Speakers now are Thiel CS 2_2 and Maggie LRS, which I am sure will be displaced by the Helios. Historically, up until a month ago, I had home-built monsters that I designed along with some help from Madisound for the crossover. Dynaudio soft dome and (2) 17cm mids per side, (1) Focal 12" woofer. Absolutely awesome sound, only downside is approx 6 cubic feet measured to outside of cabinet, truncated pyramid shape. Taking a word from Jeff Foxworthy, I USED TO COULD lift them a lot easier than I can now! Memories of these is what the Helios has to compete with! If I can get them built correctly, I think they will be up to the task, at least they will check several of the boxes. Thank you once again.
HELIOS Speaker Kit
Has anyone heard the Helios speakers? by Jeff Bagby and Javad Shadzi? if so can you talk about your impressions? I am sure it is a great speaker, but i want to make sure that midrange, vocals would not be a weak point - because the speaker has a huge 9.5 inch woofer. Second question - anybody heard a Beryllium tweeter before? I want to make sure these are not too harsh? Thank you for your comments...
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@rop45, the Helios drivers are very good ones but even with a passive radiator that little woofer is never going to be a match for a 12" Focal driver. What I would do is build the speaker without the passive radiator (which will take redesigning the box) and cross over to subwoofers at about 100 Hz. |
I agree with you, but I don't have to match the bass output of the old ones. if the Helios is better, or as good as my originals in 3 or 4 important categories, falls a bit short in the bass, but is still impressive for it's size, I will consider that a total success. I just returned some REL subwoofers that sounded really great. I am enjoying the open floor space. :) |
@rop45 , it is not just bass! Reproducing bass requires a woofer to take long excursions. The smaller the woofer to longer the excursion. The Helios is a two way speaker with a woofer that is running higher and a tweeter running lower to get to the single cross over point. The woofer is really a mid woofer. The long Bass excursions cause Doppler distortion of everything else the woofer is reproducing. If you do not know what Doppler distortion is google it. Transferring the lowest frequencies to another driver gets rid of the distortion entirely and increases the headroom of the system. For full range and two way speakers the improvement is quite dramatic. Less so for 3 way systems. Have fun building them and good luck with the project. |
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