Interesting idea. Iād like to see a frequency response plot to see if itās any good, though. I suspect there may be some resonances in there.
Itās a shame that the fit and finish is such poor quality.
Timbre desktop speakers ādesigned for people who like nice things donāt like speakersā
And Iāve got to object - these are not even close to reasonably priced for what you get. They show it all opened up - there simply isnāt more than maybe $30 worth of hardware there.
Timbre desktop speakers ādesigned for people who like nice [looking] thingsā
Donāt be such a cynic. They sound phenomenal if you buy a set of gold-plated Monster Cables!
Itās the essence of marketing. āProve youāre not a terrible person by acquiring this objectā.
look closely and you will see that they arenāt even nice looking. They have all the quality of a high school wood shop project.
Iām going to echo nixiebunny, Iād like to see a frequency response plot (actually, a few of them, at different angles from the axis). The finish could be better, too. This is not typical, and it seems theoretically possible that using the entire front surface as resonating area could give you much better response than youād typically get from a speaker that size, but my experience with the audio industry leads me to think its probably hype and bullshit, especially because, if it werenāt they would have put those plots there. Nowadays, if you donāt care how it looks, you can get some surprisingly nice powered monitors for not much more than that.
I was really prepared to not like them, but find myself defending them instead:
Not nice looking: some comments are clearly fit-finish related, but that is exactly why they wanted kickstarter funds to use professional woodshop and steel cutting. One can certainly see in the video that there is some ālack of smoothnessā of the steel from the hand-finishing. Some comments could be related to the aesthetics of the design, which I find quite clean and reminiscent of mid-century-modern and Jakob-Jensen:
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A2909&page_number=&template_id=6&sort_order=1
Price: Some people are offended when a product costs much more then the āparts costā of the assembled materials. As a business, these guys still make a loss if their income from the project doesnāt also cover the cost of all the prototype materials, and I suspect they might like to be compensated for their time too.
The actuator/exciter being used is available in bulk for $35.50/pair,(www.tectonicelements.com) and reasonably clear alder is selling where I am for about $5 a board-foot in that thickness. They are using solid planks, so they will need to be very selective about buying boards only of adequate width, there will still be a bunch of the wood that they will have to cull because of knots, checking, splits, or wany-edge. Wood moves. By using whole boards they need the wood to be cut in a particular way in relation to the growth rings so that changes in humidity donāt break the speakers. Finishing costs money ā The lacquer on wood furniture from Target uses the same mass of resin per unit area as the furniture from Bo Concept, but the latter has a niceness of appearance and feel from the multi-step application and buffing that the former canāt match.
Audio circuits never sound the same laid out on a breadboard as they do on a proper circuit board, so there is a lot of trial and error (and parts purchases, and re-etching) involved in getting from design to production,
There are many reasons why I would not choose to mill a speaker box out of a chunk of solid alder. But it is really nice to have something so elemental as part of your everyday environment. There are many reasons why I would not choose a bent panel of stainless for a loudspeaker diaphragm. But Iād also say there are probably many worse choices in terms of sound quality at the same price in retail stores near you.
The price is not unreasonable in light of the materials and them being made in America, but whether its reasonable in light of the sound remains to be seen, and, though a frequency plot in itself doesnāt tell you everything, its really the only thing you can judge from without hearing them in person, and they didnāt post one.
Iāll stick with my B&Ws, because I like nice music.
Well, remains to be heard, at any rate. And no matter how fancy-looking, no matter what brand, no matter what exotic or space-age materials, Iām never spending more than $100 on speakers without hearing them first.
Given the material in use for the diaphragm it is far to tempting to respond:
ānice musicā, as opposed to āheavy metalā?
But seriously, one canāt go wrong with B&W in any price range in terms of the sound quality. Iāve snapped up many pairs of DM series from charity-shops, spent the $20 on the needed tweeter diaphragm that put them there, and then passed them on at cost to appreciative friends.
Inherited a pair of DA2s from a flatmate about 15 years ago. Theyāre almost as old as me, and I love them (and heavy metal, natch).
There, um, might be a reason why they are for āpeople who like nice thingsā rather than āpeople who like nice soundsāā¦
To be sure, there are more and less elegant speaker designs in the world; but itās virtually impossible to beat having plenty of volume to work with, along with case materials that would stop a bullet, much less an undesired vibration. Such hardware tends to suffer low WAF, though.
You sir, are a champion!
You can never have too many amplifiers. Or speakers.
Seems to me that āniceā, even when not used sarcastically, is generally a pretty mild approval.
