I’m rating this complete kit with 4 stars only because the cabinets are great and it has a potential when it comes to the sound of the finished speakers. In actuality, the suggested crossover is a joke and the sound is pretty mediocre for the price, so I would rate them 3 stars if I hadn’t come up with another crossover design.
There are plenty of reviews of these speakers on the net and some people are quite happy with the sound of them. Others appear to have better sense for the main issue, namely the overly aggressive top end, so adjectives like “bright” and “hot” are sometimes used to describe the treble. As for the poor bass, some people are mentioning, it’s a tricky thing. It depends on the room where they are placed in, the position in this room and our taste. I think we have to calibrate our expectations about small drivers and their performance in the lower frequency range. The drivers used in these speakers are HiVi D6.8-IIB which are supposed to be identical to D6.8B, but that’s the thing - it’s not clear and we have to rely on the information we have about the latter. Anyhow, both of them are identical in size which is officially 6” (sometimes even presented as 6,5”), but in reality they are 5,5” - yes, I’m talking about the usual offensive marketing approach of the manufactures. My point is that we cannot expect very deep bass from such a small driver - it’s all about physics and the limitations of the Mother Nature. In fact, given the real size of them, I think they are doing quite well in the bass department. Another thing about these drivers is their relatively low sensitivity. So when I said that the crossover is a joke, I mean mostly the 1,5 mH coil used in the low-pass filter which is 1,1 ohms and this is unacceptable for a good design, especially when we are dealing with not very sensitive drivers.
In order to cope with the tilted frequency response of the tweeter, I used an impedance compensation network and also a broad notch filter aimed at the resonant frequency of 1 kHz. I changed the crossover frequency as well, so now I have very different crossover from what it was originally. I’ll try to document the modification and to post in the diyAudio forum in foreseeable future, so keep an eye if you’re interested...
By Allex on 6 February 2021
They're a good speaker with good drivers. BUT, there seems to be a bit of an issue with the balance between tweet and sub as its a bit bright. They do work well for female vocals, but they're not what I'd expect at this price point. I'd prefer a few other speakers over them and am rather disappointed in them. I was hoping they would mellow out with the covers, but its not enough to dampen the highs.
Also the base is a bit missing and they just don't really seem to thump much.
Overall, I expected more. And I'm not really happy with them. I wish they were better, and would return them if I could.
Overall they're priced a bit high for what you get. If I had paid less, I would be happy but many other choices exist that would push these farther.
I haven't tried them with my Tube Amp yet, and we'll have to see if that can mellow it out a bit.
Hopefully the high valued Euro will drop the price down.
They're very easy to assemble. All parts were included. They're missing banana clips to attach the speakers to the wire and so you got to weld on the speakers.
The instructions were not the best.
I may try to change the crossover frequency.
By Michael P. on 30 December 2020
