# Build DIY variant of the Audience "2+2" Clairaudient speaker



## bill13 (Jan 23, 2010)

How about building a DIY variant of the Audience "2+2" Clairaudient speakers which received a rave review in recent "Positive Feedback Online" issue #47. These speakers use Audience's 3" drivers. A pair of "2+2" speakers would require a total of eight A3 drivers.

There's an interesting review of Audience "4+4" and the smaller "2+2" Clairaudient speakers: http://www.audience-av.com/tradeshows/Show2010PosFdbkRm4035.html 

A quote from this review: 
"My first listen to the 4+4 was sans subwoofer and was quite simply amazing. This speaker is without doubt the least colored, most natural sounding speaker I have EVER heard. The result is a naturalness, effortlessness, transparency, and coherence that simply has to be heard to be believed. Honestly, I'm not sure my words can do it justice at this point." 
"And guess what, I think that the more diminutive 2+2 was even better with respect to coherence and soundstaging."

These Audience Clairaudient "2+2" speakers use the newer proprietary 'A3-S' driver, but I understand that the 'A3-S' uses the same motor and even looks identical -- so maybe the model 'A3' that is available to hobbyists might be similar? 

For DIY, a 1/2 cu ft Parts Express Dayton rectangular cabinet might be used to mount four Audience A3 drivers ("2+2" layout) -- two on the front panel and two on the rear. 

Instead of using a passive radiator for more bass, may use one or two side-mounted, active, woofers (for example 6.5" Seas Excel magnesium W18 cones & maybe use big series laminated core inductor for roll off of these woofers). This way, the A3 divers should play louder with less distortion. 

Perhaps the panel space between the "2+2" two front-mounted A3 drivers could be occupied by a ribbon tweeter (see the picture of the small Audience '2+2' speaker in the Positive Feedback review). For example, the smaller RAAL 70-10D ribbon could be fitted -- with a crossover at a high frequency (like 6.5 kHz, quasi-first order slope (?)). 
Maybe adding a good ribbon would help compensate for any performance advantage that Audience may have for their newer proprietary Clairaudient model "A3-S" driver? Time-align the acoustic centers of the ribbon and the front-mounted A3 drivers. The best ribbon tweeter candidate seems to be the RAAL OEM 70-20 but it's only available to qualified companies. 
However, perhaps a Raal ribbon really wouldn't improve subjective sound quality, considering the ear's sensitivity to extremely high frequencies, and the benefit of radiating all sound from the same {single full range} driver. 

Also, consider 'boffle' fiberglass layers (open-back) or maybe an aperiodic cabinet configuration.
A centrally placed Velodyne DD-15 subwoofer, crossed in at 80 - 100 Hz, & located immediately behind the listener, works surprisingly well for arrays of A3 drivers.


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## 1Michael (Nov 2, 2006)

Those are interesting drivers but at $340 just for the drivers I can almost build the Modula MTM...


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## bill13 (Jan 23, 2010)

Yes, the Audience 3" A3 drivers are very expensive, but IMO they sound different from anything else that I've heard yet. Wish that the new proprietary Audience Clairaudient "A3-S" 3" drivers could be purchased by hobbyists, but the original 'A3' still is great. 

The measured frequency response of the A3 driver is not perfect, but in my experience, the impulse response (time domain) was astonishing for a 3" driver (I used SoundEasy Lab to measure) -- many if not most, 1" tweeters don't appear to be as good (especially considering that it's a 'full-range' driver). 

There seems to be some justification for the (previously mentioned) rave comments about the Audience "4+4" and "2+2" 'Clairaudient' speakers. 

I've had Soundlab electrostats, and other high-end speakers in the past which (I recall) just didn't have the 'palpable' midrange and dynamics. Perhaps hard to believe, but that's my experience, so far.


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