FS: Darren69's large monitors

[Darren69]

Item: Large Custom Made Monitors
Location: Waterview Heights, NE NSW
Price: $2500 exc plinths, $2700 inc plinths
Item Condition: Very good
Reason for selling: Listening room not big enough
Payment Method: Pickup - Cash, Paypal, COD Only
Extra Info:

Purchased a few months back from Onebaldybloke and I love them. Don't want to sell them but nowhere to store them. My room is not quite long enough for these big buggers, am suggesting you need a 5m or longer room for these things to really shine. Width isn't hugely important unless you live in a glorified hallway. I reckon they need 1.5m to the side walls and 1m behind them to allow them to breathe their big accurate lungs and give gorgeous soundstage with a large sweet spot (sweet area?). Once you manage that, you wont need any other speaker, these speakers are as good as my Focal 1038Be's, just a different flavour. I prefer the Berylium tweeter of the Focals and the smaller cabinets allow me to have the Focals' further from the wall as they are not as deep through. The Scanspeak tweeter is very powerful and more forgiving of harsh recordings. It still has a lot of 'air' to it's sound, just a smidgen less than beryllium but again, not as harsh depending on quality of mastering. I replaced the cheap bi wire speaker terminals with ETI's speaker pods and it made them sound a good 20% better, IMO! When soldering, I allowed the terminal casing of one body to get hot and one slid slightly through it's thread casing but this has not affected anything, only aesthetics, see pictured. Rear ports top and bottom @ 90mm wide.

 

Dimensions- 1540H X 480L inc grills X 330W

Tweeter is 720 from the base of the speaker.

 

Drivers-

woofers- Vifa M26WR-09 top and bottom DÁppolito design. 

mid woofers- Vifa P13WH-00 above and under the tweeter, DÁppolito design. 

Tweeters- Scanspeak D2905/950000.

 

Strongly suggest that if you are interested and your ears are higher than say 800mm when seated, you will need plinths, either mine or source/use your own. The speakers do not sound their best until the tweeter is at ear level. Then it all comes together and oh la la!! My learning curve is for all to see in my Darren69 stuff to date thread.

 

Plinths sit at around 160mm high with adjustable feet on conical spikes with their own shoes, Herbies Gliders are not inc. Plinths are 500mm wide by 600mm long. They are solid ply coated with fine buffing oil and polished alloy corner protection.

 

Aladdin's Transport lovingly delivered these speakers from Vic for $360 so please, no 'Oh God wish you were closer' posts (Malcolm at Aladdin's Transport- 0434376798)

 

These should have sold for around 5k at least but because they are old-school monsters and we are a fickle, marketing driven mob, Bob sold these to me for $2750 and I pass on the savings. Bob guesstimates they would be around 10k's worth now and I agree and they would be a bargain at that. What I like about these speakers (and apparently it was part of the design brief) is they don't have that hi-fi signature sound of in-you-face-bordering-vulgar forward mid range. The whole sound is perfectly balanced.

 

Built by a guy called Phil Routley circa 2001, I don't know who he is.

 

To be Captain Obvious, in the right room (as with any speaker) these would be as good or better than my Focal 1038Be's. They do loud, the do imaging and they do soundstaging, they do the whole frequency range in excellent fashion. If they don't sell, the ports will be bunged up and they will go into storage at Bro's or Bro in laws and I will feel smug that I still own them, haha.

 

One of the best bargains you will see here, very beautiful speakers as well. PM me if interested.
 
Pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest scumbag]

"large" doesn't start to describe the scale of these babies. GLWS.

[Wimbo]

“I’m sick to death of people saying we’ve made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we’ve made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.”

 

 

Dont agree with Angus there. Two totally different singers.Its a shame, but I could never get into Brian Johnson.

[Guest]

these look extremely professional

 

i think you are right though that the d' Appolito bass drivers take some distance to blend, and yes acoustic centre will be on the tweeter.....

[Gremrock]

Very Duntech looking'. Love it.. I struggle enough to lift my ML3's on my own though, these look worse for your back again

[Guest scumbag]

I would have thought the distance issue would be the blending of the midrange with the tweeter. The bass units would be most likely operating in the omnidirectonal frequency range. 

The configuration of the midrange and tweeter drivers has the benefit of reducing off-axis lobing. In my experience this type of configuration when done well provides really locked in imaging too. Think holographic.

Off course you need to think about bass issues with a small room but that's not a factor of the D'Appolito configuration per se. 

Having the 2nd bass unit up high is a good idea - compared to having the bass drivers at the bottom, allows you to move the acoustical center of the MTM to a lower height which you ideally want to be your ear height.

 

Edited June 18, 2017 by scumbag

[Darren69]

Heres Hilary at our last GTG-

 

[Guest]

That's for interesting observations Scumbag

 

i agree side lobbing should be greatly diminished so distance from sidewalls so not important

 

and yes d' Appolito woofers will decrease floor bounce issues

 

woofers separated by such a large distance compared with wavelength though:-

 

this famously was an issue between John Dunlavy and JA in Stereophile

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/dunlavy-audio-labs-sc-iva-loudspeaker-followup-part-2

[Guest scumbag]

Not wanting to get into a debate and side track things here. The Dunlavy design used 1st order filters so there was a lot of overlap between the output of the bass and the next driver up. So even with a crossover of say 150hz (and I think the Dunlavy's where higher than that) there would still be a bit of mid-range energy coming out of those bass units.

Anyway, good luck with the sale. Someone should be very happy with these beasts.

Edited June 18, 2017 by scumbag

[PKay]

That is a lot of speaker for the money. I can see why you wouldn't be too disappointed if they don't sell, you may end up regretting it if they do sell.

[Guest scumbag]

9 minutes ago, Nap250 said:

That is a lot of speaker for the money. I can see why you wouldn't be too disappointed if they don't sell, you may end up regretting it if they do sell.

Keep the speakers and knock out the side of the house. Just a suggestion...............

[Darren69]

I believe in a bigger room they would take it right up to passive speakers that are trendy and asking over 15k.

 

They wouldn't hang with actives in a big room, unless you got some JC1's or Yamaha Hoons Krells.

 

Do the math, chuck in depreciation, bloody bargain. If they don't sell, I will be happy to store, I know it doesn't make sense but it's like having an old motorbike in the shed, even though you don't ride much anymore.

 

One can sleep better at night knowing it's there.

 

Getting a lot of bites but no commitment yet.

 

All good, commitment is scary, I get it.

 

 

[Darren69]

Very sad to report that they have been sold to a long term member.

 

Very happy to report that they have been sold to a long term member.

 

If you know what I mean.

 

Thanks all for the positive comments and looking.

 

Daz