Raven and I were busy on Black Friday. He helped me build a new pair of experimental baffles.
We also had a quick listening session to hear his modded ZMA. It really sounded outstanding and perhaps the best I have heard his system/room sound (without room treatments BTW – he is remodeling). Big open sound. Room filling. Some impressive bass too but that may have been the Direct Stream update.
Anyway, I had three things I was trying to accomplish with the new baffles:
1. Bring the AMT down closer to ear level (it was kind of tacked on the top of my old baffles). Randy had advised me that these drivers don’t have the best vertical dispersion.
2. Open up the soundstage. I felt that the large baffles were blocking information from getting back to me at the listening position. Also, this blocking was keeping some instruments on certain songs glued to the speaker and ruining the illusion.
3. Make some baffles out of Baltic birch. I have heard a couple of pairs of speakers made from baltic and they sounded faster to me. I like the tone of the ply versus MDF.
The whole idea of the stepped baffle shape is to have as little baffle as possible for each driver in order to allows as much sound to come around the baffles. This shape is probably not everyone's cup of tea, but the proof is in how they sound.
I took the wood to Raven’s place for precision cutting. As usual, his big saw cut through it like butta. We did have to do some work with the cross-cutting against the grain using a band saw and even a jig saw.
We probably wouldn’t have needed to use the latter two saws if we’d cut against the grain first. Raven saw how it could be dangerous to cut against the grain after we had already done the with the grain. Nobody wants a chunk of wood in the face. Anyway, it was no big deal as Raven has a steady hand and I had to do very little sanding afterwards to true everything up.
I cut the driver holes back at home and glued it up and attached the stand hardware.
I listened last night and was pretty impressed. A little more detail coming through via better on axis with the AMT but the big gain was on the openness of the soundstage. A lot was being blocked by the big baffles. The Baltic seems a little more lively as well. Some help with the instruments glued to the speaker phenomenon.
Some pics: