a few similar designs. The best use of the RS180 was to cross to the tweeter as low as possible. The Amiga crosses at 2 kHz, which is pushing the RS180 a little above its ideal range. Rick is also correct that the bass from the RS180, while extending pretty low, somehow seems a bit underwhelming... From 100 Hz to 1,000 Hz, the RS180 is a great driver. The further you get away from that range, the more you are giving up in terms of distortion.

For not too much more money, there is the diysoundgroup.com Apollo MT kit (another two-way design with a 7" aluminum cone woofer). It offers much stronger bass, a better tweeter, but has even lower sensitivity and a standmount cabinet, which may be a plus or minus depending on your application.

I've run some of my small 3-way designs head to head against another RS180-based design, the Modula MT that my brother has a pair of. The small 3-ways, including the modified HiVi DIY 3.1 reviewed here, all win out in the midrange (more detail, but also more relaxed due to less of a directivity error at the low end of the tweeter range and lower midrange distortion). The Apollo MT addresses that issue as well with a waveguided tweeter. The Amiga, according to the designer's site, deals with it by having a considerable on axis dip between 2 and 3 kHz. This will get rid of excess sibilance, but at the expense of some detail resolution.

Rick, did you have some other designs in mind?

Several but unless I or someone can help with a precut baffle, the options become more limited. At one time, Meniscus was supposedly working on engaging a cabinet builder. Lacking that…

I concur on your Apollo MT suggestion. For a smaller speaker, would have suggested Dennis‘s Affordable Accuracy Monitor, but looks like it has gone NLA again too. The supply chain issues are compounding availability challenges.

 

[01svtL]

I just finished the Helix Dome MTM. I have about 60 hours on them now. I bet they would fit the bill for you, as they have a slightly laid back (to me) soft dome tweeter. I've had to increase treble for my liking a couple of decibels via my AVR. A sub may not be needed with them depending on the room.

 

[Mattcc22]

I second the Helix design from DIYSG. I heard the MTM version and it was very detailed and bass was very punchy. That woofer definitely has way more bass output than the RS180. I have had two different RS180 designs in my home in the past, a bookshelf and a large floor-stander MTM and I would take the Helix over those.

Denovo Audio Helix Dome MT

Denovo Audio, 7" Hexcore woofer, SB Acoustics, SB29SDAC tweeter, speaker kit, Jeff Bagby, monitor speaker

www.diysoundgroup.com

 

[Rick Sykora]

Thanks for sharing your impression of the Amiga.

I am looking to build my first DIY kit speaker for each of the following use cases:

1) A small 2.0 bookshelf that I can pair with the computer -or- a 1970s receiver. The S2000 looks ideal here.

2) A 2.0 or 2.1 floorstanding setup for the living room. Primarily for mainstream Top 40, Pop, Rock, and occasional jazz/vocals - Norah Jones, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra. I was drawn to the Amiga because I read the build and review of the S2000 and thought "if Carmody designed a good bookshelf, maybe his floorstander will also be good."

I'd like to avoid woodworking at this time, so I am looking at flat pack kits to keep things quick while also getting some satisfaction from building. The goal is to get high quality sound that is on par with a commercial offering for each type/class of speaker. I prefer more subdued treble, soft dome tweeters, and listen at moderate volumes.

Since I can see this is going OT, suggest you start a conversation or post another thread. I can arrange for the mods to move this discussion to the new thread if needed.

Thanks!

 

[beagleman]

I second the Helix design from DIYSG. I heard the MTM version and it was very detailed and bass was very punchy. That woofer definitely has way more bass output than the RS180. I have had two different RS180 designs in my home in the past, a bookshelf and a large floor-stander MTM and I would take the Helix over those.

Denovo Audio Helix Dome MT

Denovo Audio, 7" Hexcore woofer, SB Acoustics, SB29SDAC tweeter, speaker kit, Jeff Bagby, monitor speaker

www.diysoundgroup.com

Way more meaning, in volume level, or deeper, or both?

 

[Nate R]

Just wanted to say I appreciate this site, just stumbled upon it recently.
Built a Classix II 9 years ago now along with a kit amp... Wife said it's time to upgrade the living room entertainment "furniture", so audio setup will be changed as well to fit within. Just ordered a set of S2000s based on the reviews/data here, and looking to eventually assemble a 2.1 system, maybe with a Topping MX3S or similar.