Ringnut
Prominent Member
There have been a few DIYSG build threads being put up on the forum recently so I thought I’d add my experience to the pot for any considering going down that increasingly popular route.
Having heard demos of some of the larger cinema speaker systems coming to market of late I have been spoilt by that ‘BIG’ cinema sound that only larger speakers give. The problem for me though with all of the commercial offerings I have seen so far is that they are just that bit too large for my living room in one critical dimension or another and only seem to come in black. Fine if I had a dedicated room but not suitable for me in my living room setup. What I needed were speakers that had the appearance of Hi-Fi speakers but the performance of cinema speakers.
In addition I find that as speakers get larger they never quite seem to have the ‘clarity’ of their smaller counterparts in that vital mid-range area, and by ‘clarity’ I don’t mean ‘detail’ which I see as more of a high frequency component, I mean mid-range intelligibility for want of a better description. I sometimes find speech intelligibility is better on a common or garden TV set than with some home cinema setups. I guess it’s the ability of a speaker to project voices that I’m really looking for, some might describe it as a more ‘forward’ type of presentation. The XTZ M6s I had previously were excellent in that respect, walls just seemed to disappear and it was as if the person speaking was right there in front of you, so I guess I was looking for that, but with more headroom.
If you're reading this far then you probably already know something about DIYSG and their aim of providing kits to enable customers to build their own speakers at a fraction of the cost of commercial offerings. The big problem with their speaker range as far as I see it is that while it's quite easy to have demos of commercially available speakers – even a home demo in some cases – unless you have been able to demo DIY offerings it requires an awful lot of faith in the end result to embark on such a project. On top of that there is also the time element not to mention the necessary skills needed in woodworking and electronics (for the crossovers).
While I'd heard of DIYSG I'd never actually had an opportunity to hear any of their offerings until @markymiles gave me that chance here following his build of the DIYSG Cinema 8s. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. I have attended demos of some really excellent systems from most of the major names but despite their very low price these were right up there with the best that I’d heard. My only reservations of the Cinema 8s in my room was some difficulty I had integrating them with my sealed LMSU subs due, I presume, to their ported design, and what I felt was a mid-range that didn’t quite have the clarity of my beloved XTZ M6s.
So, with all that in mind, I decided to give the three-way DIYSG 893s a try. The big attraction for me with this kit was that although it has similar (though not identical) twin 8” mid bass units and CD to the Cinema 8s, it also has twin 4” Celestion drivers handling that critical mid-range. The other big advantage for me was that unlike the Cinema 8s they were sealed and so were likely to be much easier to integrate with my sealed LMSUs. The price you pay for that is a lower efficiency of 93db. Better than most of the commercial offerings but nothing like the 98db efficiency of the Cinema 8s. Decision made then, time to give the 893s a try and an order for three 893s was duly placed.
Having heard demos of some of the larger cinema speaker systems coming to market of late I have been spoilt by that ‘BIG’ cinema sound that only larger speakers give. The problem for me though with all of the commercial offerings I have seen so far is that they are just that bit too large for my living room in one critical dimension or another and only seem to come in black. Fine if I had a dedicated room but not suitable for me in my living room setup. What I needed were speakers that had the appearance of Hi-Fi speakers but the performance of cinema speakers.
In addition I find that as speakers get larger they never quite seem to have the ‘clarity’ of their smaller counterparts in that vital mid-range area, and by ‘clarity’ I don’t mean ‘detail’ which I see as more of a high frequency component, I mean mid-range intelligibility for want of a better description. I sometimes find speech intelligibility is better on a common or garden TV set than with some home cinema setups. I guess it’s the ability of a speaker to project voices that I’m really looking for, some might describe it as a more ‘forward’ type of presentation. The XTZ M6s I had previously were excellent in that respect, walls just seemed to disappear and it was as if the person speaking was right there in front of you, so I guess I was looking for that, but with more headroom.
If you're reading this far then you probably already know something about DIYSG and their aim of providing kits to enable customers to build their own speakers at a fraction of the cost of commercial offerings. The big problem with their speaker range as far as I see it is that while it's quite easy to have demos of commercially available speakers – even a home demo in some cases – unless you have been able to demo DIY offerings it requires an awful lot of faith in the end result to embark on such a project. On top of that there is also the time element not to mention the necessary skills needed in woodworking and electronics (for the crossovers).
While I'd heard of DIYSG I'd never actually had an opportunity to hear any of their offerings until @markymiles gave me that chance here following his build of the DIYSG Cinema 8s. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. I have attended demos of some really excellent systems from most of the major names but despite their very low price these were right up there with the best that I’d heard. My only reservations of the Cinema 8s in my room was some difficulty I had integrating them with my sealed LMSU subs due, I presume, to their ported design, and what I felt was a mid-range that didn’t quite have the clarity of my beloved XTZ M6s.
So, with all that in mind, I decided to give the three-way DIYSG 893s a try. The big attraction for me with this kit was that although it has similar (though not identical) twin 8” mid bass units and CD to the Cinema 8s, it also has twin 4” Celestion drivers handling that critical mid-range. The other big advantage for me was that unlike the Cinema 8s they were sealed and so were likely to be much easier to integrate with my sealed LMSUs. The price you pay for that is a lower efficiency of 93db. Better than most of the commercial offerings but nothing like the 98db efficiency of the Cinema 8s. Decision made then, time to give the 893s a try and an order for three 893s was duly placed.
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