Speaker build - CNO4

They’re alright I spose…

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Thanks for taking the time to take us your journey with great photos. Such an enjoyable thread for many of us and your hard work has been rewarded with great music.

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Followed your process fron start to finish Mark, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m a cabinet maker and a Hifi enthusiast so it ticked all my boxes, thank you for sharing, and I was very impressed with the design/visual impact of the enclosures as well as your craftsmanship.

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In my roughly eighteen years on this forum, that is the finest system picture and surrounding environment that I have seen, bar none. Excellent visual and equipment taste. Your skills and taste are exceptional IMO. Bravo ! Enjoy !

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Blimey ! They look twice the size I thought they were during the build !!! :grinning:

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Yeah thay are pretty large. The photos are deceiving. Finished speakers are somewhere around 75 kg. 1100 tall and at the base are 400 wide and 540 deep. It became quite a pain to move them around in the later stages. I am glad they have adjustable bass as they are staying put!

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Thanks. That’s very flattering.

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Just read your page on there, great story about the Titan 707s :slightly_smiling_face:

The Illumina 66 is really nice looking speaker as well, I like the way you’ve done the front panel on yours. Great build!

Cheers,
Mark

Yes when you start comparing component quality of commercial speakers vs DIY you realise the markup. I read somewhere that a speaker needs to be priced at 4 or 5 times the cost of components to make a viable business. After building a pair you understand why.
The scan Speak Illuminator line of drivers like in the Illumina 66 are used in top of the line Wilson Audio speakers and the beolab 90. They were Scan Speak top level driver until the Ellipticor drivers were released.

My friend’s dad owned an audio store in the 70s to 80s - it was more consumer hifi audio (JBL, Pioneer, Technics, Akai, Sanyo, Nikko, etc.) but the speaker markup was far and away the highest wholesale to retail. Nothing else came close.

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Yeah I can imagine. Cable must be up there too though.

I think he just sold “speaker wire” - and probably some Monster Cable products.

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Steve, I’ve just read your post on Troel’s site - very interesting indeed when trying out the NAP300 with the Kudos 707!

The build looks superb!

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Thanks YetiZone that is very kind of you to say so. I spent at a lot of time researching materials, constrained layer dampening, methods of construction etc before taking the plunge and launching into the making of them despite having made two sets of loudspeakers prior to the Illumina 66. They had more WAF than my previous ones and are more enjoyable to listen to although that is not to slate the DB6s which gave me many years of enjoyment over my previous pair.

As has been said many times on this forum as you go up the ladder and spend more and more the refinement and extra detail you gain peters out quite quickly. The law of diminishing returns. I felt that with the Illumina66 loudspeakers they punch above their weight and are quite affordable. In my system and surroundings I feel completely saisfied with the sound that they produce. Of course there are ‘better’ loudspeakers out there but I genuinely have no burning ambition to search for them. I have different priorities now.

If you decide to take the plunge and make a pair you will find Troels very helpful. If I can help in any way please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Cheers, Steve

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Mark84

Back in the aughts, there was another speaker build thread here by a New Zealander named James. This is a picture of his DIY design using solid native Rimu NZ hardwood, built by James for me, as I lacked any sympathetic skills, Scanspeak Revelator mid/woofer and Morel tweeter in sealed box. Shipped by post from NZ to the US Pacific NW and played extended hours everyday since received in June 2009.

I still look at your System Pic photo near daily. And I own a far more meager set DIY design that brings me similar joy everyday as the end user.

Thanks again for sharing this thread.

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Hi Steve,

Yes, I enjoyed looking through your build, the level of craftsmanship is excellent and the finished speakers look tremendous. Great to read that Troels is helpful too. I was slightly concerned about contacting him after reading that he doesn’t recommend specific models for customers. This is where I’m hesitant about taking the plunge.

My listening (work) room is (3.7x3.7m) and compromised in terms of where I can place the speakers - close to the front wall and one corner bound. I often listen off axis, remedied to a point by the Nait balance control. All in all, not ideal for rear ports and stereo imaging!

I do have competent-ish DIY abilities (better at finishing), but Troel’s designs look a little daunting, the woodworking and crossover soldering side of things could be a level above my current experience, and I do not possess a router as yet, so there will be a lot of ‘first steps’ if I dive down the rabbit hole.

How did you arrive at the choice of the Illumina 66? I keep looking at the sheer number of models and come away confused, but the one speaker I do keep returning to is the ScanSpeak Bookshelf-3WC, which could work in my environment (picture). I may drop Troels a line to see what he says.

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Hi YetiZone

Lovely set up. I have to do my painting on the dining room table but I do have an office upstairs for my books and computer though.

I based my decision on the fact prior to the DB6 Loudspeaker that I built I had bookshelf speakers. Celestian Hadleigh’s and a pair of Dave Berriman’s bookshelf speakers. I knew that I wanted floorstanders but not necessarily with massive booming bass. Having said that these Illumina speakers will make your ribcage pulsate if you crank the volume up too much.

My late wife stipulated that they should not be any bigger than the current ones that I had at the time, the DB6s. I managed to keep the height just below the original speakers by about 10mm or so but the dimensions front to back were greater. I looked through all of Troels designs and whitled possible contenders down to three or four. A comment that Troels made about them tipped me towards settling on them was

“I consider the Illumina 66 a small speaker and if it must be small and we at the same time want decent deep bass we sacrifice efficiency and can you live with this, the Illumina 66 may be an option for you to bring the illusion of a live event into your living room. 87 dB is really not that bad, most “6+1” speakers will make 85 dB.
I obviously do not have all the 2-way floorstanders I’ve made over time for comparison, but I do not recall any of them being able to do what this one can do.”

Troels cannt advise you on what you should make because your ears are different to his! The music that you listen to and the electronics and the dimensions of your respective rooms will also be different.

Before I found Troels website I had lurked on a few other audio/loudspeaker sites and I found there was a lot 'the big I am/bullshit/ego/pointscoring attitudes displayed by posters and seperating the wheat from the chaff was difficult. Troels is very matter of fact.

Hope that this helps.

Cheers, Steve

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Many thanks Steve. Very helpful in terms of how you arrived at your final choice of speaker kit. OK, I’ll do a lot more reading on Troel’s site and see if anything really connects with what I’m after. I too fancy trying floor standers in this space, but I may have to consider a rejig before I go further, just to liberate the RHS speaker from the corner of doom! Alternatively, I do keep referring to Larsen speakers, as they are supposedly designed for boundary and corner placements. Now if Troels could design something like that?

Yes, I am very lucky having a dedicated work room (esp with good light), but it is starting to get a little full so I do need to look at a storage revamp - 3.6m square is quite a tight space!

Apologies for the thread diversion @Mark84 .

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@Mark84 , you could have choosed the Audio Note kit 3 diy speakers too?
With 98 db, they can be run easily by the Atom.

Picture from the Audio note site.

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Look forward to your build sequence pictures😉

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