This is my first post in this group. Advance apologies for any inadvertent mistakes.

Recently I designed a pair of 3 Way Floor Standing Speakers, which are sounding better than anything I have listened to before that.

I am an audio enthusiast. My current stack includes three stereo amplifiers (Cambridge Audio 651A, Yamaha RN-803D & Pioneer N34AE), two pairs of speakers (Monitor Audio – Bronze 2 & Dali – Zensor 3), one preamplifier (Yamaha WXC50) and a Sub-Woofer (Yamaha YST-SW35). Apart from these, I have owned Monitor Audio Bronze 6, Polk Audio Sub-Woofer PSW 111 and Cambridge Audio Sub. While, none of them are high-end, one couldn’t argue against a certain level of quality which each brings to the table. Unfortunately, I always felt something was missing no matter how I mixed or matched the equipment. My taste in music is eclectic and includes Classic Rock, Blues, Classical Vocal, Pop, Indie etc. I am one of those who doesn’t feel comfortable listening to music at high volume; my usual listening level is around 55 to 60 dB which would translate to around 70 dB playback level. While I do like Bass, I value good midrange and hf reproductions more.

Last year, during the height of Covid Pandemic, I told my wife jokingly that I would like to design my own Speakers.The project started with me searching the internet for information about the basics of speaker design - which took around three months . The next step was to create the design goals – looking back, I feel that it was the most important step in the whole process. A large part of today’s success is owed to the design goals I set for myself. One of the most important goals was to get the reproduction of midrange right. Another design goal was to have fast response in the low end. In order to satisfy both I went for a driver with relatively high QTS for the midrange in sealed design and paired it with a sub-woofer with low QTS in ported enclosure. The drivers were also selected based on high DCR and high BL (both from FREDO). My common discomfort with the speakers I own and those I have auditioned is usually kind of veiled sound above 10 K (except B&W) and I always felt employing a inductive transducers for HF stands contrary to it’s basic nature. Capacitative ones should be the natural choice – I experimented with horn loaded Piezo and they are giving solid performance (though it was sort of rough journey for a while). FREDO didn’t publish FRD and ZMA so I had to depend on my ears to decide on the crossover points, also needed to keep reminding myself about the piezo and how it has the habit of encroaching into 1.5 to 2K region and end up sounding piercing. I designed the crossover and employed audio grade caps and low tolerance coils and assemble it on vero board (didn’t use PCB to avoid stray caps).

The work was finally completed and we could hear sound coming from them for the first time. It was immediately apparent that I did get the mids right and the bass was indeed very fast and also the speakers seemed to be exhibiting good off axis dispersion – all of them were part of my design aim and I was hoping to have them fulfilled. Abundance of bass came as a pleasant surprise – abundant and fast. Another surprising thing was that none of the amplifiers were getting as warm as they would get when I would play them with MA or Dali speakers. The mids connected nicely and there was no ‘boxy’ sound. The most pleasant part was the cohesion and attack or decay of sound as our brain perceives as reality. My daughters spent hours listening to the speakers and remarked that they sounded uncannily real at times.

In conclusion, FREDO drivers are definitely worthy of serious consideration and one can create world class speakers with them.

Please feel free to get in touch with me (bhaskar.bhattacharya08@gmail.com) if you would want any further information.