Decided to ditch the cat-coffins in the living room bookshelf (those are for sale in the "For Sale" forum, BTW) and build a second pair of LXmini, this time without purchasing any kit parts. The living room is part of the open-plan first floor with dining and kitchen, so the acoustics are terrific -- few noticeable nodes, lots of things to break up nodes, and lots of space around behind the listeners.
Finished the last bit yesterday after fully testing everything for a few days -- and finding an out-of-phase driver using the 9-volt battery test. The errant phase was making the system sound strange. Now, it sounds incredible. It's hard to explain the change from a box -- esp. one in a bookshelf -- to an open-type speaker like this except to say, Wow.
This particular build is using a 4-channel Adcom amp I picked up from Craigslist for $250 and a MiniDSP 2x4HD for the time being. I'm building a passive, downward-firing subwoofer which will sit in the bookshelf behind one of these. I found a tremendous 9" subwoofer driver for it, requiring only a .7 cu. ft. sealed enclosure. If the sub works well, I'll build another.
I'm buying some cheap books at goodwill and cutting off the spines, which I will glue to the face of the subwoofer box to make it look like books. It will be driven by some spare amp I can find, and I'll switch out the 2x4HD for a 4x10HD to have total control over the sub integration. Since the amp(s) sit under the main stairs behind a removable panel, I have no particular heat or space issues for amplification, which is nice.
I control all this through a Matrix Element i which directly feeds the amp. The interface is Roon, connected to a computer server elsewhere on the first floor. Anyone can use the system by just picking up an iPad which sits in the living room.
Oh, and 3 of the NKS behind the one speaker are signed first editions. Eat your hearts out, skeptics of the universe-as-computer theory.
Finished the last bit yesterday after fully testing everything for a few days -- and finding an out-of-phase driver using the 9-volt battery test. The errant phase was making the system sound strange. Now, it sounds incredible. It's hard to explain the change from a box -- esp. one in a bookshelf -- to an open-type speaker like this except to say, Wow.
This particular build is using a 4-channel Adcom amp I picked up from Craigslist for $250 and a MiniDSP 2x4HD for the time being. I'm building a passive, downward-firing subwoofer which will sit in the bookshelf behind one of these. I found a tremendous 9" subwoofer driver for it, requiring only a .7 cu. ft. sealed enclosure. If the sub works well, I'll build another.
I'm buying some cheap books at goodwill and cutting off the spines, which I will glue to the face of the subwoofer box to make it look like books. It will be driven by some spare amp I can find, and I'll switch out the 2x4HD for a 4x10HD to have total control over the sub integration. Since the amp(s) sit under the main stairs behind a removable panel, I have no particular heat or space issues for amplification, which is nice.
I control all this through a Matrix Element i which directly feeds the amp. The interface is Roon, connected to a computer server elsewhere on the first floor. Anyone can use the system by just picking up an iPad which sits in the living room.
Oh, and 3 of the NKS behind the one speaker are signed first editions. Eat your hearts out, skeptics of the universe-as-computer theory.