UncleMaz

Nice!

hans14914

Its official. The large lot of drivers in in a container and on its way. I had a couple sets of drivers pulled and express shipped over here and they arrived in the States today.

Three sets are earmarked to make their way out to Sharktoberfest. Hopefully one set will make it out to Frenzy, and another set will be traveling with me to Shaks in Titletown.

The bulk of the drivers are due to be here and clear customs by the second week of October.

Crossover design is being finalized, and pre-orders for the front door kits should start next week.

Keep an eye out for a new and updated thread for the official product announcement and pre-order.

Thanks
Hans

hans14914

I received the advance sets on Friday... the production line versions look really nice. I think you guys will be very pleased with the quality.

The build house also sent sets of the matching round-perforation grills, and they too look really sharp. Unfortunately I had to leave everything at the office on Friday afternoon, so no pictures

In other news, another curveball on the passive crossover front. In an unlikely turn of events, the nominal output of the 4" driver is greater than the 3/4" tweeter. On paper and with normal calculations, the drivers are evenly matched, but in the bizzare world of the 928... that is just not the case. It looks like I may have to make a last-minute change to a 1" dome just to boost the efficiency. In the current configuration, I would actually have to pad the woofer (add a resistive load to lower the sensitivity - and overall output) of the woofer. This is not an issue for those who are considering using an active crossover system, as this can be level-matched inside the DSP, but in a passive design, it is an inefficient use of power, it is just converting energy into heat. I do still plan on offering several active options, and the 3/4" driver will still be an option for that configuration.

As I have mentioned before, the advantage of the smaller dome is increased off-axis performance. This was slightly effected after changing from the angled mount to flat mount. Changing to a 1" dome will affect this again. Luckily, there are a couple 1" drivers out there which have better off-axis performance than most. Another interesting twist, is that the way these 1" drivers are built, I can not reverse mount them, even with new tooling as the flange will not pass through the factory opening. This is actually kind of a good thing, as I can use the existing plastic cups I had made. I tested it this morning, and lopping off the angled cup in the table saw allows me to mount the large-flange drivers flush in the existing cup.

I am absolutely certain at this point, that it would be extremely difficult to get an off-the-shelf component set to ever sound as good as they look on paper, or they way they demoed on the soundboard at the store. Even with advanced measurement devices, it would be incredibly difficult to tune components purchased in a general-purpose kit.

I rarely like to brag, its not my style, but I am confident that you wont be able to best the components included in this kit, even if you spent 10x as much on something like the Focal BE or Dynaudio Esotar... at least if you wanted to retain the stock appearance and the option to return the car back to stock in the future.

Thanks,
Hans

Glenn M

Hans,
Sound great!

Arnoud

Your relentless quest till the end for 928 audio perfection with this set is going to be appreciated by many of this community, I'm in awe!
And almost needless to write that you can put me down for a set...

sweet928

Haven't kept up on this thread. OB option yet?

hans14914

There will be an OB option, but it hasnt been finalized. What has been verified, is that the new drivers are shallow enough to fit between the door and the interior door card without any modification. All that needs to be done now is finalize the adapter plate to hold the 4" driver and the tweeter.

Worse case scenario, I will have access to an OB in a couple weeks... there just arent any local OB cars here to test with.

Thanks for the interest,
Hans

UncleMaz

"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs and test fit some speakers..."

sendarius

I finally finished running the replacement antenna cable to the replacement bee-sting antenna on my '89S4. (I hate POs - why do they cut cables when there is a join less than 12 inches away?)

The head unit is a new mid-price Sony that I picked up on sale at the FLAPS.

As expected, I powered up the system to find that at least two of the speakers are toast - the 4" in the passenger door is dead, and the larger of the two in the B pillar has a death rattle.

The car has the 10 speaker option, and I figure on replacing them all - when do I send my money?

hans14914

Sendarius,

I will gladly take your money

We are very close on the door speakers. A couple months out on the rear though. I would like to have them in for the holiday season, but we will see. They are not tweaked to my liking yet, and I dont want to rush a product out the door if there is still room for improvement.

As a general update, I have a slew of 1" tweeters on hand, and hope to do a batch of testing tomorrow. We should have a winner selected by tomorrow afternoon, and have a good idea about the crossover. My goal is to have a crossover design by the end of the week so I can price out all the components and start a pre-order next week.

The container is due to land on the east-coast the first week of October. I should have drivers in the second week. I will have crossovers built and ready to go when the drivers get here. Expect order fulfillment of pre-orders starting towards the end of the second week of October.

Thanks
Hans

Glenn M

Hans,
Sounds great!

Thanks for all your hard work on this and the other cool projects!

diazepam

Hans,

I would also be interested in a full set (ie front and rear). Would it be possible to have it shipped from Europe to South Africa. Shipping costs from the US is insane.

Regards

Theunis

hans14914

Was over at the acoustic engineers place last night. My project is back on the bench today, so we should know what the new tweeter will be by the end of the day. More news later in the week.

Theunis,

I have no problem shipping however a customer prefers. I am sure we can work something out.

Thanks
Hans

Speedtoys

What are the chances I can order and have installed by Sharktoberfest?

hans14914

Not likely. The container is due to arrive the first week of October, so will likely miss your deadline by a couple days. There should be some sample sets out there at Sharktoberfest for you to audition though.

If they come in early, I will let you know. For now, all I have are the 6 sets I had DHL'ed over in advance of the bulk.

Thanks
Hans