OBL-15, built by Vassil |
I built the OBL-15’s about a year and a half ago
and have had plenty of time to get familiar with them. They replaced my
OBL-11’s and were a big improvement. First, I like the JA8008 HMQ/T35
much better than the JA8008/TW034 combination. Second, I built the front
baffle on the OBL-15’s from 1.5’’ thick top quality baltic birch. That
was also a significant improvement over the 1’’ MDF on the OBL-11’s.
Third, it's definitely worth investing in good quality caps here. I used
Superior Z-Caps for the mid range and Alumen Z-Cap (excellent cap) for
the tweeter. I also used Cross-Caps instead of the Premium ELKO the kit
came with but did not bother comparing for sonic differences on those
(did not expect to hear a big difference). Next thing on my list to
mention in this post surprised me as well… I bought the 15’’ Ciare
woofers, which were really hard to find at the time as Ciare stopped
production when they got acquired. But I also had the Eminence DeltaLite
II 2515 from my OBL-11’s. Since both of them were able to fit without
additional routing, I decided to try them as well. I liked the Eminence
better than the Ciare. Not sure why, it could be related to the acoustic
in my room, or the Eminence could be a little louder, but I ended up
keeping the Eminence. The last thing to say was that the speakers
sounded better to me in my room without the 5-degree tilting. I built
them with the default tilting but ended up using a piece of cork to lift
them back up. Acoustic treatment
(very important). The OBL-15 required a little different
acoustic treatment than conventional speakers. Any broadband absorbers
behind the speakers made the sound dull. Instead, place diffusers behind
them and enjoy their full potential. On the wall behind the listener
heavy duty broadband absorbers made miracles. That had better effect
than the diffusers behind the speakers in my room. An interesting read - http://www.linkwitzlab.com/rooms.htm
- section D1.
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