Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: DIY Vox Minuta Speakers by Edp

Another petit creation that you can't buy, but you can build.

After the creation of the Little Whispers as a test mule for brightness, I needed a test mule combo for warmth. Kinda like needing salt and pepper, dark and white chocolate, sweet and sour. Little Whispers weren't the best by design of doing vocals, needed one that did the midband at the expense of "air".

Same basic 0.3ft^3 enclosure, MDF, bass reflex tuned construction.
Choose the Focal 5NV4211 (single voice coil version) midbass and Morel MDT-30 tweeter. Tuned to 48hz.

Crossover was made to reinforce the midband, remove silibance and shelve tweeter down by 3 to 4 db from flat. Simple design of single inductor (initially 1.39mH foil coil then 1mH foil coil), imped comp (8.2 uF/7.8Ohm) and 40 ohm resistor parallel to midbass. Single cap (inital 2.5 uF then 3 uF cap), 4.4/7 ohm Lpad (with 0.75 cap shunting 4.4ohm set added later) and 10Ohm/1uF imped comp on tweeter.

With the laughable initial 1.39m/2.5 uF crossover config, the unit was warm, midband/bass and bullet proof tolerate of any vocal CD ever made. Listen to vocals all day long and no fatigue. Nice toe tapper in bass/upperbass. NO SILIBANCE. Test mule completed. Used in testing a friends very unusual and bright room. The combo of this config of Vox Minuta and Little Whispers worked wonders at help defining/designing a much larger setup wrt to overall voicing, driver do's and don'ts and room interaction.

But in this config, the Vox just didn't get modern music right. Old album rock sounded to stiffled/stuffy, and same with many selections of modern cool jazz ( vibes, brush cymbals, Wes guitar sound).

So change to 1mH/3uF and jumpered 4.4Ohm Lpad. Makes them unsuitable as a bracketing test mule to the Little Whispers, but makes them a significantly better all arounder.

Okay, enough of the bull Ed, get to the sound.

As of this writting I have had them running for about three months.

Bass - extremely articulate, honarable mention extention. Actually very amazing in depth, power and detail considering the nice large room they are in. Almost entirely nearfield setups, more closely to Audio Physic than I normally use. No bloat. Minimal midbass hump to add flesh to bass. F3 at seating position 45, F10 42, F20 38. Falls like a rock. I have a sub. I rarely use. The Focal is a powerhouse of extention and xmax for a driver of this size. Due to the larger mass of the cone the Fs of the 5NV is lower than that of its very close model used in the Little Whispers 5k013L.
Tried them in a smaller room (Home Theater room 11/13 foot). Plenty of bass and authority, clearly more optimal for a speaker of this size/output, but if too close to walls out comes the BIG midbass hump!

Midrange - design goal was to make a speaker for vocals. Overall this unit is superior to my main units that use the Scan Speak 18W8545K. But the layering and microdetail of the Scan Speak is oh-so more superior. Clearly the larger unit can produce more power with it's finese. The Vox Minuta has the imaging one would expect of a small mini-monitor, but it is not a razor sharp exagerated execution. With my kevlar or poly or paper/carbon based experiences I tended to describe voices as "up a pitch or down a pitch", or "detailed,but warm" or "detailed but airy". These units I just use the term, "its voiced like voices".

High Frequencies - The Morel MDT 30 is a good, hard-to-get-wrong performner. Not the greatest, not the worst, but very relaxed refined. It ain't got the decay and ultra detail of a Focal Titanium. It ain't got the body and substance of a Scan Speak Silk. It definitly does not have the chalky sound of the Vifa's. A very fine mate with the 5NV. Good dispersion. Never an edgy/stressed/buzzy presentation. Very good decay, nice air and not excited to silibance by nature. When the shunt of Lpad cap is installed the character does not actually change but clearly the extention and therefore the decay is nicely increased.

Ella's age can be determined.
Lady Day's addiction toll can be gauged.
Velvet Fog has thickness.
Jimi's Experience can be understood.
Nat's daily pack count is transfered.

The units can tux.
The units can tshirt.
The units can step.
The units can flow.
The units can growl.
The units can purr.
The units play more often.
The units may unseat the Danish King.

The units, although "Minute" render not only music but do the "Voice".
Vox Minuta!

REVIEW: DIY Vox Minuta Speakers Review by Edp at Audio Asylum