Guys,

don't know if some of you have seen this, but I thought it was pretty freaking interesting!!!! John Janowitz and Mark Seaton have been working for some time to get Nick Barnett's studio done with a pair of AMAZING full range monitors.

Story is, He wanted a very high end monitor, the likes of the Genelec 1037's but without the $25k a piece price tag, and something that would actually fit in the available space. As the system would be all active with full DSP, they contacted Mark Seaton.

So Mark and John came up with a plan for a high end monitor that would allow for monitoring at up to 120dB all the way down to the 10hz range. The system consists of a B&C 8" coaxial driver with 1.4" compression driver, a pair of TD10X's for the midbass, and pair of custom 15" drivers for the woofer section per side. As the room is small, and to keep things simple, all sealed enclosures are used. Power is supplied by a 3 channel SpeakerPower amplifier for the tops and a single channel amplifier for the subwoofer sections.

Here they were cutting the inner baffle layers and the inner plate for the actual mounting of the amplifiers. Also at the far end is a template they used to cutout the oval shaped recess in the front baffle for the solid oak insert. They couldn't just cut this shape on the CNC originally because there was too little material left at the edges of the piece. It had to be trimmed out after the front was attached to the quarter rounds
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1844.jpg
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1845.jpg
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1848.jpg

test fit of the baffle and quarter rounds onto the rest of the cabinet. Looks to fit well. glue it up:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1852.jpg
subwoofer cabinet is together and so is the amplifier section. Here is a pic of the two of them stacked on top of each other as they will sit when mounted in the wall:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1857.jpg

cutout the solid oak accents on the CNC. Using small passes and a downcut spiral bit gives a nice clean edge with no chipping:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1867.jpg
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1870.jpg

he part that gets very tricky is the front baffle on the main speakers. The cabinet mounts to the section of the wall that is angled down by 22 degrees. The 8" coax also has to be mounted so that it is towed in by 13 degrees to be at a proper angle at the listening position. Lots of angles means lots of cutting small pieces without a full 3d drawing up front. First we glued up the two layers of the front baffle:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1876.jpg

Look at the oak insert at the baffle....beautiful touch!
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1878.jpg

some final bits:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1885.jpg

One of the greatest difficulties in the tops was the angles. The wall angles down at 22 degrees from above the amplifier section. The 8" coax also has to be angled in at 13 degrees to be properly aimed at the listening position. Ah yes, angles are so fun. Not only are their angles, but they have to match up to the 3" round over to look right. That essentially creates 2 more angles for them to make on the baffle. To do so with MDF would take a great amount of time stacking and sanding pieces. The ideal situation is to do it with a two part pour foam. This isn't your typical "great stuff" in a can. It's the same foam used in boat hulls and mold making. they used a 5 lb foam. It sands and shapes well and is in general quite durable. It's also quite good for getting rid of any kind of resonance on the baffle board. Here you can see where the foam was poured and carved to get the basic shape we needed:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1886.jpg

some fiberglass to add for strength:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1888.jpg

a little sanding...and it is ready for an application of MarGlass to fill in any large dips and to build up slightly in some places where it was needed. Some more sanding and it is ready for the body filler
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1890.jpg

sand and sand and sand some more. Any smaller holes get another application of body filler mixed up with a different color hardener so they can more easily see what they need to sand.:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1894.jpg

he cabinets were finished with a textured Duratex black and a catalyzed polyurethane on the solid oak inserts. Both are quite durable and long lasting. The Duratex sands easily and is self priming, making finishing the MDF an easy process. Here are some pics of the empty cabinet with the oak inserts before driver installation:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1929.jpg

This first one above is the top left monitor with the oak insert. This was a big pain in the butt to get all the angles correct for the coax to be aimed properly at the listening position. The oak took quite a bit of shaping and skill to be "bent" around the front angles...LOOK AT THAT FINISH!!! amazing:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1930.jpg

The 8" coax fits nicely in it's octagonal hole, aimed nicely at the listening position. The pair of TD10X's compliment nicely with their shiny phase plugs.
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1939.jpg

everything out on the floor as it would be when installed in the wall. Mark brought the TEF with and began working on the crossover design, EQ, etc to get it setup before installation in the room. This is the whole right side on the floor looking from the bottom up. It looks pretty mean from this angle. These are not your typical everyday monitors:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1946.jpg

closeup of the monitors. You can see the angles nicely in this one:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1956.jpg

installation, and Mark Seaton begins his DSP work:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1959.jpg

one side up:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1968.jpg

installation is nearing completion now. Mark hooked up the TEF and began fine tuning the system in the room.... optimization of the system along with measurements:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1970.jpg

Here is a picture of the system fully optimized:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1977.jpg

just one final picture from the listening position, looking up slightly towards the monitors:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/PICT1984.jpg

here are some of the preliminary measurements done by Mark...I'll let him get into the details....Here is what many on the web like to show you, with ~1/3rd octave smoothing. This view is good to see general trends and is a good step back and check of what is going on:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/NB-Monitors_shop-1m.jpg

Here is a look at the same measurement with 1/6th octave smoothing, which is pretty close to our upper frequency hearing acuity:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/NB-Monitor_shop_6th.jpg

and of course, for us BASSHEADS, here is the final EQ FR at listening position:
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/NB-studio-VLF-postEQ.jpg




how much all this cost you ask??? morethanyoucanaffordpal.jpg

Wow ,those are gorgeous ! They need to give Detroit some pointers !!!! Congrats Mark !!!!!:)

Art

The end product is impressive and gorgeous. Marvellous craftsmanship! :cool:

Congratulations!

Very impressive!!

Yummmyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very nice indeed.

They look great. Just a question whats going on starting at 3K? Looks like a comb every1.5K. Seems to be something out of time. Is that a TEF shot of both cabs on at the same time? If so that would explain it.

Love it, Scores a big 10 on the cool factor. Im sure they sound as good as they look.

And to think I can't hammer a nail straight into a piece of wood. I hate you guys!




(kidding of course, it looks awesome!) 10+

INCREDIBLE Mark

absolutely gorgeous

Kudos from California

Nice setup, congratulations.

Very nice!!

Thanks for the write up and photos, very interesting and definitely impressive.

Hi guys,

Thank you for the kudos. :)

It is always nice to have friends and other enthusiasts confirm that our own satisfaction isn't just from the time and effort put in. ;)

Nick Barnett, middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, got back in town after we finsihed the install and was extremely happy with both the look and the sound. He gets pretty heavy into production of mostly hip-hop/rap (but also is into to plenty of other music), and when he played some tracks he previously created, he was hearing things that were lost in the previous setup. Even with the subs set to a balanced level with the rest of the range he was very happy with what it revealed and how it sounded.

Note that John Janowitz and his team at Acoustic Elegance, who's primary business is suppling OEM's and DIYers with unique drivers, did all of the cabinet work and designed the way in which the boxes would fit in the wall. I helped with the front end planning, driver and amp selection, and design concept. John & crew made it happen. I then spent 3 days in Green Bay first integrating the system on its own, and then getting the best result possible once installed in the room and at the listening position. We still have some more, very critical acoustic treatments to add, the ceiling being the most important one. I will make a second visit at that time to make sure we're getting the best the system has to offer. For those not familiar with John Janowitz's past efforts, some of you have heard his driver designs used in favored high end speakers although he can't let on who.

John and I are already brainstorming on a free standing hi-fi version, as well as a more straight forward wall/baffle mounted version of these speakers.

They look great. Just a question whats going on starting at 3K? Looks like a comb every1.5K. Seems to be something out of time. Is that a TEF shot of both cabs on at the same time? If so that would explain it.

Hi speco,

The measurements were all taken with my TEF25 system. The ripple you see up high is not from a secondary speaker, but rather the reality of a coaxial loudspeaker without additional treatments on the front edge of the driver. This is common to find on such drivers, where many have much more dramatic notches in the response. Please keep the vertical scale in perspective. That is 5dB/division on the vertical scale, and the response is mostly within a +/-2.5dB window. This is also fairly common to see in horn loudspeakers. Check the attached measurement. Does that look a little better? :p (meant jokingly)

The reality is that we get some very useful directivity from the horn loading the compression driver. While the measurement in isolation tends to have a little more wiggle to it, in real rooms reality is that the realized response at the listening position is often smoother than that of the ultra smooth responding dome tweeters that spray sound everywhere. :rolleyes: The ripple at the listening position was in fact very similar with one or 2 notches from reflections off the desk and yet-to-be-treated ceiling.

While the response isn't hyper smooth, the coaxial has huge benefits in the on-off axis/polar response, as well as allowing me to achieve the phase response you see in the graph. Note that phase curve is of a 3 way speaker. Many 2 way speakers have a few more phase rotations than that. :cool:

Very clean and beautiful speakers Mark and John. Congrats!

That is very impressive. I have never seen a successful studio monitor. Congratulations on getting the speakers pretty close to flat. I am sure with a few more treatments like you mentioned, the response will level out a tad more.

Understood Mark thanks I see the db division is small.And is 33% 3rd oct smoothing? I not being a TEF guy though have a question. SIM guy. Your phase looks like at 1K to 3K it goes 160 out of phase. Or is that the way TEF shows the wraps? Is that a unwrapped trace?Thanks for the info.

'drooooool' !

Very nice work! How much did they cost? (if you're allowed to post that info) Just curious because you mentioned you didn't want to spend the same kind of money as the big Genelecs.

Very nice work! How much did they cost? (if you're allowed to post that info) Just curious because you mentioned you didn't want to spend the same kind of money as the big Genelecs.

I wouldn't disclose exact fees for custom work a customer/client, but if something very similar to this was to be produced for another, depending on the details and complexity of the install, fit, application and calibration, it would fall in the $20-30k range, with $25-30k more likely. There is a LOT of time and planning that went into these.

Excellent work, Mark- you're well on your way to being a force in this industry! I'm very proud of you, and proud to know you. beautiful.

Dan

I wouldn't disclose exact fees for custom work a customer/client, but if something very similar to this was to be produced for another, depending on the details and complexity of the install, fit, application and calibration, it would fall in the $20-30k range, with $25-30k more likely. There is a LOT of time and planning that went into these.

Thanks Mark, that's what I figured. I must have misunderstood the comment about the Genelecs, or they cost way more than that in an equivalent implementation.

Wow, nice system!
Glad you showed me this thread, Mark!

So the Freq extends down below 10 Hz?
http://www.aespeakers.com/pics/nick-studio/NB-studio-VLF-postEQ.jpg

Wow, I'll never look at my Mackies the same way again. Beautiful.

I have always been impressed with this guys DIY speakers. http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vaslt&1135958151&read&3&4&

That's gorgeous work. And I can well appreciate it! I've built a few speaker enclosures but nothing that's at that level of sculpture or finish. Never had the need to. But I do build guitars, from scratch. Entirely hand-made. It's a hobby that maybe I COULD turn into a living but it'd be tough to make a DECENT living at it.

Now I want to make some new speakers! :)


CJ

Awesome!

Thanks for sharing this! Awesome.

HUGE cool factor! Those are awesome. I would love to hear them.