[dewar]

Just finished making new baffles, and installing a DEQ2496 into my system. Very happy indeed.

Old baffles were 51"x35" winged monoliths. The new ones 40" high, 17" wide at the top and 14" wide at the bottom. The top edge slopes down about an inch from inside to outside edge. The new look is much less imposing, I think my wife is going to be happy when she gets back from holiday.

The DEQ must be the best $300 I ever spent. Cant speak highly enough of it. The music is just that much more intelligible now, just more there to hear. And a lot more relaxing with a balanced FR. No insertion loss that I can yet tell. Makes integrating the B200's with my subs a breeze. Its also allowing me to relieve the B200 of some bass duty as I set the gain of the subs at ± 15db to loud before I started equalizing, thereby lowering the LF signal sent to the B200's by that amount.

One quite disturbing surprise was playing the B200's by themselves. On the large baffles I found they could do the majority of music without a subwoofer being needed. On the small baffles they might just cover a piccolo. Really amazing the difference.

And with the new phase plugs and Neo3 (+2uF cap) on the rear side the music is sounding a whole lot better than it was a few weeks ago. I think I'm finally finished my tweakathon and will be happy with my speakers for some years to come (I'm not even laughing as I type bit)

b.

[Luigi]

Hmm … if memory serves, you said you would detail your findings of the rear firing Neo3s Bevan. I've just ordered the same so Im keen to hear your impressions.

FWIW I made a set of MiniOnkens over the weekend to get some more bass out of the CSS FR125s I had been listening to open baffle. What a waste of time. More bass is now there but the mids are a mushy mess. Dont think I'll ever build a cabinet speaker again. Thanks be I only used MDF to see how they sounded.

OBs really do rule (until I find something better).

[mcgsxr]

I follow with interest this addition of the tweeter to the rear of the baffle!

I LOVE the avatar of the Supermotard!

Oh, and where are you Luigi?  If you are looking to get rid of those mini-onkens... I have some FR125's, sitting in simple sealed boxes...

[Dougl]

dewar,

Congratulations.

Enjoy.

Doug

[Luigi]

Hi Mark
Im a long way from where you are! In Auckland, New Zealand. I wouldn't send rubbishy old MDF boxes anywhere anyway. I will probably give these to the lad for multimedia stuff. The instant I heard them, I realised the FR125s in a small OB with a passive sub are better. I think I might have just built my last box speaker.

On the Ducati front, I got to ride the whole range recently, all Monsters, MultiStrada, both the SportClassics and the new 1098 (oh baby) at Eastern Creek in Sydney, Australia. But not with as much style as Xaus of course.

There's really not a dud amongst them, but loved the Sport Classic cafe racer and both of the S2Rs.The S4R Testastretta was pretty cool on track too, until you climbed on the 1098 and instantly forgot the rest!

Luigi

[dewar]

cheers Doug.

I think I did Luigi. As yet all I can say is very nice improvement. I havent had a chance to try anything other than the 2uf cap. I will sometime try 1 and 3uf, but as i've now gone further and eq'd flat to 17k changing the caps might have a different effect to what you might hear in your non eq'd speaker.

At the moment the highs sound as airy and extended as I ever remember my Dynaudio Esotec+ T380 tweeters sounding so I'm not in a tearing hurry to go rolling caps. I think the DEQ will object of my attention for some time to come. I think it's giving me delusions of omnipotence having so much controll over FR

cheers

b.

I'd try put up a photo of the new and old baffles if I knew how