This is a review and detailed measurements of the Carmody S2000 DIY speaker as built by our own member, @Rick Sykora. He has nicely documented his build of S2000 speaker from the kit. According to him the cost for a pair of these with everything included, sans labor to assemble is about US $244.
I like that the kit comes with Baltic Birch plywood which gives it a nice half-way finished look:
You could literally use it like this or finish it with a stain and top coat. I would personally use it as is.
And yes, these are very small speakers.
The back is not exciting other than showing the port:
The binding terminals Rick used are easy to turn since they are not inset in a cup like commercial speakers are.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% up to about 3 kHz but then climbed up to 2% or so.
Temperature was 58 degrees F. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
Carmody S2000 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
At first the measurements look very flawed but if we focus in, the response is actually quite good between 100 Hz to about 3 kHz. Then we lose energy before some kind of resonance around 11 kHz gives us a bit back. Directivity is also good until the graphs bunch up around 4 kHz to 5 kHz region (crossover is supposed to be 3 kHz). Smaller woofers tend to make directivity errors smaller because they are closer in size to the small tweeters.
Efficiency is around 84 dB which is fairly low as expected.
Early window reflections which are the strongest sum up to a smooth response:
So room dependency should be low.
Putting the two together we get a surprisingly good predicted-in-room response:
I noted that the regression line slopes down to the tune of 10 dB. This will be a good exercise to see if this if the results are too dull or right.
Drive responses shows some mismatch leading up to the crossover region:
Doesn't seem to be that the Crossover is really at 3 kHz. Note that this is the acoustic crossover, not electronic.
Impedance dips down to below 4 ohm as is typical in most speaker we measure:
Beamwidth is pretty flat and reasonably wide:
Color coding the amplitude in contour map says the same:
Vertical directivity is typical so try to stay from slightly below tweeter to above it:
Otherwise you fall in that response ditch and loose energy in the important upper mid-range area.
EDIT: forgot to post the distortion graphs originally:
Carmody S2000 Speaker Listening Tests
Cursory look at the frequency response measurements would say this speaker should not sound good. But good sound it produced! Not only initially but through a full suite of tracks covering every genre and tonality. Most impressive were male vocals which had a wonderful warmth to them courtesy of the slight bass boost (and possibly reduction of high frequencies). Female vocals were nice too with no lispiness. Track after track was reproduced well and a nice diffused aura around the speaker.
A very nice characteristic was power handling. I could turn it up and up and it simply did not degrade like a lot of budget speakers do. When presented with deep bass, it simply did not play them. I have learned to appreciate this over a speaker that tries to play them but then distorts, bottoms out, etc. Don't do what you can't do I say!
There is one flaw there though: if the content of the music track is mostly low frequency, the level drops way down almost making you think someone lowered the volume way down. This made a few tracks not listenable. Actually I could listen to them by turning up the volume but then was afraid of the next loud note blowing them up!
Conclusions
I will confess that I hate doing reviews like this. Objective scores are likely to be low creating a lot of cries of "how could you like it so much." Early on in my speaker testing I realized that what is important to my ears is good response from 200 to 2000 Hz. Dips in that region can be really problematic as there is so much "life" in music in that region. Testing this speaker made me realize perhaps I don't like as much high frequency content and want a more sloped down response.
Something that doesn't jump out of the measurements and is a key reason I listen is power handling. Yes, I show you the distortion graphs but those are two points and you can't hear what I am hearing. In this case as I noted, the speaker incrementally gets louder and louder without falling apart like just about every budget speaker. I want to experience music, not the limitations of the speaker and the S2000 does a very good job here.
I imagine nothing is more complicated than getting a cheap, small speaker to sound good. The components are simplicity in themselves. But balancing the compromises must be a herculean affair. Whatever that formula is, it worked for my ears.
I suggest giving this build a try. If you don't want to build them yourself, ask Rick to build them for you. You will wind up with a unique speaker that sounds really good, and fits everywhere.
I am happy to give a strong recommendation to Carmody S2000 DIY Speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I like that the kit comes with Baltic Birch plywood which gives it a nice half-way finished look:
You could literally use it like this or finish it with a stain and top coat. I would personally use it as is.
And yes, these are very small speakers.
The back is not exciting other than showing the port:
The binding terminals Rick used are easy to turn since they are not inset in a cup like commercial speakers are.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% up to about 3 kHz but then climbed up to 2% or so.
Temperature was 58 degrees F. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
Carmody S2000 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
At first the measurements look very flawed but if we focus in, the response is actually quite good between 100 Hz to about 3 kHz. Then we lose energy before some kind of resonance around 11 kHz gives us a bit back. Directivity is also good until the graphs bunch up around 4 kHz to 5 kHz region (crossover is supposed to be 3 kHz). Smaller woofers tend to make directivity errors smaller because they are closer in size to the small tweeters.
Efficiency is around 84 dB which is fairly low as expected.
Early window reflections which are the strongest sum up to a smooth response:
So room dependency should be low.
Putting the two together we get a surprisingly good predicted-in-room response:
I noted that the regression line slopes down to the tune of 10 dB. This will be a good exercise to see if this if the results are too dull or right.
Drive responses shows some mismatch leading up to the crossover region:
Doesn't seem to be that the Crossover is really at 3 kHz. Note that this is the acoustic crossover, not electronic.
Impedance dips down to below 4 ohm as is typical in most speaker we measure:
Beamwidth is pretty flat and reasonably wide:
Color coding the amplitude in contour map says the same:
Vertical directivity is typical so try to stay from slightly below tweeter to above it:
Otherwise you fall in that response ditch and loose energy in the important upper mid-range area.
EDIT: forgot to post the distortion graphs originally:
Carmody S2000 Speaker Listening Tests
Cursory look at the frequency response measurements would say this speaker should not sound good. But good sound it produced! Not only initially but through a full suite of tracks covering every genre and tonality. Most impressive were male vocals which had a wonderful warmth to them courtesy of the slight bass boost (and possibly reduction of high frequencies). Female vocals were nice too with no lispiness. Track after track was reproduced well and a nice diffused aura around the speaker.
A very nice characteristic was power handling. I could turn it up and up and it simply did not degrade like a lot of budget speakers do. When presented with deep bass, it simply did not play them. I have learned to appreciate this over a speaker that tries to play them but then distorts, bottoms out, etc. Don't do what you can't do I say!
There is one flaw there though: if the content of the music track is mostly low frequency, the level drops way down almost making you think someone lowered the volume way down. This made a few tracks not listenable. Actually I could listen to them by turning up the volume but then was afraid of the next loud note blowing them up!
Conclusions
I will confess that I hate doing reviews like this. Objective scores are likely to be low creating a lot of cries of "how could you like it so much." Early on in my speaker testing I realized that what is important to my ears is good response from 200 to 2000 Hz. Dips in that region can be really problematic as there is so much "life" in music in that region. Testing this speaker made me realize perhaps I don't like as much high frequency content and want a more sloped down response.
Something that doesn't jump out of the measurements and is a key reason I listen is power handling. Yes, I show you the distortion graphs but those are two points and you can't hear what I am hearing. In this case as I noted, the speaker incrementally gets louder and louder without falling apart like just about every budget speaker. I want to experience music, not the limitations of the speaker and the S2000 does a very good job here.
I imagine nothing is more complicated than getting a cheap, small speaker to sound good. The components are simplicity in themselves. But balancing the compromises must be a herculean affair. Whatever that formula is, it worked for my ears.
I suggest giving this build a try. If you don't want to build them yourself, ask Rick to build them for you. You will wind up with a unique speaker that sounds really good, and fits everywhere.
I am happy to give a strong recommendation to Carmody S2000 DIY Speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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