High efficiency speakers, low efficiency speakers

Thank you!

Well, if you’re looking at building something like this, Zu is using some eminence drivers, based off of their beta10CX woofer. Almost 20 years ago, I used to work for a kit speaker and subwoofer design company in Seattle called Adire Audio and we made a kit with the Beta10CX and Eminence APT-50 tweeter that is documented here and can be made for a couple hundred dollars each.

A newer/slightly better version of this is available at diysoundgroup.com as the Volt-10.

However, I don’t generally recommend these coaxes as there is a large mismatch in the horn flare between the pole piece and the cone and this causes a lot of diffraction and response errors. The B&C coaxes are certainly better (and a lot more expensive) but I think a separate horn/waveguide is the way to go for more hifi applications unless you put a ton of work into optimizing things (like KEF has for 30 years).

As a company, if we offered something like this, it would certainly have to be at a higher price point than a kit, as we’d need to offer higher performance and you’re paying for the enclosure/furniture aspect of things and enough profit to support it and keep the lights on. Still, I think that more cost effective products are exciting engineering challenges, as engineering at it’s heart is doing the most with the least.

1 Like