Post by Boomzilla on Jul 14, 2013 15:34:58 GMT -5
I bought these 10" two-ways with piezo tweeters from a yard sale for $20 the pair. They have a socket in the bottom for a pro-speaker type post-stand. The inputs are for 1/4" phone plug (like on an electric guitar) or for bare wires via spring clips. The boxes are tapered and covered with grey all-weather carpet. The boxes are also very light and have metal corner-protectors. The speakers are rated for 75 continuous watts, but I've read tales on the internet of live-sound applications where the speakers tolerated significantly more power without failure.
The first thing I did, just for giggles, was pull my Klipsch Cornwalls out of my system and put these atop 28" stands for a quick listen (mostly to make sure they both worked prior to rolling them on Craigslist for a profit). Initial impressions:
These things IMAGE! It's probably because the woofers pretty much run full-range with the tweeters coming in just for high end. I doubt that there's a crossover in these at all. Despite the economy engineering, the bass was firm & tight, the midrange was present without distortion, and the treble, well I'll get to that in a minute. By toeing the speakers away from the listening position, I could create some really 3-D images in the listening room. The sound stage was wide (beyond the outsides of the speakers) and deep with no need to stay perfectly centered.
The bass is specified by Radio Shack as -2 dB at 50 Hz. That's about the way it sounded. What surprised me was how clean the bass was. This is a sealed-box speaker with no port, and the 10" woofer is apparently a GREAT match. I've read online that the Shack buys these from a manufacturer who also sells the same box to more "upscale" companies who charge much more for it. I couldn't verify that claim, but I can say that drums, bass guitars, and acoustic bass just sounded "right" with these speakers.
The midrange is also specified by Radio Shack as plus or minus 2 decibels. I rather doubt the veracity of this spec, because the upper midrange apparently has an octave or so in common with the tweeter, and there's where the problem is. There is a VERY bright peak in the lower treble (I'm assuming at a frequency where the woofer still has some output and the tweeter is starting to kick in with a vengeance). I'm guessing that the peak is about 4 to 6 kilohertz, but I could be wrong. Another problem in this range is that there's a bit of raggedness in the sound that becomes obvious on sustained tones particularly. It only occurs on occasional tones, but it is grating when it occurs. For sound-reinforcement use, this probably wouldn't be an issue, but for home audio, it's a bit of a deal breaker.
Beyond the lower treble peak, the piezo tweeters do just fine. The treble seems extended & airy. Piezo tweeters have a poor reputation for ringing and harshness, but these, for whatever reason, seem to avoid noticeable nasties.
So what are these good for? I plan to keep them and buy a pair of stands for public address use. I occasionally have to present talks where the room is just too large to use without sound reinforcement. An Emotiva Mini-X and these with a cheap front-end mixer give me the ability to deal with just about any venue. I also plan to use the speakers as surround speakers once my XMC-1 arrives. Since I have a nice DBX 1/3 octave equalizer on hand, I think that I can tame the lower treble peak and make these suffice for rear-channel-effects duties. With my nice B&W subwoofer taking the high-current bass demands off of the surround channels, the Mini-X won't be overworked.
Inexpensive, dual-purpose, and effective, these are my kind of speakers!
Boomzilla
