Very Nice Cheap Kit Speakers: HiVi/Swans DIY 2.2A & 3.1

[ta240]

The $239 HiVi 2.2A looks to be a clone of the Dynaudio Special Forty which sells for $3500 at Crutchfield. Or could it be the other way around. Drivers, enclosure dimensions, rear port location and bi-wire binding posts look much the same.

DynaudioSpecialForty_EbonyWave_Halfprofile_525x700.png

It is likely easier to clone the look of a product than it is to clone the function. I'm not saying it isn't a good speaker just that duplicating appearances is common but copying performance is less common.

 

[Poultrygeist]

It is likely easier to clone the look of a product than it is to clone the function. I'm not saying it isn't a good speaker just that duplicating appearances is common but copying performance is less common.

What else is new?

 

[Futility]

What else is new?

Water is wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets

 

[mhardy6647]

What else is new?

c/λ

(nerd humour)

 

[motomech]

Both of these are back on Amazon. $240 for the 2-way and $300 for the 3-way.

 

[maltux]

I call my second pair Cherry bombs. I have them in the basement powerred by a Topping PA3s amplifier with my computers (Mac and Windows/Linux machines) as an input signal. My prevouse pair I veneered. Could not be happier with them.

 

[Laserjock]

I need to put mine back into rotation

 

[D!sco]

Maybe I'll build surrounds and a center... It's still cheaper than the raw drivers alone. Crazy.

 

[motomech]

Now on sale @ Amazon, 2.1 is $180 and the 3.1 is $240.

 

[motomech]

I just got together one of the 2.2As, have tested a couple of cross-over mods recommended on the net and compared them to some speakers I have on hand and I'm super impressed.
My ancient DIY speaker pairs are both based on the Dayton Audio RS150-8 and Seas 27TDFC combo, a pair of sm. sealed MT's designed by Paul Carmody called "The Girl From Ipamema" and the other pair are MTM's in a transission tower designed by CJD that are called "The Abouriou". And so far, they seem rather comprable. If a "blind test" were done, I don't think I could identify which is which, which is not surprising since I beleive the Hivi tweeter is a copy of the Seas.
I am a little surprised that the 2.2A does play as low as the MTM tower, great bass out of a (rather lg.) bookshelf. Mids would be hard to pick a winner, probably a testiment to how gd. the RS150 is.
But I'm really not posting this as review, just a reminder what what a great deal these things are, especially while on sale for $180!
I recently posted The Ipanemas as my recomendation in "The Cheap DIY Speaker" thread and thought it was about the best that could be done for $400 and off hand I would guesstimate the Abouriou (probably a better comparison to the HIVI) would now be at least $600 in materials and a lot more work to build.
Really, anyone thinking about a pair of high quality speakers, now is the time.

 

[sejarzo]

Didn't see this noted yet, but the link to the YouTube video series in post #6 of this thread seems to have gone away on the swanskits.com website but can be directly accessed here:

https://www.youtube.com/@swanskits1335

 

[ROOSKIE]

The tweeters are of objectively poor quality and HiVi, like many poor quality manufacturers, pays for 5 star reviews.

Hi-Vi Q1R | HiFiCompass

Despite its low cost and not at the highest level measured performance, I really liked the Q1R tweeter. The frequency response is smooth. The sound is very soft with a pleasant atmosphere and airiness. The rendering of micro nuances is very good, and the percussion is expressive. The tweeter has...

hificompass.com

The tweeter is very nice for the cost point. They have been measured already many times.

 

[sejarzo]

I just got together one of the 2.2As, have tested a couple of cross-over mods recommended on the net and compared them to some speakers I have on hand and I'm super impressed.

Do you have any measurements to share, or can you direct me to some that others have done? Thanks!

 

[ROOSKIE]

I just got together one of the 2.2As, have tested a couple of cross-over mods recommended on the net and compared them to some speakers I have on hand and I'm super impressed.
My ancient DIY speaker pairs are both based on the Dayton Audio RS150-8 and Seas 27TDFC combo, a pair of sm. sealed MT's designed by Paul Carmody called "The Girl From Ipamema" and the other pair are MTM's in a transission tower designed by CJD that are called "The Abouriou". And so far, they seem rather comprable. If a "blind test" were done, I don't think I could identify which is which, which is not surprising since I beleive the Hivi tweeter is a copy of the Seas.
I am a little surprised that the 2.2A does play as low as the MTM tower, great bass out of a (rather lg.) bookshelf. Mids would be hard to pick a winner, probably a testiment to how gd. the RS150 is.
But I'm really not posting this as review, just a reminder what what a great deal these things are, especially while on sale for $180!
I recently posted The Ipanemas as my recomendation in "The Cheap DIY Speaker" thread and thought it was about the best that could be done for $400 and off hand I would guesstimate the Abouriou (probably a better comparison to the HIVI) would now be at least $600 in materials and a lot more work to build.
Really, anyone thinking about a pair of high quality speakers, now is the time.

Which X-over mod did you like the best?

 

[motomech]

Do you have any measurements to share, or can you direct me to some that others have done? Thanks!

HiVi/Swans DIY 2.2A (crossover modification/upgrade)

(An update of this OP is available as post #99) Hello everyone, I’d like to share with you my latest project, namely building a pair of speakers from a commercial kit - Swans DIY 2.2A and the modification that I’ve come up with. As the name suggests it’s one of the two official kits from Swans...

www.diyaudio.com

 

[motomech]

Which X-over mod did you like the best?

Deffinately the 4.7uF on the tweeter. There is enough top-end even for my 71 year old ears and the result sounds very smooth to me.
I didn't spend that much time listening to different coils on the woofer. After rotating though the 2.2mH and 2.5mH coils, I went back to the stock coil to see how it would blend with a 10" sub. Running the Hivi/Swans full range, the sub ended up set around 70 to 80 Hz. That's a guesstimate, as the sub amp only has a rotary dial, but with the sub alone, male voices can just barely be heard.
I am curious about using a larger coil and may try them out again without a sub.

 

[sejarzo]

HiVi/Swans DIY 2.2A (crossover modification/upgrade)

(An update of this OP is available as post #99) Hello everyone, I’d like to share with you my latest project, namely building a pair of speakers from a commercial kit - Swans DIY 2.2A and the modification that I’ve come up with. As the name suggests it’s one of the two official kits from Swans...

www.diyaudio.com

What's disappointing is that the guy who started it all ended up selling the speakers before he presented any plots of actual performance. There's a lot of simulation of his crossover mods, but any actual measurements from other users there look pretty rough to me.

 

[D!sco]

I keep looking for affordable ways to make the 3-ways active. Plenty of quality measurements have been made for an active sim, but I suspect the main advantage the commercial version of this speaker, the Swan M3A has is FIR filtering and EQ. It's a well enough designed speaker that I'm sure nothing is being put to it's limit, but it would be expensive to make it passive and ironing board flat. These are also surprisingly low distortion parts, when put together as they are. I wouldn't be surprised if the distortion was often amplifier limited vs high SPL compression.

To be clear, I'm still very satisfied with my purchase, but they're cheap enough and good enough that I can really see the potential in these kits. If consumers can get a kit for as low as $200, think about how cheap these must be to make. And they're frankly better than a lot of hi-fi out there as-is, maybe with some tone knob adjustments to the treble, but y'know. Wrap 'em in mahogany and aluminum, put a snazzy plate amp on the back, charge $1000+ for them, instant success.

But I'm not a speaker manufacturer and I sure don't have an anechoic chamber. Besides that, I'm still figuring in my head what kind of electronics I can stick on these without going over the value of the speakers themselves. Considering these need a subwoofer for home theater duty, you can't get away with less than a MiniDSP 2x8 kit, which is like ~300USD, without even touching the amps. I'd be tempted to try a raspberry pi DSP solution, since the outboard kits only cost up to $75 when they're available, but that's a major headache. Another option would be to use the passive crossover between the midrange and tweeter, stripping the hi-pass filter off of the midrange and using EQ/FIR to correct them on a single channel. This could have a lot of problems, really. And what's worse is you can't run a digital output to a subwoofer from any of the 2x4 miniDSP kits.

Has anyone done measurements on the Dayton DSP systems? I suspect they won't be good, but I want to be surprised.

 

[Poultrygeist]

The 2 way HiVi/Swans kit is now priced at $191 on Amazon. When I bought mine the boxed kit was hernia heavy.

 

[Gabbocasa]

What's disappointing is that the guy who started it all ended up selling the speakers before he presented any plots of actual performance. There's a lot of simulation of his crossover mods, but any actual measurements from other users there look pretty rough to me.

Don't worry, I will post soon the frequency response graphs with the stock crossover, the frd and zma files of the speaker and a new crossover design