RMAF (Rocky Mountain Audio
Festival) was great
fun this year and it was also fun to see so many people I know - and to hear
so much good music and great gear.
The most fun part was that JB(speakerman) brought 2 of his homemade OB rigs with him. You'll see them in the photo below. The goofy looking dude is me. These were not for sale, not for public show, just for our own amusement.
There
was the inexpensive little rig, AKA the Manzanitas, that you will see on the
floor behind me. Just a passive 2 way with a Peerless 12" sub and a Seas
dome tweeter. The system has been extensively documented over on DiyAudio.com.
Parts costs are about $150 per side.
They won't play super loud, but still have plenty of grunt for most size listening
rooms. They image very well, too. And for the price… Well, to quote one
visitor to the room - -"I've paid more in tax on a pair of speakers."
Just a little project to show you don't have to spend a fortune to get great
musicality and low, clean bass from an open baffle.
The big fuglies I'm leaning against are the "Big Boys." 18" P.Audio coax. Real monsters. In fact the drivers are from the Blue Monster series. I told JB not to buy those drivers - 18" coax drivers could never sound good. But boy, oh boy, was I wrong! They will really shake the walls with only a few watts. No power compression at all, tons of bass and clean, clean sound. We were playing at 105 to 110dB peaks with no strain at all, and maybe 4 volts peak.. Could have gone louder, but the neighbors shut us down. :P
Not just big and loud, they have a musicality to them that few drivers can match. Voices are palpable, recording venues are real, emotion is high.
JB and I did a lot of crossover work on the rig while we were there. Some on
the woofer, but most of it on the horn. Never did get it just quite right,
there was still some grain left on voices. But they were better than most of
the other speakers we heard at the show. And no $100,000 worth of electronics
to drive them, either.
The cool thing about the Big Boys is that they have dynamics out the wazoo. Like real, live music. And they were one of the few speakers I heard at RMAF that had real depth to the sound stage. Few of the speakers at RMAF had much depth, with some notable exceptions. (Gershman, Reference Audio 3A, Focal, to name a few). Many could do a passably wide sound stage, but few could do depth.
Funny thing about working on the crossover there at the show was that we would get to a point where the rig just didn't sound right, just was not living up to its potential. We'd take a break and go out to listen to a lot of other stuff. Without fail, every time we came back to the room and fired up the Big Boys I thought "Oh, wow! These really are good." The comparison was obvious. Then it was back to work on the crossover.
For most of the show we assumed we had the biggest drivers there, until late Sunday. I just happened to walk past room 586 and look thru the open door. What did I see? 18" coax drivers in big bass reflex boxes! Yes, the same P.Audio drivers. Same big, live sound, same real live dynamics. Crossover wasn't the best, but the basics were there. JB said he could hear the box and it bothered him, I didn't notice it. Whatever the case, that big P.Audio coax is a real winner.
My conclusion? Speakers really define the sound. And the drivers define the sound of the speaker. Combine great drivers with a good crossover and you've got a winner. With a little skill and patience and not too much money, you can build an OB rig that will sound as good as or better than most of the commercial rigs out there.
So what are you waiting for?
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