Open baffle speakers, cheap DIY kit vs placement restrictions

[Ropeburn]

Yet another DIY open baffle thread, please bear with me.

I've been wanting to build speakers for years, but it's always such a thing. I'm well versed in electronics, but my woodworking skills are lacking, to say the least. Therefore, any "proper" project involving building a whole cabinet is out of the question as a first attempt. But how about something like this:

Monacor Katana M1, pretty much the simplest (and also cheapest) kit available, that includes all panels and all parts neccessary.

2x 8" bass drivers, plus wideband driver for mids and highs. The simplest "crossover" possible: a series capacitor as mid/high driver highpass, and an inductor serving as bass driver lowpass. So far, so good and simple. The "cabinet" really is easy enough even for me to assemble. Just glue those parts together. I'm aware these won't do deepest bass, and could compliment them with a subwoofer.

The problem: open baffle speakers rely on room interaction even more than boxed speakers, or so I gathered, and physically it makes a lot of sense, especially regarding baffle diffraction and open-back induced phase cancellation. Now, speaker placement in my room is severely limited. There's pretty much only one proper placement: 1m from back and side walls. It works very nicely with regular floorstanders, being pretty much ideal, but there's just no wiggle room.

In room measurements do indeed look kinda wild:

Certainly "lol". I've seen much worse though that still sounded fun. No idea how much the room plays into this. Probably a lot.

My question: worth it for the fun of it and the DIY factor? These Monacor Katana kits are available for 600€ the pair. I certainly don't expect stellar results rivalling or even beating my reasonably good floorstanders (Heco Aurora 700) or bookshelves (Canton RC-K). It'd just be a fun project that hopefully doesn't sound all too horrible. I gather, open baffle speakers need to be placed right to sound good, and exactly that is very limited here as described above.

Is this a viable idea, with at least "fun enough" results? Any other recommendations for big DIY speaker kits below, say, 1000 moneys (available in Jurop), including cabinets that are easy enough to assemble?

 

[JustJones]

I was always under the impression open baffle speakers needed to be out in the room away from walls. On their website it shows these against the front wall.

 

[Jim Taylor]

My question: worth it for the fun of it and the DIY factor?

In my younger years (early Holocene) my friends and I tried all sorts of crazy stuff. We were simply curious, sort of a "I wonder what happens if we do this" attitude. We broke some stuff, let out some Magic Smoke, but we also learned a lot.
Did we have fun? Oh ... you betcha! I have no idea what you will think of this kit, but the only way to find out is to order it and put it together.

It looks to be ten times better than the crap we did ... and maybe you'll have ten times the fun!

 

[Ktacos]

Boy that response is bad. I mean the room does play a part but not that much, 10db increments on the vertical axis too instead of 5db, gonna look way worse with 5db steps.

One could buy it and run their own active filtering, but at that point probably better to just make your own OB design. I really dislike full range drivers personally, the mids can be great but none of them render HF correctly. While I didn't find the sweet spot to be narrow as I expected, I did notice that all the HF was basically stuck to the full range driver. I assume this is to due the extremely narrow dispersion in the HF region. Really breaks the whole illusion for me.

 

[suttondesign]

Build the Linkwitz Orion.

 

[ai1]

A great nonexpensive alternative is Nao Note II RS by John K. - the total price including minidsp will be hardly more than you are going to spend (given the current price of SLS drivers)...
Personnaly, I think that they are fabulous. I have never heard Orions or LX521, but folks say that Notes are at least comparable (and much-much less expensive).
The project now is freely available, see https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/nao-note-ii-rs.221948

 

[Rednaxela]

It is amazing how hard it is to resist the appeal of speakers like these.

I mean who wouldn’t want to slap some drivers on a baffle, apply the simplest of crossovers and not worry too much about cosmetics, in the hope that an absolutely horrible FR (10dB between 1.8 and 5k!) won’t sound too bad in practice?

 

[007Shorty]

Found a construction proposal from Visaton:

NoBox 170 | Visaton

Electrostatic tweeters have maintained unbroken popularity for several decades. The large but light diaphragm, which radiates sound to both sides of the diaphragm, generates light, overall unfussy sound with excellent spatial qualities that is not attributable to a particular source and fills...

www.visaton.de

Bauanleitung | Visaton

www.visaton.de

 

[mhardy6647]

I have done lots of time with OBs of myriad sizes, shapes, and philosophies.
Looking around the hifi loft as I type this. Identically zero OBs in sight.
Draw your own conclusions.

To the OP's earlier question, though -- yes, position is critical. Kinda, sorta has to be, since the back wave must be dealt with (at least at the listening position).

 

[Ropeburn]

I have done lots of time with OBs of myriad sizes, shapes, and philosophies.
Looking around the hifi loft as I type this. Identically zero OBs in sight.
Draw your own conclusions.

To the OP's earlier question, though -- yes, position is critical. Kinda, sorta has to be, since the back wave must be dealt with (at least at the listening position).

Yes, the conclusion is clear. Haha.

I've heard the rule of thirds applies - ideal position is one third into the room. That's the case here, infact it's the only possible speaker position.

 

[mhardy6647]

Yes, the conclusion is clear. Haha.

I've heard the rule of thirds applies - ideal position is one third into the room. That's the case here, infact it's the only possible speaker position.

Thirds, I thought, was generic guidance for loudspeakers (EDIT: including 'normal' ones )... even if so, yeah, as good a place to start as any. Be prepared, of course, to fiddle, I mean to fine tune, to get things as extended and non-lumpy as possible at your listening position. This is the one case where the long wavelength is an advantage.