A follow-up to my previous article on ECDesigns’ audio system

The system described is composed of:

  • the powerDAC-S, a novel “all in one” digital-to-analog converter and speaker amplifier
  • open baffle speakers of their own design (but “build your own”)

I built these speakers out of curiosity, in a leap of faith, not having heard them before. I was doubtful that I would end up keeping such large and intrusive speakers in my flat, as I do not have a dedicated listening space outside of a smaller room that I use as my home office. My plan, were I to keep them, was to store them in that small room and wheel them out to my living room to use them. But is so much effort really required simply to enjoy music?

To make matters worse, my living room was far from ideal from an “acoustic” standpoint, and I did not initially find a satisfactory placement for the speakers.

I spent many months “tweaking” the speakers and making adjustments to my listening space:

  • I experimented with reducing the size of the speaker panels. I also built a 3-driver version in an attempt to make them even more discreet, but went back to the original 4-driver version as it offered significantly better sonics.

  • Through trial and error, I managed to find the optimal placement for the speakers. I rearranged some furniture to store them in my living room, thereby reducing the effort involved in setting them up each time I wanted to listen to them. Furniture changes and curtains also improved the overall acoustics.

  • I found a simple way to move the speakers around by installing wheels designed for upright pianos.

I had come up with solutions to some of the practical problems I was facing, but the question remained: Was all this worth the effort?

The system, as explained in my previous article, is unique in its design (it is a quasi “straight wire with attenuation”). The listening experience is also, to my ears, unique, and unlike anything I had heard before (in my previous setups, at people’s homes, audio dealers, and audio shows).

One of the most striking sound characteristics of the ECDesigns system is best explained by what audio critic Arthur Salvatore (www.high-endaudio.com) refers to as “individuation”:

“As I’ve grown older and more experienced, it is my increasing conviction that a component’s ability to Individualize each instrument (including voices), and the recording space, is its most difficult, musically rewarding and ultimate challenge. If the ultimate goal of listening to (recorded) music is a human-to-human, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and artistic “connection”, I don’t see how anything can be more important than individualizing each musician as a unique and distinct artist, along with their own “space”. Further, by definition and simple logic, the unavoidable rule is that every weakness of a component (and system), either of omission or commission, will compromise that desired individuality. Some examples…

Every coloration masks some of the inherent sound (aesthetic) of, and adds an artificial quality to, a unique instrument. Every dynamic compression, no matter how subtle, diminishes some of the musician’s original emotion. Every subtraction of the natural harmonics and decays makes the musician and space sound more “generic”. Any loss of transparency removes at least part of the complete musical picture (performance). Accordingly, when a component lacks the capability of individuation, what the listener will experience is inevitable…

A “non audiophile” friend, listening to Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine” on my system, remarked: “I have never heard this song like this before - I feel I am transported back to the 1940s!”

Being a jazz aficionadao myself, most of the music I listen to has been recorded in a 40-year time span between the early 1930s and the late 1960s. Recordings are not always of the highest quality. Listening to Bill Savory’s recording of Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul, broadcast from the Fiesta Danceteria in N.Y.C. on May 17, 1940, I feel I am “there”, in the crowd, listening to this timeless music. This, to me, is priceless.

Another striking aspect of this system is the sound quality it offers at low volume levels, something that I value highly as I spend many late nights listening to music. Here again, Arthur Salvatore explains:

“It’s the low sound-floor of a component (and complete system of course) that allows you to hear the natural harmonics, body, decays, space, ambience and subtle dynamic shifts of the original recording. It also reduces the tendency for musical homogenization. Another benefit is that the component, in this case a speaker, doesn’t change (by “dying”) when the music becomes softer in volume. This weakness, so common in speakers, forces the listener to play extra (unnaturally) loud if he wants the music to always sound “alive”. Listening at a natural volume even enhances the dynamic excitement of the music, because of the extra contrast when going from truly soft to truly loud. Playing “loud” and then “extra loud” is a poor and unsatisfying substitute for natural contrasts.”

As a bonus, the system offers all these qualities using the most basic source component - a raspberryPi model 3A+.

Pi

Enamored with the sound quality of this system, and having found ways to optimize its performance in my living space, I decided to have the speakers professionally rebuilt to my specifications. After some discussion and guidance from the cabinetmaker (www.rouaultacoustic.om), I settled on the following design:

Plan

The front baffle is 24mm thick, 40cm wide and 115cm high. Two side wings are 30cm and 15cm deep at the base, and narrower at the top so that the front baffle is slightly tilted back. The build quality offers better “visuals”, durability, and though I was never able to compare it with my own model, the added rigidity of the construction seems to have improved the sound as well.

Speakers2

As can be seen in the picture, I added 20kg weights to the base of the speakers to improve their stability.

No system is perfect, but this one is close to perfect for me. Can it be improved upon? Only the Brown brothers from ECDesigns hold the answer to that question.