Category: ‘News’

“Excellence Two – Mini Monitor DXT” built by Bart (Australia)

May 10, 2023 Posted by gornir

I finished building the Excellent Two – M1 DXT around 4 year ago. Initially I bought the Seas woofers
from someone’s unfinished project. After researching the units I realized that these are difficult to
implement correctly. Thus rather than designing a configuration myself I found the design of the
Excellent Two as one of the few available online using this excellent little woofer. It ticked all the
boxes; small, simple filter setup, and high quality parts.

Getting the parts was more difficult than I originally anticipated. Seas doesn’t have a large presence
in Australia. Thus I ended up ordering the tweeters and filter parts from Europe myself.

The build was straightforward, only detail missing is the exact location of the port, thus I guessed
directly behind the tweeter. I build the speaker boxes from MDF and sprayed them with acrylic car
paint blue metallic (see picture). IMO this works well due to their rather smallish size.

The first testrun I did with the excellent two was in our 65m2 family room which has a lot of hard
surfaces, I used a 30 W class A amp. The sound blow me away, very revealing with unbelievable
dynamics for such a small speaker; it was able to fill the room up to reasonable sound levels. Bass
was very good too, obvious no subsonic heavy bass, but that’s to be expected from a 4.5” driver. My
wife and daughters were equally impressed.

After the test I moved the speakers to my desktop, besides my 38” monitor. Initially I heard some
distortion using a cd-player, class A amp and class A pre amp. After switching channels etc. I found
out that one of the channels of the pre-amp had a too high bias which pushed the power transitor
slightly in saturation. Now this must have been like this for a long time and I never picked it up
before, even not with my Solosound Electrostatic speakers (which I love too, but they are so
impractical).

After fixing the pre-amp I still found the sound a bit harsh, so I bought a good quality DAC, and that
gave me sound I was after; clean, clear and still plenty umph for this application. So yes the speakers
are revealing and will show any imperfection in your equipment.

I have my laptop (and cd player) connected to the DAC through an USB slot and use the Excellent
Two nearly every day. Now after using them for more than 4 years I still love the Excellent Two and
still like them as much as I did 4 years back. So thanks for the work you did Göran with designing
these excellent little speakers. Only issue I have is that I am sitting a bit too close to the speakers
(80-90 cm) but I can live with that.

So thumps up for this design, and feel free to put my review on your website.

Cheers,

Bart G.

“Revelation Two – M4 WG” built by Josip

February 20, 2021 Posted by gornir


Hi Goran, hi folks following Goran’s great website

Few months ago I built the M4 WG. As you can see from attached pictures I’ve built it from some hard wood which I now regret because it has some resonance vibrations (despite internal brace and bitumen pads)on side walls when pushed hard (I believe MDF would be better).

I also built a Symmetrically Balanced Cross-over design and I had to put it in an external enclosure. I have used foil coil and some capacitors from intertechnik.de. I also have used the “variovent” box option which I also regret because the bass is firm but not deep as I expected.

The sound is overall great and on a relaxed side. Unfortunately most of the time I use it for listening to youtube, but when I feed it with some high-resolution music it blows my mind.

I follow your site as well as troelsgravesen.dk site and you are the two best diy loudspeaker sites on this planet. As we in Europe live usually in small rooms I will challenge you to create really small high end 3-way loudspeakers, with cross over points at some 200 and 2500 Hz.

Why? So we can benefit from a midrange driver doing just midrange and woofer doing just bass, and all it for small european rooms. IMHO for bass I would recommend Seas Seas L16RN-SL as it has great HD performance in bass section (see http://www.zaphaudio.com/5.5test/), midrange driver is up to you, and for tweeter I would recommend Scan Speak 2604/832000. But that is just my humble opinion. Once again, Goran thank you for sharing your projects with the DIY community.

Regards, Josip

Loudspeaker Drivers For Sale!

November 28, 2020 Posted by gornir

Hi Everyone,

It’s time for me to do some house cleaning and reduce my stock of loudspeaker drivers and Hifi equipment in order to make room for new exciting Hifi gear.

Everything advertised here are for private sale and not for commercial purpose. If not noted, everything is in mint condition and most of the items are only tested and has never used for a long period of time.

Be sure to check back here since new items will be added regularly in the near future.

First out for sale is the great Illuminator Beryllium tweeter from ScanSpeak: For details look at the sales page here: For Sale!

 

Hifi Show Report!

February 15, 2020 Posted by gornir

Hi everyone,

Here are some pictures and comments from the High End Hifi show I visited 8-9th of February 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Stockholm High End 2020

Here’s a video from the show and a Tidal playlist made by Johan Björck:

Youtube Video – High End Mässan 2020 i Stockholm

Tidal Playlist – HEM2020

 

Happy New Year!

December 31, 2019 Posted by gornir

 

Happy New Year!

I wish you all my followers and readers a Happy New Year!

As many of you readers have noticed this year, is that I haven’t updated the website as frequently as usual and there is a tragic reason for that!

Suddenly and without warning! – My best friend and lovely beautiful wife since almost 28 years was diagnosed with cancer and passed away after only 53 days on 15th of July. Cecilia, known by her friends by the nickname “Sissi” died at the age of 45 and left a beautiful 14 year old daughter and me alone in this world. Sissi, we will always carry you in our hearts and love you forever and someday we will meet again. Rest in peace!

Cecilia  “Sissi”

23rd of December 1973 — 15th of July 2019

 

Luckily everything wasn’t bad news 2019. I’m happy to share you the great success Hulgich Audio has done during this year. We had several great reviews of our loudspeakers during the year and hopefully there will be new ones next year!

Thanks to Nicolas “Nick” Hulgich and his family for being such nice friends and all the support you have given me in such difficult times and that makes me even prouder of the latest award Hulgich Audio got from Soundstage! in the category “Exceptional Value”.

Congratulations Nick for your hard work and commitment in building the world’s best loudspeakers!

In the early 2020 I will publish a review of the Dayton DATSv3 measurement system and compare it to the DATSv2. Later on there will also be a new floor-stand 2-way loudspeaker published on the AudioExcite website.

There will also be some new and exciting new releases from Hulgich Audio. Have your eyes open, stay tuned and we see you next year!

Again, I wish you all a Happy New Hifi Year 2020!

Best regards

/Göran
Author of the “AudioExcite Loudspeaker Design” website

SB Acoustics Satori 5″ Driver Measurements!

November 23, 2019 Posted by gornir

On the test bench we have three different versions of SB Acoustics Satori 5″ driver.

For further details see:

SBAcoustics Satori MR13P-8
SBAcoustics Satori MW13P-4
SBAcoustics Satori MW13P-8

 

Hulgich Audio Duke Loudspeaker reviews!

September 28, 2019 Posted by gornir

 

The Hulgich Audio review section is updated with three new loudspeaker reviews of the Hulgich Audio Duke loudspeaker.

Read more about it here:

Hulgich Audio reviews

Or visit the reviews directly from here:

Soundstage Australia – Hulgich Audio Duke Loudspeaker Editor’s follow-up review

Soundstage Australia – Hulgich Audio Duke review

Headphone & Earphone Reviews – Hulgich Audio Duke review

Stereonet Forum – Hulgich Audio Duke review

 

SB17NBAC35-4 vs SB17NAC35-4

March 9, 2019 Posted by gornir

(Click on picture to zoom)

This short blog post describes the difference between the SB Acoustics SB17NBAC35-4 and the SB17NAC35-4 mid-woofers. In the picture above you can see the NBAC driver to left and the NAC driver to the right. The only visible difference is the color of the aluminium cone.

The questions are — Do they measure the same and is the only difference the color of the cone? I will try to answer this by providing some measurements below.

T/S Parameters:

 

(Click on picture to zoom)

Top: SB17NBAC35-4 vs. SB17NAC35-4 T/S parameters measured using “added” mass method in horizontal position.

Bottom: SB17NBAC35-4 vs. SB17NAC35-4 T/S parameters measured using “known” mass method in vertical position.

According to the official specification sheets there are some small difference between the two versions. The measured T/S parameters also show small differences, but in reality it could be the variations between different production batches.

Impedance:

 

(click on picture to zoom)

Left: Free-air impedance. NBAC vs. NAC.
Right: Close-up of free-air impedance. NBAC vs. NAC.

The impedance plot is similar between the two versions. The cone break-up is slightly higher up frequency for the NAC version, 10kHz vs 9.7kHz for the NBAC version.

Frequency:

 

Frequency measurement conditions:

The mid-woofer is measured mounted on a baffle in an 17.6 liter closed enclosure with the following conditions:

Baffle size (WxH): 20×40cm. No baffle edge round-over.
Driver position: Mounted on center-line with driver unit center 17cm from the bottom of the baffle.
Mic position: 1m distance, on mid-woofer-axis.
Smoothing: No smoothing applied. Measurement valid down to 275Hz.

(click on picture to zoom)

Left: Frequency response on-axis. NBAC vs. NAC.
Right: Frequency response 15deg off-axis. NBAC vs. NAC.

Virtually the same frequency response. The slightly different cone break-up mode is visible around 9.7-10kHz.

Distortion:

 

Measurement setup:

  • Mid-woofer near-field measurement at 18cm
  • Frequency Range Mid-woofer: 200-10000Hz
  • Baffle size WxH: 20×40cm

 

The distortion measurement shown is done in near-field and the amplifier output level was adjusted so that the fundamental is 95dB at 1m. This setting simulates a high listening level.

(click on picture to zoom)

Left: = SB17NBAC35-4 — 95dB @ 1m

Right: = SB17NAC35-4 — 95dB @ 1m

Both versions are very low distorting drivers.

Conclusion:

 

The NBAC and NAC versions are very similar in measurements and they are they interchangeable of each other in the same cross-over design. The small differences shown above are most likely caused by measuring different production batches. In fact there are a couple of years between the production of the above mid-woofers, so consistency seems to be good between production batches.

The only real difference between the two versions is the color — Pick your favorite color and looks!

For further measurement details of the two versions, see: SBAcoustics SB17NBAC35-4 and SBAcoustics SB17NACC35-4.

SB Acoustics SB17NBAC35 Measurements!

March 9, 2019 Posted by gornir

On the test bench we have the SB17NBAC35-4 and the the SB17NBAC35-8 6″ mid-woofers from SBAcoustics.

For further details see: SBAcoustics SB17NBAC35-4 and SBAcoustics SB17NBAC35-8

 

Hifi Show Report!

February 19, 2019 Posted by gornir

Hi everyone,

Here are some pictures and comments from the HighEnd Hifi show I visited 16-17th of February 2019 here in Stockholm, Sweden.

Stockholm High End 2019