Like everything over the last few years, the effects of COVID 19, general inflation, along with the rising costs of raw materials and shipping; most everything gone up substantially over time. For some kits, the total cost has gone up by 25-50% or more than when a given video originally released.

The older the video is, the more drastic the change in price will be. Some of our oldest videos are from 2019.

We’ve had to adjust our prices a few times the last few years just to keep up with the changing market prices for raw materials, shipping along with all of the parts for our kits and upgrades, especially capacitors & coils.

No.

We do not sell the schematics on their own. We supply the parts to get you the best performance for your money, and some parts you may be interested in using may be more of a lateral movement than an upgrade. There may be some cases where you would be getting more performance, but in most cases they are just “different” rather than better.

If you need to save on international shipping costs, we can remove the No-Rez from most kits. upon request to help bring down the shipping costs, VAT or duty.

The only exception is if you send us a crossover board another manufactuer to map out and give you a schematic. But when it comes to our kits and upgrades, we do not sell the schematics alone.

In 99.99 % of cases the answer is simply “No.”
There are often many differences between models that our kits will not account for with different models, even within the same brand or product line. Even small differences in cabinet design, driver materials, size and driver placement will have an affect the speaker’s performance, and it will need a kit specific to that model in order to work as intended.

Unless the only difference between a “V1” and “V2” of a given speaker is an internal change to the crossover,  then the kit will not be compatible.

A kit developed for a 2-way bookshelf speaker will not be compatible with a 3-way tower speaker from the same line and vice versa.

There are a few exceptions, but they are very rare. (Ex: Klipsch RP 160M and RP 600M)

In-Wall/ceiling speaker will have a very different crossover to an equivalent tower model, even if the drivers & layout are identical, and cannot be used interchangably.

Unfortunately not.

Currently, the only place to buy our kits, drivers or speakers is going to be from us directly via our website, phone, email, or here in person.

Yes, we do ship all over the world! If you need assistance with shipping quotes, please make sure you provide all the items you would like to purchase and the full shipping address! We cannot give a shipping quote without this information. Thank you! 

No. Any local VAT, duty, taxes or Customs fees are NOT INCLUDED in the cost for international orders.
You will need to factor this in to the cost of any product you wish to purchase.

Check out our DIY upgrades page here: Speaker Upgrades

Don’t see the model you own? Chances are, we’ve not yet looked at it yet, and you are welcome to send one in, given that all drivers are in good working order, and you give us a heads up.

There are a few models we’ve looked at and upgraded in the past, which we haven’t added to the site. However, not all of the models we’ve looked at were able to be upgraded either due to cost, size, driver issues, or even issues disassembling the speakers without risking damage.

Feel free to ask about your model if you don’t see it on the site.

Sure! However, the ONLY WAY we can design a crossover for your custom speaker is to send us one fully-assembled speaker, with the drivers installed into the cabinet.

That way we can see the exact meaurements of your drivers in the cabinet.

Be aware it’s possible that additional changes may need to be made to your cabinet and/or drivers. This is especially true if the drivers are too far apart, have too many issues, or if the drivers can’t reach one another.

Also be aware that any changes to the drivers, their position spacing, or the cabinet’s design will likely require further changes to the crossover to acount for differences in acoustic output.

Unlike commercial speaker upgrades, It is not a free service, as your speaker is a one-off design. Feel free to reach out to us about the cost of the design service.

Simply put, no.

We do not use crossover calulators as they do not take into acount several factors that will have a big impact on the crossover design. Here are a few things that calulations alone cannot account for.

Baffle-step loss
Edge Diffraction
Time/phase alignment
Driver spacing
Driver output

All of those factors play a part in the design process of a speaker. Without being able to know and account for all of those factors, designing a proper crossover with a calulator is a shot in the dark, at best.

A lot of the same issues can arrise when using crossover design software like X-Sim. Unless you properly measure the drivers with a calibrated microphone, and have a means to accurately time-align the response of the drivers, it’s very likely that your crossovers will not be properly in phase with one another when you measure the actual speaker with the designed crossover installed.

First thing we do when a speaker gets sent to us is to test the stock performance of the speaker; measuing it’s on-axis and off-axis responses, along with spectral decay and impedance. This tells us a lot about the good and bad of a given speaker, crossover implimentation, and if there are issues with the drivers themselves, or with the ports/cabinet design. From there, we will send the measurements to the customer and let them know our thoughs on the speaker and seeing what we believe can do with it based on what we’re seeing.

Some speakers never make it past this point, either due to the number/severty of issues that cannot be addressed by the crossover. (e.g. driver ringing,edge diffraction etc) Sometimes the issues may be the speaker in question is simply too small, and in other cases it will be too difficult to disassemble the speaker without risking damage to the drivers, cabinet, or trim.  In some cases the customer simply decides not to pursue an upgrade.

Follwing the cusomter’s apporval, we will then disassemble the speaker and run wires directly from the drivers out the port or back panel of the speaker. This allows us to measure the raw performance of the drivers. which lets us know the actual capabilities of each driver and where we should naturally be able to cross each driver.

From there, we begin externally designing the new crossover by using components connected together by alligator clips, & and taking new on-axis measurements with each change, until we finally get to a desired, smooth response. Next will be to quickly check the vertical or horizontal axis to asses any issues that may arrise with the phase relation of the drivers in the off-axis, as well as to check for issues with edge diffraction, ringing, etc.
We will then make any further adjustments needed to account for the above issues.
Lastly, we will also check the impedance to see if the impedance is properly balanced or and doesnt have any dips that could cause issues with amplifiers.

When we are happy with the on-axis, impedance and rough off-axis results, we will run our full suite of measure with the new crossover. After printing off paper copies of the measurements, we then draw out the schematic and then figure out the amount of wire and/or NoRez necessary for the speaker, and calulate the total cost for the kit.

Finally, will then notify the customer and send them the new results, along with the cost of the kit. (calculating shipping costs later after everthing is boxed.)

The last few steps are to make a digital drawing of the schematic & parts list, possibly shoot a video, and then get the product page set up on the website.

There are a few reasons for this:

1. We don’t own an anechoic chamber, so we use a gated time window of 4 milliseconds. This removes any & all room reflections from the measurement, giving us an anechoic measurement. However, the primary limitation is that it is only accurate to 200Hz. To accurately measure below 200Hz, you will need to take near-field measurements. Many Anechoic chambers are also limited to 80-100Hz.
2. In-Room measuremensts are largely unreliable. and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Your room size/shape, your listening position along the speaker placement within your room will be a big influence on the sound of your speakers, especially below 200Hz, where room modes will dominate the response, creating several dips & peaks. A measurement from the listening position might look very different from even 2-3 feet over. Speaker placement near a the front or side walls in a small room will also cause issues that wont show up in larger rooms with the speakers 3+ feet away from the front/side walls.
   Room treatment is the only real means to remedy those kinds of issues.
3. For our upgrade kits, the bass response is already determined by the manufacturer. Tuning for the bass of a speaker is determined via the driver, box size and the ports used when the manufacturer designed the speaker. We cannot change any of that without changing either the driver, the box or the ports. If there are issues, they were also present in the original speaker, or a room issue. Plus as frequencies get lower, the parts needed to make those adjustments only get larger and more expensive… so there’s no real means to fix them other than building a new box and using a different port, or changing drivers and building new boxes for those new drivers, but at that point, just get a different speaker…
4. For our own kits, we use the T/S parameters of the woofer(s) to calculate the necessary box volume and/or port dimensions needed for the desired tuning frequency. These calculations have been standard practice for determining the box size for a long time, ad the effects of an over/undersized boxes are already known. We tune the bass of our kits to be pulled away from the walls.

Because it doesnt really mean much.

The reality is, you’re much more likely to kill a speaker by over-driving (clipping) an low-powered amplifier than by cranking a 2000W ampifier.
With a high-wattage amp, you will reach your ears’ “threshold of pain” (~115+dB) long before the speakers give out.

Generally, we recommend a minimum of 8-10W, but you also need to consider how loud you want to listen, the size of your room, and the effeciency of your speakers. The larger the room, and the lower the effeciency, the more power you will need.

For reference, here’s the minimum wattages we recommend for 87-90dB effecient speakers in some basic room sizes:

Desktop/nearfield: 3-10+W
10’x12′ (Bedroom) : 8-10+W
15’x20′ : 10-50+W
20’x30′ :  50-100+W
Large/Open floor: 75+W

In general, you’re always better off with more power than not enough.

Here’s the reality, all of the speakers we get sent are from customers who aren’t happy with the stock sound of their speaker. Based on a lot our testing, we can’t blame them either, many of the speakers we get in have several issues that should have been addressed during the early design/prototype phase, cheap components aside.

That said, absolutely, there are definitely some manufacturers who stand out. Spatial Audio Labs, Tyler Acoustics, Polk, ATC and Buchardt often produce quality products that are definitely worth a look and a listen.

When we find speakers with good bones, we definitely try to mention as much.

We’ve had a fair number of speakers sent in that were full of issues; stored energy, breakup, ringing, edge diffraction, phase issues, comb filtering, port chuffing, etc. We’ve even had speakers that had fundamental design flaws. You name it, we’ve seen it all from both cheap and high-end speakers over the years.

There are often things we can do to improve some of those speakers and fix some of their issues, but how many parts is it going to take to fix them, and does it make sense? Especially for a really cheap or really small speaker full of issues.

Sometimes it’s just not worth the customer’s time and cost to fix a speaker with so many issues. Especially when you’re getting into the price levels where you can just build one of our kits, which don’t have any of those issues to begin with and will easily outperform the bad speaker even after it’s been “fixed.”

We don’t know, we’re not psychic, so here is the deal, It’s like asking your mechanic how much it will cost to fix your car, but your car is back at home. He won’t know what’s wrong with it until its in the shop and he’s had time to look it over.

It’s the same with upgrading speakers.

In order for us to tell you anything about your speakers, we need one of them here. That means, you must ship one of them to us. 

If you want a rough estimate, look at the cost of upgrades for similar size or brand models. The bigger the speaker is, and more drivers (or issues) it has, it will cost more. A 3-way tower with 5 drivers will obviously cost more than a small 2-way bookshelf.

Plus you will need to factor in the shipping cost of the speaker to us and back to you, which also depends on the size/weight of the speaker. (The bigger it is, make sure it is well packed to avoid any damage in shipping.)

Unfortunately not. We simply dont have the necessary space to build such a large rig to test those kinds of speakers.

In-wall speakers requires a test bench that mimics the environment in which they are intended to be used, as the wall/ceiling is now just as much a part of the speaker as a box is for a traditional tower or bookshelf. They would measure very differently if they weren’t mounted into a wall, and trying to design a crossover in an open-air environment will only lead to poor results once it is finally mounted into the wall.

Such a test bench will need to be quite large, but also modular to accomodate for the wide varietly of different sizes and shapes that in-wall/ceiling speakers are made into.

While we’re always thinking about ideas for new speaker kits, we don’t currently have any specific plans for another line-source speaker kit at this time.

Line-source speakers are very expensive to develop due to the number of drivers even 1 speaker requires, and may even require the development of custom drivers, further increasing development costs.

We’ve also got other big projects in the pipeline, but at some point in the future, we may revisit this speaker design.

What about the Line-Force speaker seen in some of your older videos? 

When BG was bought out by Christie Digital, all of their drivers became unavailable to the OEM and retail markets. Any remaining drivers still on the market rapidly became either much more expensive or simply unavailable, so that project was ended with only a few units ever built.

We’ve looked at some alternative drivers and even having custom versions of the Neo 10 made, to match our own GR Neo3 tweeters, but none of the prototypes or alternatives we have tested met our needs, especially since the PDR technology still under patent.

Radian’s new LM10 shows a lot of promise, but we don’t currently have any plans to design a new model around them at this time, unless someone is willing to pay us for the time and development costs of a new speaker.

Unfortunately, we  do not make them.
However, we can get you the necessary information needed to make them.

There are 3 things we will need to know when helping you make a high-pass filter:

• Input impedance of your power amp (typically between 10,000-100,000 ohm)
• Desired -3dB roll-off point (Ex: 40Hz, 70Hz)
• RCA or XLR

This will allow us to calculate the capacitor value needed for your desired roll off.
The values are quite small, and we always recommend getting the best quality capacitor you can as your entire signal is passing through this capacitor. We typically recommend copper-foil caps like Miflex KPCU03 or KFPM or from other notable brands like Deulund, Jupiter, V-Cap, etc depending on the sound you are shooting for.

Note:

If you change amplifiers, the capacitors will need to change as well.
The capacitor value will need to be adjusted according to the input impedance of the new amplifier.

High-pass filters cannot be used with integrated amplifiers. (Unless they are connected to a separate preamp or power amplifier(s))

AV-Receivers typically have a high-pass filter already built into them by setting the speaker size to “small.” Some my also offer edjustable roll off points. recommended range is 70-80Hz for bookshelf speakers, and 40-60Hz for large tower speakers.

For more information on high-pass filters, check out our page >>here<<

You may be right! But hold your horses…

There are may factors and variables that exist in a person’s setup. ALL of those factors play a part to determine what, when or if you’re going to be able to hear differences in your system.

Your speakers, source, gear, placement, room size/shape, room treatment, among many other factors all play a roll. Even the type and the quality of the music you listen to plays a big factor.

Lets say you’re using an old receiver with some cheap or vintage speakers. The speakers are pushed against the walls in a large room with only basic home furnishings, with mostly bare walls & floor, and you listen almost exclusively to 70s rock and 80’s hair bands, it’s not likely that you’re going to hear much difference from better cables, regardless of spending $10, $100 or even $1000.
Such a setup isn’t bringing much to the table beyond room-filling sound. With so many bottlenecks, a lot of performance is being left on the table.

On the other hand, if you have some decent quality gear, using a decent integrated amp, or using some decent separate DAC, Pre and/or amp(s), some good quality speakers that are pulled away from the walls, which are in a lightly to moderately-treated room, and you listen to a wide variety of well-produced music, then you will have a much better chance to notice even moderate to small differences in cables, gear, etc. As such, this system has fewer bottlenecks, allowing it to bring a lot more performance to the table, especially in terms of clarity, sounstage separation and layering. Even relatively small changes will be more apparent.

That said, “more expensive” doesn’t always mean better sound quality & vice versa.

Another factor is the construction of the cables themselves. While you might get a nice boost in output going from 22 gauge lamp cord to 16 gauge lamp cord, the difference in sound between 16 gauge and 12 gauge zip cord will be quite minor, as the only difference between them is the effective gauge of the wire being used.

A cable made with multiple wires braided together or cables using a unique construction, (e.g. solid core vs stranded, shielding, twisted pairs/tri/quad, foil, specialty dielectrics, etc) are all going to be bringing different things to the table, as those differences in construction and materials will have an effect on the LCR (inductance, capacitance and resistance) values of one cable over another, and each unique variety of cable will then have a different effect on the signals that are passing through them.

Where you use high-quality cables in your system makes a difference too. You will often get bigger changes by upgrading the cables on/between source gear, like a DAC or Phono stage, than you will on power amps at the end of your chain. Essentially the cleaner the signal is kept from the source, the cleaner it will be after it’s amplified.

All of those little factors end up playing a big roll in your ability to hear the differences that good quality cables bring to the table.

We’ve perplexed visitors many times over by simply swapping out the USB cable wich connects to our DAC, or even reversing the direction of the FireWire cable connected to our external hard drive. Both of which create immediate and yet different effects to the sound of our system as a whole.