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Ideas for a good looking standmount.

Chris

Chris

pfm Member
Which are the best looking standmounts ? Not thinking of the best sounding, just the best looking. Seeking inspiration.
 
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That's a confusing question. Are you saying that only aesthetics are important, or are you looking for the best compromise between sound and aesthetics?
 
If you like the moden look, I think Q Acoustics are nice. For the more traditional, Sonus Faber look pretty good.
 
These Viotti speaker are pretty cool although they would be very difficult to fashion yourself without the ability to vacuum form, well certainly at anywhere near what the actual ones sell for.

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For a simpler modern look the Cesti range are also very cool looking.

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Of course you shouldn't be swayed by the fact I sell both of them.
 
The internals are decided - basically Robert´s AR22 Tribute , and the stands will be Heybrook HBS1s - it´s the externals I was looking to freshen up but not much you can do with a flat baffle. I plan to make them out of baltic ply as all the boxes I´ve made, all 2 of them, are in mdf clad particle board a la Peter Comeau, as in my Avatar. Maybe some largish radius curved edges leaving the several layers of ply in full view. God knows.
 
Good looking is going to depend on the room and how your tastes have formed. I was adventurous with my first DIY speakers with cork, cloth, resin but they all were aesthetic failures either immediately or over time. Today I prefer a neutral conventional look with lightly grained wood and a plain grille clothe. No doubt boring to many but it is comfortable and won't jar over time. I have accepted that strong aesthetics that works and continues to work over time is not straightforward requiring significant time, effort and understanding. Hence neutral and comfortable.
 
As already mention Songs Faber are beautiful looking speakers, especially Serbian era designs.

I think Focal mini utopias are a very striking speaker, not beautiful in the way SF's are, but they look very purposeful.
 
h.g. said:
A 2 way with an 8" hard cone midwoofer and a ribbon tweeter. That looks like a combination to give hard cones and/or ribbons a bad name. Interesting to see another vote for the big chamfered look though.
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They measure very well actually, there’s a blog about the build somewhere. May be in the diy Facebook group.

One of the big shows in the states had these in selahs room, and having seen the reviews of quite a few people who heard them, they all say amazing sq. Might try a pair one day out of interest
 
Paul Burke said:
They measure very well actually, there’s a blog about the build somewhere. May be in the diy Facebook group.

One of the big shows in the states had these in selahs room, and having seen the reviews of quite a few people who heard them, they all say amazing sq. Might try a pair one day out of interest
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Have you gone to an audio show and compared what you heard with what other attendees later describe as low or high sound quality in posts? It is an interesting exercise.

This speaker will almost certainly suffer from audibly unpleasant levels of distortion at reasonably high sound levels. It may be OK at low levels but not at higher ones. The hard cone woofer (SB Acoustics classify it as a woofer not a midwoofer) has severe resonances starting around 3 kHz and so if the 3rd harmonic of the motor is not to drive them it would need a reasonably steep crossover at a frequency below 1 kHz or so say 750 Hz if pushing it. Ribbon tweeters have high levels of distortion at the low end of their frequency range and are typically crossed at 5 kHz or so in order to avoid it. But...

Having just looked it up, the BZ "ribbon" transducers (there are several) are not ribbon tweeters despite looking like ribbons and being called ribbons presumably for marketing reasons. It is a rather odd hybrid device with a somewhat odd radiation pattern more like a dome than a ribbon but it has plenty of cone area a bit like a planar and so should be able to extend lower in frequency than a ribbon but almost certainly not low enough to cross to an 8" hard piston woofer. A soft one possibly. The distortion around 2 kHz looks fairly good but there are some artifacts higher in frequency possibly from cavity resonances which tend to stop planars being used for midranges or possibly the unusual suspension. Would like to see what happens at higher SPLs. The response is not particularly flat but looks workable. Can't find a price and they don't seem to be distributed in Europe. At around Chinese ribbon prices they would be an interesting DIY option but at RAAL prices of zero interest at least to me. They invite contact from DIYers as well as the trade. Been around for a few years apparently evolving the design without making much impact. Interesting stuff and many thanks for making me aware of it.
 
Yep I’d agree with that. Tend to not rate most speakers at shows, or at least that particular setup of them. For me there’s normally only a few rooms I’d stay for more than a track. But then others might not like my choices. The thread from Cranage recently showed that. Lot of people raving about big expensive setups I found pretty garbage tbh...

Ive no experience with ribbons, would to try one day if I find any for sensible money, be worth a test. But the drivers I’ve used from sb, beryllium tweeters, some midwoofers and subs have all been very good.

Whether he can mate those 2 drivers together will be a lot to do with the crossover design and just how good he is, I agree they don’t look like the easiest drivers to mate up. But I wouldn’t have thought a 2 way standmount would work well with a 9.5” midwoofer, looks good in the Helios though and something I’d really like to build sometime
 
Paul Burke said:
Y
Whether he can mate those 2 drivers together will be a lot to do with the crossover design and just how good he is, I agree they don’t look like the easiest drivers to mate up. But I wouldn’t have thought a 2 way standmount would work well with a 9.5” midwoofer, looks good in the Helios though and something I’d really like to build sometime
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He posts on DIY speaker forums fairly regularly and has sold a range of DIY designs over the years making his level of competence as a designer straightforward to assess.

I am not familiar with the Helios speaker and a quick google didn't help. A soft cone 10" woofer with a large tweeter can make a good budget configuration if size is not much of a constraint and used to be fairly common a few decades ago. The Dynaco A25 is perhaps the most famous example. If technical sound quality is a strongly weighted then one doesn't have to much above a budget price for 3 ways to become the better option.

In terms of aesthetics, big angled chamfers on a 3 way with a smooth progression in driver size, similar style of driver finish and fairly close spacing is likely to look pretty good to my eyes. Unfortunately the OP has a small midrange and the chamfers would likely mess up the baffle step in the crossover without modification.
 
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