Elvis Ripley

A6-6T6 Tower

In the last part of 2007 I had been looking for some speakers and a subwoofer. It was pretty tough to find something that was just the right balance of cost and sound quality. Most companies after you go above the cheapest speakers try to balance cost, sound quality and high quality wood cabinets. It doesn't really help for me. I just want it big and cheap. Here is an example of some of the speakers I was considering and maybe also these. Both of those are fine examples of speakers but still not as much performance as I would like and a little nicer looking than I would care to have.

Spiky Feet

Subwoofers are another search I have been on for a long time. In the last couple of years there has been a big growth in a more manufacturer direct model for subwoofer as well as more subwoofer only dealers instead of speaker makers who also make a subwoofer. For subwoofers I looked at Hsu Research along with Aperion and AV123 from the above speaker examples. My favorite was from SVS mainly because I wanted to have a cylindrical subwoofer. How sweet would that be? But SVS also makes good box subwoofers too.

In what I thought was the end I had decided on getting the SVS SBS-01 5.1 speaker system with that nice box sub above. It is a very nice setup, the sub is great but the speakers are a little expensive for being a little small and they are also not very efficient. Around that time, this is probably November, I found an article about some subs made for a theater. I wondered how much that would cost and saw that on the company's site you could figure it out and it wasn't very much for some car sized subwoofers. That lead me to their home subwoofers. I read reviews for about a month and decided they were where it is at for price performance. Also most people aren't happy with the way they look so it was perfect.

I ordered a subwoofer, which as far as I could find reviewed higher than most of the other subs I was checking out. That then led to a couple tower speakers and a center, you get a discount if you get a package. It was all very reasonably priced but the subwoofer is made on order and they are backed up quite a bit. Last Thursday it had been 10 weeks and the towers showed up after 8 weeks. That is a pretty long time. The subwoofer is expected to ship tomorrow so it will arrive this Thursday or Friday, right at 11 weeks from order. Yowser.

In terms of a review, these speakers sound really amazing. The clarity and range of the speakers I ended up getting are really fantastic. The towers and center go lower than I would have expected for the size of each one. They are really super and I am glad I have them. I will really go into everything when the subwoofer shows up.

Elemental Designs A6 6T6 Tower Set

If you have been in my kitchen in the past quarter of a year you have probably seen the wires and electrical components spread out on my kitchen table. Last night I decided to finish it a it took about 4 more hours of very slow soldering to finish a very fantastic amp. It is sort of an old style DIY HiFi. It uses a new type of amplifier and is super clean sounding with very high efficiency meaning small size and a low amount of heat. It also means it has loads of tiny pins to solder that are way too close to each other. I am very pleased with it and plan on building a nice box so I can take it off the towel. Also, I plan on making a much more powerful amp or maybe even a multi channel one. This entry is a little short, I think I am too excited. I will have to wait another day and fill this out.

Update: So now that I have spent some time with the amp, in its still bare board form. I am still very pleased with the easy sound of the amp. I don't have any speakers with an efficiency high enough to really explore high end hifi like a nice pair of La Scala II's. I will probably just build some simple Voight Pipes in my spare time and use those for my office speakers. That would be a weird adventure.