I've been away from the DIY OB scene for a few years, but I'm back with my old project, and this time I plan on finalizing it and finishing it with proper baffles.
This is just all a temp setup, just for "proof of concept". These are the same drivers and dbx Venu 360 that I used a few years ago, but now in a much more suitable room, and with better gear overall ahead of it. I'll break down the entire system, as well as future plans...
Schiit Freya+ with NOS GE 6FQ7's and 6CG7's as the current tubes of choice. The Freya+ is being fed from from a Raspberry Pi 4 wirelessly via USB to a Schiit Bifrost 2 Multibit. From the Freya+, signal heads to the dbx Driverack Venu 360.
Audio Nirvana Super 12 Ferrite, powered by the Emotiva XPA 2 Gen 2, and crossed over at 35 Hz.
Eminence Acoustinator N1202, powered by Nuprime STA 9 (top one), and crossed over from 50 Hz to 190 Hz.
JL Audio e110 subwoofers, fed signal by second Nuprime STA 9 via high level input, and crossed over at 60 Hz.
All interconnects are Wireworld and Pangea XLR balanced cables.
Once I decide on a baffle design, it will be built with two layers of 0.75" Baltic Birch plywood for a nice and solid 1.5" thickness. The baffles won't be much wider than they are now, if at all. I have two pairs of the Eminence Acoustinator N1202 drivers and will wire them in parallel for a nominal 4 ohm load. So far with just two of them playing in the system (one per side), they are very impressive in their bass response and output capabilities. Running two per side in parallel will only make them that more efficient and dynamic, which they already are on their own.
As for the baffle design, I'm still on the fence as to how I'm going to go, whether it be a spin-off of the Pure Audio style or just a single, solid baffle, and whether or not I will have both bass drivers on the bottom, or one above and one below... a.k.a. - D' Appolito style.
As far as the current sound I'm getting?... Absolutely shocking honestly. Right now I'm streaming Andrew Jones' Elac demo playlist on Qobuz (running via Roon). Vocal naturalness, dynamics, weight and life-size presence and height is incredibly realistic, to the point of being "spooky" or "eerie" and sending chills right down your spine. Heck, even when I was in the kitchen making my coffee earlier, I swore someone came walking into the room and started talking. It scared the crap out of me! LOL
So far, all instruments have proper weight, heft, meat to them and great texture and tonality. The amount of detail throughout the entire range is excellent. And the treble... Let's not forget about that. All three of my brothers were over last night for dinner and a movie. They picked whatever they wanted to listen to music-wise while dinner was cooking. All three of them swore that I had some tweeters installed somewhere. LOL The treble extension on these Audio Nirvana Super 12's is amazing. Full of "zip", airy, crisp, but still silky smooth, detailed and non-fatiguing. And there's absolutely zero EQ correction up that high in the Auto EQ. In fact, the highest EQ correction is +1.5 dB at 8.25 kHz at a Q of 6.24.
Because the baffles are currently standing directly on the suspended wood floor, you can feel each and every note, foot stomp, bass drum kick, bass string come right through the floor, and that's all coming from those two single 12" bass drivers. The JL subs are 4" off the floor on IsoAcoustics ISO-200 sub isolators, so I get very little energy transfer from them through the floor.
And lastly, sounds stage is deep, wide and tall when needed, and imaging is pretty spot on. The funny thing is, these open baffles just replaced my beloved pair of Martin Logan SL3's which I had dialed in as good as they could be in this room. Those SL3's sound excellent, but these ugly little OB's are bringing a lot more to the table right now.
Here's a few pics taken earlier today...
