I first met Danny at LSAF. Danny kinda reminds me one of my head banger high school friend. If you can imagine a southern version of Nigel from the cult classic, This Is Spinal Tap, you get my drift. I soon realized this is a talented guy who provides high quality speakers for ridiculously low price. He told me about a big line array using BG Neo 10 drivers that he was designing. Told him I would one day visit him to listen to this speaker. Fast forward several months, I was in Dallas visiting a friend over the weekend, so I gave Danny a call. He didn't have Neo 10 line array, but I still wanted to check out his place of work and some his speakers. So Monday I made the 2 hour trip from Dallas to Wichita Falls area and came upon a quaint house in quiet country suburb.
His living room had been converted to his listening room with plenty of room treatment. He has one of the most impressive tube monoblocks I have ever seen. It's a blue behemoth custom made by Gary Dodd with 6 KT88s per side and the biggest transformers I have ever seen on an amp. His preamp was the battery powered Dodd tube preamp, and source was Tranquility DAC fed by Mac Mini. His work place was at the back of the house in a small room composed of a desk with a computer surrounded by numerous drivers, cross over components, various speakers at different stages of build, etc. And he had huge storage containers in his back yard filled with more components. He pretty much is a one man factory.
So my main reason for writing about this trip was tell you guys about his small 2-way (N1x?) and servo sub using the SW-12. Mind you, this system is around $1000. What I heard was tremendous dynamics, excellent imaging/staging, very good coherency, clean powerful extended bass (flat down to 20 Hz according Danny and I believe him), smooth midrange, snappy transients, and clean sparkling highs. I couldn't believe I was listening to a $1000 system. I don't know any system anywhere near this price that can give this kind of performance. I would really have go to $4000+ speaker system for something more comparable. We played rock (Eagles), jazz (Flim and the BBs), classical organ music (saw Danny's eyes glaze over so didn't drag the piece too long), female vocals...The speaker system shined through all of this. We were listening pretty loud (probably 90+ dB during loud passages, above my comfort level). Only when the music got excessively loud did I hear the small mid/woofer on the 2-way bottom out (the mid/woofer was run full with the subwoofer). Given the price, the only negative comment, more like nit pick, I have about this system was that the highs can get aggressive with some recordings. The planar magnetic tweeter is very revealing, and I can see situations (some transistor gears, bad pop/rock recordings, bright cables) this can be a drawback. But I'm extremely sensitive to slightest aggresiveness in the high frequency. If you don't mind a little DIY work and are on a budget, these are THE DIY kits to get. I already have two pairs of 2-way speakers, so I really can't justify another pair 2-way at this time. Otherwise, I would jump on these. But I am planning to get a pair of the servo subwoofers. According to Danny, there is a guy here on AC who will build a subwoofer cabinet for $150 to $300, depending on finish. The driver is $149 and the direct servo subwoofer amp with EQ is $349. So for ~$650, you can have a fully built subwoofer that will compete with any commercially available $2000 subwoofer. Afterwards, we all (Danny's nice wife and friend) went out for some tasty Chinese food.
So this trip was productive and enjoyable for me. I got to see an awesome "dude" at his place of work and shared some great music on one helluva system.
