Our friend Miguel is an electrical engineer who built all the components in his system including his turntable, which I'll share in another post soon. He's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to the source and delivery of his music.
When he mentioned he had new speakers, we pretty much dropped everything and headed on over for a listen.
The Speaker plans
Miguel's new do it yourself speakers were built from Model NFX plans.
The Driver
The driver is a single full range 8" full range crossover-less loudspeaker. The spec sheet claims a minimum power requirement of 2 watts. OK then. I like it.
The cabinet, which as mentioned was built by Brian, another neighbor from plans from Decware DYI plans was nothing short of stunning. I don't often use that word to describe the physical form of a loudspeaker but in this case it held true.
Yes the cabinet was carefully hand crafted with beautiful matched fronts, but the baffles, oh the baffles!
The cabinet sits at a 20 degree angle and there are eight (8) baffles, 4 on each side. And oh, what they do is nothing short of amazing.
The dimensions
The cabinet is 12.5" wide, 17" deep and 42.5" high. The Decware website calls this the Nibbelin Ultraflex that has no parallel surfaces.
You can read all their marketing stuff here.
The Sound
The most amazing trick this speaker accomplishes is to almost totally disappear. I've heard a lot of speakers and these are one of the most transparent speakers I've ever heard. The sound stage was immense and seamless. Sound was everywhere and very balanced and comparable to good electrostatic panels. A beautiful mixture of mids, highs and cultured bass that simply filled the room with music and incredibly natural vocals.The one thing though...
Jazz, acoustic music, symphonic music sounded amazing with just the right amount of bass, for me at least. Where the Decware's fell short was rock or anything requiring more booming bass. The soundstage remained impressive but the bass was just not delivered in a satisfying way. Nothing a good sub could not and did solve.
But the reproduction of jazz and vocal musics along with the immense soundstage makes me want them just for those genre's alone.
Bottom line
Would I buy these? Well, all tolled with labor these came out to about $2,000. A reasonable price for these incredible sounding and looking speakers. Of course you build cost could vary. That said, I want one of Miguel's turntables before a new set of speakers, of which I already have quite a collection.
Here are some of the specs from Decware's site.
SPECIFICATIONS
- 99 dB with 1 watt at 1 meter
- 58Hz ~ 20kHz flat
- 48Hz ~ 25kHz -3dB
- 8 ohm nominal impedance
- Crossoverless
- 2 ~ 60 watts
- Max SPL 115 dB
- Size 12.5" wide, 17" deep, 42.5" high
- Ultraflex cabinet
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