After experimenting with various combos of crossover values, although the MK I cheapowave using the Pyle PDS221 compression driver sounded OK.. the high end was never really impressing me.
Note: this post continues on from cheapowave MK I postwhich documents building the cabinets etc

After reviewing the Econowave thread on Audiokarma yet again I ordered in a  Selenium D220Ti-8 from Parts Express in the USA. The shipping cost almost as much as the drivers themselves.. but although I could probably find a more than acceptable replacement from the P.Audio drivers from Cannon Online, I decided to go with a combination that already has shown so many good results for others, plus the hard yards on the crossover circuit has already been done by people with way more expertise than myself.

The Selenium drivers arrived, and the immediate impression is that they are bigger then the Pyles.

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These speakers have been a favourite of mine for ages. I got them over a decade ago second hand for $600. Given they are now at least 12 years old and probably more I decided to replace the capacitors in them. As stock they are KSC 50V non polar electrolytics.

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I while back I got some JPW Sonata speakers from EBAY for $67 AUD. They are nice “entry level” English bookshelf speakers of reasonable quality…

Laurie Anderson is sitting on my bed singing to me this evening. Earlier Tom Waits popped in.

Basically, I am gobsmacked by these little sealed boxes. I don’t know if it’s because they are in a small, quiet bedroom, mounted on a solid wall, or because they have an Audio Innovations amplifier powering them. They are sublime and emit this beautiful warmth and richness that makes me not want to leave the room.

I’m not quite as impressed as the above reviewer, but they are very nice little speakers for the size and price, especially for acoustic music.

And the sealed enclosure means they mate very well with a subwoofer.

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Goals:

Learn about making speakers by building some 2 way speakers using some low cost drivers using ideas borrowed from the AudioKarma Econowave project. And make some full sounding floor standing speakers by virtue of big cabinets and large drivers.
Results:

BASS!!

And knowing a hell of a lot more about speakers than I did 6 months ago. Thanks to Col for all the help and hints in getting this off the ground.
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I have had an ART SLA-1 (aka the Unika MT1000) amplifier for nearly two years now.. I got it after Col showed me it was heaps better at driving my Alesis Monitor One speakers than my old faithful Rotel 30 watt amp. This is not that the Rotel was a bad amplifier, it just didn’t have the headroom to drive the relatively low efficiency Alesis speakers, they really do need a 100W power amp to get the best from them.

Here I’ll document some minor tweaks and random info on the ART SLA-1 amplifier for future reference..

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Well recently I made an Alien Dac kit purchased from Glass Jar Audio. This was to free up my Behringer USB sound cards for use in my laptop with MIXXX.

In short: the kit works and sounds amazing!.. Though the purity of it’s signal path (no output op amp to buffer) means it’s a lot quiter than my other sound cards. Interesting that playing my wife one of her favourite tracks she was asking about an instrument (snare drum brush) she hadn’t heard in the mix before.
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