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Wide dispersion DIY PLEASE not BMR yet the force is not yet strong enough in me (for beautiful finish)

Wolf

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Have you gone and looked at Meniscus' website for kits? For DIY though, most of the time there really is no cost savings. The savings with the kits is that the homework is done for you. All you have to do is assemble and finish.

With the Elac UM52, those are 3-way speakers. Unfortunately, there are not very many 3-way DIY kits that come in this low in cost, and most ofthem are floor-standers as well. I hope to ameliorate this issue in the very near future. With a 3-way, the xover will have twice or more components in them compared to that of a 2-way, so they get more cost prohibitive as well.

Go look at Meniscus, as they have a bunch of available kits.

BTW, I really am not a huge fan of the BMR drivers. I know they are seen as the bees knees currently, and measure well, but they've not really impressed me except in the larger varieties. I've heard the 2.5" in the BMR monitor, as well as about 4 other pair, and it was okay about 40% of the time.
 

Jim Matthews

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I found these to be pleasant, but with limited image stability. It should be simple construction.
 
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Nwickliff

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Have you gone and looked at Meniscus' website for kits? For DIY though, most of the time there really is no cost savings. The savings with the kits is that the homework is done for you. All you have to do is assemble and finish.

With the Elac UM52, those are 3-way speakers. Unfortunately, there are not very many 3-way DIY kits that come in this low in cost, and most ofthem are floor-standers as well. I hope to ameliorate this issue in the very near future. With a 3-way, the xover will have twice or more components in them compared to that of a 2-way, so they get more cost prohibitive as well.

Go look at Meniscus, as they have a bunch of available kits.

BTW, I really am not a huge fan of the BMR drivers. I know they are seen as the bees knees currently, and measure well, but they've not really impressed me except in the larger varieties. I've heard the 2.5" in the BMR monitor, as well as about 4 other pair, and it was okay about 40% of the time.
Thank you so much. I have not hear of Meniscus. I will check them out. Not looking at the UM52 but the Reference dbr62 which I think is a 2-way design. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-debut-reference-dbr-62-speaker-review.12232/

"not impressed but the larger variety" this is what is making me think I should be looking at floor standers and also three-way designs even though elac figured out how to do wide with the two-way.

Thanks again for taking the time to view my video and give me some suggestions.
 
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Nwickliff

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I found these to be pleasant, but with limited image stability. It should be simple construction.
Are these "head in a vice" speakers. If so, not really interested but.....I had some Lii Audio f15's in an open baffle that were "head in a vice" and the craziest imaging speakers I have ever heard! Depth and width were just insane. Wish I kept them for just listening in my office.
 

Wolf

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"not impressed but the larger variety" this is what is making me think I should be looking at floor standers and also three-way designs even though elac figured out how to do wide with the two-way.
Meniscus has been in business for a long time, and they also sell the BMR monitor, so I'm surprised you weren't aware of them.

I couldn't find dbr62 in a google search, so I guessed without listening to the video again.

What I meant by larger variety was the BMR/midrange size only. The 3.5" Tectonic driver really does sound good, even with the huge dip in its response.

I'm also not the 'head in a vise' directivity muncher that some claim is best. My kits Nephila and Zingers are not of the narrow variety horizontally. The Stance may be this way due to its waveguide, but they sound really good too. At any rate, I really enjoy the Zingers in terms of a fun inexpensive build with extension to the lower 30Hz range.
 

Jim Matthews

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Are these "head in a vice" speakers. If so, not really interested but.....I had some Lii Audio f15's in an open baffle that were "head in a vice" and the craziest imaging speakers I have ever heard! Depth and width were just insane. Wish I kept them for just listening in my office.
Quite the opposite. They presented much like Quad ESL63 to me, good balance with little room interaction. The main driver points straight up and covered most of the music. If the direct firing position of the tweeter is obtrusive, it *should* be simple to attenuate with the dedicated MiniDSP 2x4 processor.

One caveat - they're terribly inefficient.
 
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Nwickliff

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JRS

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Have you gone and looked at Meniscus' website for kits? For DIY though, most of the time there really is no cost savings. The savings with the kits is that the homework is done for you. All you have to do is assemble and finish.

With the Elac UM52, those are 3-way speakers. Unfortunately, there are not very many 3-way DIY kits that come in this low in cost, and most ofthem are floor-standers as well. I hope to ameliorate this issue in the very near future. With a 3-way, the xover will have twice or more components in them compared to that of a 2-way, so they get more cost prohibitive as well.

Go look at Meniscus, as they have a bunch of available kits.

BTW, I really am not a huge fan of the BMR drivers. I know they are seen as the bees knees currently, and measure well, but they've not really impressed me except in the larger varieties. I've heard the 2.5" in the BMR monitor, as well as about 4 other pair, and it was okay about 40% of the time.
Agreed, the only way to save buckets of money is to aim high and buy the best drivers available--an example being the Directiva 1, and already have a system with DSP and bi- or tri-amping in which to drop these drivers. One possible spin would have been to drop the passive radiators and instead buy a 10" long stroke woofer. 1200 in parts, another 250 for flatpacks if you don't want to cut your own materials buys a system that would likely trounce anything on the market for under 3 grand. Getting a good finish is the truly painful part. Many of us really, really miss the excellent prefinished, prebuilt cabinets that were available at Parts Express that might run 300/pair for 1L volume and available in black lacquer, cherry, and walnut veneers IIRC. It seems like someone should have pounced on that market, but nothing to my knowledge.
 

Duke

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This won't be the same thing as a wide dispersion speaker, but it would give you a free listen to a system with a considerably lower direct-to-reverberant sound ratio than either your KEFs or JBLs, and therefore will approximate a wide dispersion speaker in that respect:

Use the KEFs and JBLs simultaneously, aiming the KEFs at your listening position and the JBLs in the opposite direction. The idea is that the rear-firing pair of speakers only contributes reflected sound, so you want them facing away from you. If all goes well the timbre should be a bit richer and the bass a bit warmer. But if the clarity is degraded then the rear-firing speakers may be too loud, and/or their reflections may be arriving too soon, so some adjustments may be necessary (I'm assuming that the volume level of the active JBLs can be adjusted independently, which may be incorrect).
 
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Nwickliff

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Keramiskas are a great design with wide dispersion.
Are there any measurements to bear this out? Can't find any off-axis measurements that show the width of the dispersion.
 

Wolf

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You're not usually going to find those off axis plots in the DIY designs.

For the record, planars have narrow vertical and wide horizontal off axis responses. This is the nature of how they operate.
If you don't see a horn or waveguide, and the woofer is 7" or smaller, then the directivity mismatch that typically arises that requires a waveguide does not occur most of the time.
There are larger woofer designs that use clever sloping of the drivers' responses to avoid the mismatch and not use a waveguide as well, not unlike my Zingers.

Using a ribbon or 22mm/0.75" tweeter will net a wider off axis response, as will smaller midranges in 3way designs.

But what is important is that the off axis response will narrow as frequency increases, and you cannot avoid this. It's what is done at the tweeter's lower range that allows the width or not, and the smaller the dimension of the radiating membrane is, the better off axis it will have.
 

Mudjock

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The Keramiska uses the same tweeter as the HiVi DIY 3.1A, which has been on the Klippel, so you can get an idea of high frequency dispersion from that review. As I hear it, that tweeter has somewhat better wider dispersion than a typical 1" (25-27mm) dome - probably more like a 22mm or 3/4". I haven't seen any off-axis plots for the Keramiska either, but have heard them in a couple of different venues and would conclude that either they don't have a significant directivity error or it is compensated on-axis to produce a neutral in room presentation.
 

Wolf

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I am not positive the tweeters are the same, Scott, but they at least are very similar. The 3.1A has a stamped frame and is labeled at 20W, and the WE is cast and labeled at 15W.
 
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Nwickliff

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Did anyone mention this one yet?

edit: didn't realize these have cabinets that are already finished. So I guess you wouldn't get to practice finishing them unless they can be supplied without finish.
I actually wanted this to be my second speaker but I thought they were finished with this speaker. Are they still providing kits for this one?
 

pjug

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I actually wanted this to be my second speaker but I thought they were finished with this speaker. Are they still providing kits for this one?
I don't know but the youtube review linked on that page is from January 2021 and says it was to be available soon. You can email or maybe @Dennis Murphy would reply here. I wonder if other cabinets can work without too much fuss if you want to practice your finishing.
 
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