Tritrix corner surrounds finally finished

I *finally* finished my Tritrix corner surround speaker build. I picked up the kit way back when they started selling it as the "Recession Destroyer" (I've now built the Recession Buster and Recession Destroyer kits... don't say I'm not doing my part to help the economy )

Until now I've been using AV123 X-LS as surrounds but because of my room I had them shelf mounted and above head - FAR from optimal. Because of the poor placement option for surrounds I decided to build these in triangular enclosures. This cuts down on the amount of real estate taken up by the speakers and allows me to mount them further away from the listeners and lower - much closer to ear level.

The cabinets were built with scraps left over from previous builds. I had some birch ply left from my main speaker build so I decided to use that for the top/bottom and try to make something that looks nice for a change. I painted the baffles black (Rustoleom textured black) and stained the top/bottom Pecan using Minwax Polycrylic I had left from a different project. They turned out pretty good. The only problem is I put a couple layers of Minwax Polycrylic over the whole thing to protect the paint on the baffles and it did not settle very well at all, if you look at them closely you can see major brushstrokes in the finish. It's not something that stands out though unless you're inspecting them.

I emailed CurtC when I was planning this build to see what I should do with the XO to remove most of the BSC since they will be built right into the corner. He recommended removing the resistor from the tweeter network and replacing the 2.5mH inductor on the woofer network with a 1.3mH inductor. I didn't really want to buy another part and decided to attempt to unwind the 2.5mH inductor to a 1.3mH inductor. I used my drill and a pencil and made quick work out of unwinding the inductor

Since they're surrounds I don't have too much to say about the sound. When I first set them up I turned off the amps for the mains, set the AVR to All Channel Stereo and did some listening - they sounded great and really fill my room nicely for their size (with a sub - crossed at 90hz). I ran Audyssey on them and it came up with a 40hz XO so I at least didn't unwind too much inductor (I overrode this with the 90hz XO of course).

Now comes the empty feeling... Time to find a new project to start. Maybe something for the office

Before:


After:


Closeup of finish (I tried my best to hide the bad stuff but you can still see it a bit ):

I'm certainly not the expert on that stuff but Ezcl's right they're now about 1.5' above ear level. My old surrounds were about 3' above ear level plus on a shelf extended into the room... This put the right/left seating positions about 80' off axis from the surround on their side, plus the shelf jutted out a bit between ear and speaker... not good at all!

I re-listened to my SACD's of Nine Inch Nails Downward Spiral and Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon today and the surround imaging was much much better. Especially in Dark Side of the Moon where there's lots of effects panning from back-front, side-side, etc.

Yeah that's been bugging me lately. That was kind of a quick - just get them up so I can listen to them - type of moment. I'm thinking of doing a french cleat on them so the mounting is transparent.


The problem with mounting them higher is vertical off-axis response. Because of how my room is laid out the surrounds have to be right on top of the seats (just one of those compromises of using the living room as a HT). If I mount them higher the angle to the listeners is too extreme and they end up in a null around how XO. True I could mount them properly and point them but still because of the room I can realistically only point them properly for 1-2 of the seats. Mounting them lower allows me to better cover all of the seats without any of them being too off-axis. The seat most off-axis (and therefore the one with the largest dip in response) is the one closest to the speaker which helps so it isn't blasting in the ear too bad (or at least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it ).