Trying to figure out name of DIY speakers from Toulouse, Frace

[Tushar]

All,

Hi! I'm starting to get into woodworking and will want to do speaker DIY at some point (when the economy is better and my kids are old enough to help and justify another set of speakers in the house).

There's a DIY speaker I heard at a friend-of-a-friend's house in Toulouse, France. He said he bought the plans, the drivers, and the cross-overs from a place that made them down the street. I spent about 6 hours listening to it fairly near-field with a glass of cider, just marvelling at the sound. The volume was low and to me there was an aspect of it that was like listening to a wood instrument live-- not sure that's a useful descriptive but I just loved how they sounded. They cost about 400-500 Euros to build a few years . The speaker was a moderate to large bookshelf speaker, MT config with a port in front (a rectangular slit. It didn't go very deep. I can't say for sure but would not be surprised if they didn't go below ~60 Hz.

Does anyone know if there's any good DIY speakers from Toulouse?

I should say I'm a very happy Ascend customer who loves the Sierra-1's and everything I've bought here. But I have alot of fond memories of that speaker and would like to figure out what they were. Any help welcome.

[rogerm]

I took off a couple days this week due to snow and fast becoming bored decided to try and find your speakers. I couldn't find any speaker kits made in Toulouse, but I did find speaker kits that were sold in Toulouse. The mfg is Davis Acoustics. Look through their kit section and see if you find yours. The speaker you describe sounds similar to the Voight Pipe. I built a similar design last year for listening on a Glow tube amp. www.davis-acoustics.com/gb/index.php

[Tushar]

Roger,

Thanks for help! The data sheets look similar, the woofer and tweeter look similar, but Davis seems to just use round ports. That speaker had a rectangular slit for a port. Might be same, but not sure. Now I've really got to figure this out.

[Tushar]

Roger,

Searching street views of Toulouse, I think I may have found it. Seems a very small shop called "Audio Concept Hi-Fi" on Rue Des Couteliers which sells high fi and manufactures custom speakers as well. It seems like the right part of town. I'm going to e-mail them and see if my descriptions of the speaker match anything they've designed and sold.

[Tushar]

Hi! Visited Toulose again and suspect it was a Focal C500 MT floor stander kit driven by a Kora hybrid (tube+solid state) amp. The store was La Maison Du Haute Parleur. Not sure if anyone has thoughts on this kit (I think the tweeter is the Focal 90 inverted dome).

Wind and wood sounded quite pleasant to me on that setup.

What I wonder now is how much of what I was appreciating about the sound was the speakers and how much of it was from a hybrid amp with a capable speaker.

I have a Denon reciever (988 which is like 2308) and I am wondering if adding something like a Dodd tube buffer diy would be nice for 2-channel with my Sierra-1's. Also curious if just having Dodd for LR has any negative when running 5.1 mode.

Any inputs would be appreciated.

[markie]

Interesting. I suppose what you liked on the that speaker was the 'tone'. Not sure what physics aspects are responsible for that.

The Sierras are refined enough to be sensitive to what is upstream. I would like to hear from others who have experimented in this regard - what equipment has worked the most magic with the Sierras.

A good room, a relaxing six hours and a glass of cider probably didn't hurt either!