The speakers are finished!
On Saturday I first had to sand the sides of all the tweeters because they were slightly too large for the tweeter box on my cabinets. I taped them and then sanded the sides with a belt sander. After wiring the tweeters on one speaker cabinet, I found that the tweeters were slightly too long, too. I removed just one tweeter and was able to sand it down a little to make them all fit. On the other side I sanded the sides of all tweeters and the ends of two tweeters just to make sure.
Next I installed all the drivers. I ran the wire through the holes in the internal baffles and ended up with just enough wire for the crossover, bass module, and binding posts. I think I had about 6" left over. After getting both drivers loaded I then attached the bases. I had to get some 1 1/2" long 1/4" bolts from Ace Hardware to bolt them on. I was able to get bolts in 8 of the 9 holes in each base. The other hole was slighly off.
Sunday afternoon I added the Platinum bypass caps and changed a few other things in the crossovers. I circled with red the parts removed and added. Since the board already had spots for all but one bypass cap, it was very easy to change them. I also soldered new wire leads to the board and then attached the bass module.
I added the Electra tube connectors per the instructions and soldered the leads back to the crossover. The bass module is supposed to fit on the access door, but the door was predrilled and the holes on the bass module for the tube connector pass thru didn't line up. I ended up drilling the binding post holes in the bass module larger and centering and screwing it to the door. The tube connectors then just barely fit through.
Before attaching the bass modules, I connected the crossovers to the speakers. Once the door/bass module was connected to the crossover, I then put the crossover into the speaker and screwed it down. The speaker wasn't predrilled, but I had some Spax screws on hand which made it fairly easy to do in combination with a short screwdriver. I stuffed some polyfill besides the crossovers and closed up the speakers.
I put some 2" Magic Sliders on each corner of the bass. They come with double stick tape and adhered well. My dad came over and helped me lift the speakers off the dining room table and place in the living room. With the sliders, I could easily move the speakers around and position properly. I used my Bosch laser to get the speakers positioned within 1/16" of each other. The front is about 3' from the side walls and 2 1/2" feet from the rear wall. I have super chunk bass traps in each front corner of the room.
I have Realty Cables and wasn't sure how well the tube connector pins would fit and didn't have time to mess with them so I used some 6' cables with banana plugs for now. Does anyone know the gauge of the Realty Cables? It looks like two wires per spade.
After connecting the speaker cables I turned on the system. The speakers are completely silent even with my ear right up to the Neo8. Wait, I didn't say I started the music yet.
I started playing some music and sat back to listen. They work!
They are incredible! I think they are the best speakers I have ever heard.The bass extends down into the low 20’s with room gain (I haven’t measured them yet) and I could hear the 22 Hz notes on the song Deeper by Pete Belasco. The bass sounds better than most subwoofers I've heard and is extremely articulate (I've heard about 13 different dual sub pairs this past year from Seaton, JTR, CHT, Hsu, Klipsch, and DIY). Music is so smooth, detailed, transparent, dynamic, and awesome. The speakers completely disappear with the soundstage the width of the room. The X-Omni's had a wide soundstage, but I'm hearing much more now out to the sides. There is so much more precision in the soundstage and not the diffuse airy feel that the X-Omni's have. I listened for about an hour last night and some more this morning. The bass has already improved. You can stand up and walk around and go up close and stand at the back of the room and it sounds similar and at the same volume.
Here are all the pictures. You can see the room with X-Omni's and with LS-6 speakers. The last picture is with my 126" AT screen descended in front of the speakers. The pictures aren't that great since there wasn't much light this morning when I took the pictures.
