I am at Lock's home and today I've come to listen to his system I actually heard the system a few months ago and I was blown away by it I would say it's one of the best system I've ever heard in my life top five easy and what I did today I brought Mr can over and he was blown away I mean blown away because yeah there you go and why is this very interesting is because if you look at these speakers these are DIY and this is one of the best system I've ever listened to in my life think about that for a second I'm used to systems in the $300,000 million doll system whatever like 50,000 and this $11,000 speaker $500 pair what how much is the w15 I think it's about 700 a pair 700 a pair so 1,002 a pair can compete with the m like the stupid expensive systems I've listened to in my life now of course if you look at it here the rest of his system okay these are not cheap right and uh I'll I'll let Lo introduce his system but uh I'll come back to explaining what do I mean by I'm blown away by this system $1,200 speaker can rival easily the $100,000 systems I've listened to all right Lo let's go with uh your deck first let's start with your deck why don't we start at the beginning where everything starts which you can't see so first things first is uh dedicated circuits for the whole system in the wall using F Tech nanoc crystalline uh Outlets wow you believe in those snake oil of course I love it I dip my bread in snake oil every day uh then we have a space Tech Lab streamer okay so we start with the streamer y man this thing looks like so retro it's not even retro man it looks DIY I know it does look di but a lot of space TCH stuff looks kind of DIY it's very I heard that very good Bare Bones I heard they sound good they sound good just the design you need to be a little bit technical to to own this because you have to do firmware updates and it's like a little computer uh from the streamer it goes USB into the den Iris which is a USB digital reclocker oh you have one of those yeah I actually have one of those in my home I I love it really so this is uh okay a reclocker that's what it is yeah a USB reclocker absolutely okay and then where does it go from there it goes uh via an AES cable which is very rare for people to use usually with digital media well these days um as to the musical Paradise deck that I have modified mhm so um the USB Paradise the musical Paradise is using an external uh battery powered clock which is in the back which I don't know if you can see that little small thing there yeah it's all the way in the corner yeah that little black box okay uh and what I changed in this deck I'm using 6sn 7s uh in the in the deck right now because I have cryotone tubes but otherwise I use 12 bh7 m i put a purple fuse in there as well and I put purple fuse you believe in fuse makes a difference giant no giant the current current goes through the fuse man current goes through the fuse and if that fuse makes noise and you have a transparent system like speakers that are direct wired to your amp every noise you put in the chain you hear it man I should blind test you one day man seriously I will pass it's like come on fuse make a difference absolutely I'm just making fun of Lo because uh companies have sent me fuse to review too it's just that I'm too afraid to get smoked I mean like I'm going to get roasted in my comment section so that's why I never make a video on it again it's all about transparent it's it's all about transparency if you're not oh I forgot to mention there's a pure a Puritan PSM 156 what all this stuff plugs into without the Puritan the fuse doesn't make much of a difference why because there's so much noise coming in that you won't tell you won't the noise is still there I see I see okay so I remember there was some Jupiter caps no yes yes those super inexpensive they're like 800 bucks Canadian for a pair exactly okay so basically you you there's about $2,000 of upgrades in the deck yeah is yeah all right and that's fun so from there you see that's the big question mark I ask right would it have not been better if you spent $2,000 more to buy a better deck no as opposed to buying this and you know I did I did buy better dacks oh right right right so you did I bought Dax up to almost almost 5,000 not quite it was 4400 okay but this one wins okay fine let's move on then what's next all right so from there yeah that goes uh into the melody preamp which is the black one in the that you see in the middle that preamp is rectified by a space Tech Lab super rectifier which has an 845 a New Old Stock 845 made by GE okay so rectifier means that you see this has a cable going to the rectifier socket here right yeah that's supposed to be a rectifier tube there that's right but you replace it with this that's right and just okay so just whoa whoa whoa whoa let me just show this is this the original one this is uh you got some sh tubes this is the original uh Melody rectifier that goes in there okay so this looks like a toy compared to this rectifier okay maybe that's why it sounds so good the system if you spend that much money doing making modifications I mean okay fine fine fine all right so power delivery man it's all about power delivery all your components need to have good power delivery those look like leg bu man what are they they do look like leg bu I forget the types 181 1411 from what company uh it's it's just says Melody on it it's the there stock tubes the only thing I haven't changed on that preamp okay fine so fantastic preamp where does it go to from there that preamp actually bu amps so for the base it goes down to a very inexpensive Crown amplifier it's probably the least expensive thing in the system gosh man you can probably get this for 50 bucks on the use Market yeah something like that I think I got it for 165 actually used yeah but the the nice thing is that there's a crossover adjustment on this that's that's why I picked it you see this is the secret guys for this amazing sound so explain the secret yeah so that so uh well I'll tell the the I'll tell the secret a little bit after so that amplifier controls the Basse drivers yeah uh because in my test I tried all kinds of different types of amplification for the w5s and my preferred type is a Class D mhm tight fast very detailed and I don't have to worry about refinement that much because the Basse drivers don't go higher than 90 HZ that makes sense because these are not exactly very good at sound staging layering right they just have very clean tight fast base which is what you need for the w15 that's right which L will explain there now and uh aside from that the other bamp that goes out it goes out to the deware Sara 300b right now or it or it goes out to I can send it out to a Melody 211 or it goes out to 300b Wellborn monoblocks but right now the deware the deware is winning the deware now if you notice oh tell me about the those 300 B tubes look at that tube those are not your standard Grandma tubes well those are actually cryotone the whole set of tubes in that amp is currently all cryotone tubes the problem with that is that one pair is 1,000 bucks yeah it's a problem but it's not a problem I guess that's the thing for it's it's not a yeah I mean it's not the stock tubes mhm it's the ones I prefer don't get me wrong I also have a pair of Western Electric down here that are on loan uh from deware which sound absolutely amazing please take it out okay ladies and gentlemen these are the famous here I'll hold this one here these are the famous Western Electric that cost an arm and a leg like these are they're expensive these are what th something 1,800 ,800 bus okay so these are really the legendary tubes but but the cryotone can give it a serious challenge if not better well it runs it gives it a good run for its money I mean in terms of of realism to me in my preference I I find the kryon are more realistic mhm um these this is just a different type of seasoning okay it's very luxurious very sparkly uh it it's but I find it doesn't have it's not the same type of realism as a cry tone but don't no one will ever come like this is luxurious sound High luxury it's beautiful sounding excellent especially if you have a very good rectifier in the amp these tubes sound incredible well at that kind of price I mean I I hope they sound like you know like a million bucks but then again okay so Sarah aren just won you supposed to send this back to Steve yeah I'm sure I'm about to get an email soon you're holding it a hostage hey Steve maybe I should review this apparently it's like the best of the best best best you know it's excellent yeah yeah I love it well at least from what I heard now it's just that's the thing I don't know is it because of all this or because of this because of the cryotone because of you know it it's just a combination of everything all right it really so now uh let's talk about the secret here so why can this little this setup maybe what 20,000 20 30 yeah you could get with it for under 30 under that that's assuming you buy them new if you buy them new Heckman 10 grand and you're done 10 grand you got the whole you got the whole thing right and 10 grand and you buy these speakers for like one or two grand 12 Grand and you can rival $100,000 systems but there a but in certain context correct mean meaning that this will shine with certain kind of music you're not going to play hard rock with this but with voice what else was good oh the the guitar the the Decay is just spectacular I think this is the most Decay I've ever heard in a system wow how many te you have on your chains like 19 19 tubes okay I've never heard a system 19 tubes 19 tubes and a few chokes yeah I I a few chokes and I hope that's why I hope the Decay is spectacular so when it comes to guitar spectacular drum you can really really hear the skin of the drum and I'm not kidding you I can blind test you and you think that it's a real drum the vocal will melt your heart I mean that's the thing that Mr Canon next to me said it's very touching my heart yeah it touches his heart it really draws him in and for me this is end game yeah I feel I'm crying yeah you see why Mr K say he's crying is because the first after listening for 30 second you say I should stop listening to this I cannot listen to my system anymore if I listen to this and as you know Mr K with his famous Audio Research MacIntosh and the folk house uh sopra 2 cannot rival this in terms of emotions in terms of realism when it comes to Bass it's not the same s yeah of course the sopra 2 would do other things way better obviously right uh but in terms of emotional engagement heck man I I give this a 11 on 10 man anything else to add I take that's okay think just keep thinking in the meantime so lock explain why is the w15 away from the main speaker you see this you never you cannot buy them in stores no nobody's going to come up with a speaker like this right separate one in front of the other everything is usually on the same plane yep right so this is really a unique design and the unique benefit of it is that it uh it outshines uh even $100,000 systems that I've listened to yeah I was asking myself for a long time after trying so many uh speaker combinations um if sound waves under 100 htz are omnidirectional mhm now I'm going to film you keep talking the best place the best place to reproduce bass in my room was never the same place that I would put a speaker to maximize my Sound Stage MH so the base the best base in my room for me was always coming from positioning my base output in the corner of the room which made my room um the walls act as Basse horns and these are things I learned over the years I learned this actually from Varity audio how they have the rear firing drivers mhm they rear fire their base into the corners of your room so your rooms become a base horn so I've decided huh why don't I try that and by and by the way we tried turning this off so that the w15 does not play and you can tell you you lose Sound Stage and you lose uh the the the the meat on the very bottom but the the interesting part is that it affects the top end too it does and and you know usually you think that it would just affect the at the bottom but no no it affects the whole package and for that reason you absolutely need the w15 I think of it I think of it as you know if you have a scale yeah and on one side of the scale you have the highs and the mids on the other side of the scale you have base okay so you put the the the mids and the highs this is a stupid analogy guys but what it's what I feel happens when you have the Basse and a treble on one side of the scale MH then together if you have the right amount of weight in the base things stay balanced what happens if I remove the base from this side mhm now the the highs become too heavy they bought like they get too much it feels like there's too much you bring the base back oh it brings back balance so the weight of the base actually sort of tames the highs and the high and the the the upper mids from feeling harsh yeah and that's my biggest complaint with single driver speakers right there's a lack of mid base or it can be a little bit shouty it can be a bit harsh and we were pushing at 90 something DB see Lo has a SPL meter here let me just turn around slowly and I'll show you the SPL meter and we were able to listen at 90s something DB with no problem right now is at what 56 yeah yeah just our voices and and also if you look at L's place which is very nice and clean compared to my home um he has a lot of space for the energy to to dissipate so that's why when we listen to the Lee song speaker the uh Leonidas it sounds really good here but in the normal room it might be overwhelming so in this specific case I think the room has a big part to play in the the base because we're able to drive it really hard loud you get a lot of Dynamics and we don't get that pressurization that gives you listening fatigue so it's a combination of everything and what what the diffusion oh there's diffusion as well all that all works into the uh yeah I mean l DIY skills try to make the ceiling a little bit more interesting diffusion and blah blah blah but yeah it's a combination of everything so in short top three systems I've listened to in my life turns out to be $1,000 speaker sorry $500 yeah yeah 1,200 everything that's over 100 htz is positioned in the it can be positioned in the room to maximize mids voice sound stage and the bass being separate can be put in a place in the room to maximize Basse performance I do want to comment though I have a LoveHate relationship with single driver and you should and this is like the probably one of the very few times in my life where I'm Blown Away by single driver speaker I mean really blown away and this is with a chippy Leong right $500 one yeah it's not it's not the like the $3,000 drivers it's $500 a pair and uh when you compare this to the m marcaras driver I mean that one is way Superior to this one way super yes I'm not talking about the overall presentation I'm talking about just this driver in terms of refinement and detail yeah when I heard it one of the first questions asked was can I get one a pair of these drivers and and they said please let us try and sell our speakers first imagine that e if you put a maku marcaras driver here it's going to be like spectacular you can drive off half a million dollar systems then yeah but yeah I didn't quite contribute to the I don't know how many uh tens of thousands of dollars they had to pay lison to make a batch of those drivers so they I don't have the privilege yet to get my hands on them maybe one day all right so with this I am done with the first part uh I we're going to check out your ladybug now all right okay all right guys so I know I said that these can rival 100,000 whatever speakers but there's a little bit of uh asteris to it because it won't make sense if it can rival $100000 speakers right so there are some things that it doesn't do well so maybe lo you can tell me what it doesn't do well uh it doesn't do very complex types of music like Grand orchestras mhm the more instruments there are mhm and the more instruments that require extreme Dynamics yeah this suffers okay it's maybe the effect of it's one driver trying to do it all uh it's the fact that maybe there's a wizard cone mhm that being said if I if when I use a smaller driver than my other ones let's say the potential of a grand orchestra's performance these will do a grand orchestra's performance at what 30% of its of what it should be mhm whereas when you play acoustic music like you were listening before which made you go oh my God yeah it does it at over 100% right so My Philosophy with these was is I decided I'm going to stop trying to correct things that are wrong M and things that it can't actually do yeah and by cuz when you try to correct I found myself losing what was good when you're trying to fix a problem with something that can't do that thing properly I was hurting what it was doing well so I decided you know what all in on what it does well so let's move on to the next one after that I had lck bring out his ladybug and this is a very interesting concept I think he got the idea from Steve from Dew right yeah so okay so basically he has this driver which cost 200 bucks a pair pointing upwards and he's connected it to the same electronics and also do the same w15 uh woofer and when he play ratchets amazing it's fantastic uh these tweeters are not connected so I just ignore them and I'll say this the first minute I listen to this I'm like uh no I like the other one better because it feels like it's lacking detail and precision well not Precision but you know it's less there's less edges it's smoother but the second song I listen to is actually a lot more comfortable to listen and it's very pleasant so what you can listen to this for like 2 three hours and it'll be okay no listening fatigue and that's a big thing coming from a single driver and next thing if you notice is pointing upwards so the Sound Stage is very interesting uh how would I put it as Lo said things seems like they're floating in The Sound Stage with the other one it sounds like they're more grounded okay and uh this gives a very different listening experience which is also very good very large Sound Stage well as I said in audio you know you got to try everything it's like you're eating food right you don't know until you try it so the the dream would be to merge this sound stage with the with this one oops oops oops oops to get these two speakers to go on a date yeah yeah and so they can have a baby they can have a baby right of course we're saying man if only we can get this put it maybe here but we get the marar macarius driver that probably would be like the the the end game yeah it would be insane yeah absolutely insane so this cannot play Orchestra well also but better oh it does Orchestra probably double better than than this because the drivers are smaller and they're faster so that's why um my personal preference for short-term listening is the other one long-term listening maybe this one because you know by the second song I go like wow this is really comfortable as I said anyway this is a introduction to Lock's system but Lo but you got to you got to remember this is like the Prototype first try yes it's made of raw plywood mhm it doesn't even weigh I think 30 lb it's very light okay this this is the seventh version so I figured out what works with this so I so I can said like I said before it maxed out its strengths I haven't maxed out the strengths of that yet I'm going to make a different version of this as well I going to find a different driver a slightly different shape a little bit more weight to it um but I think the the purpose of these was nailing the angle yeah of the driver's firing cuz if the angle was too pronounced I didn't have the Great Sound Stage if it was too low The Sound Stage got too too blurry so now I think I got the angle just right which is for me was like a degree off of what Steve at diart recommended I try so he nailed it off the bat uh so which is very impressive so when I get a second version of these done that are where I'm going to really max out its strengths it's going to get even better I'm pretty sure plus they don't have a horn like these have a horn so I'm going to experiment with the horn as well man you know what that uh Lo once you're done with all this maybe I should slap the Gan logo on it man I'm just kidding man possible no no no you see how big those speakers are I'm never there's not there's not an audio file wife that'll say yes to those I'm not going to bring this to Market and imagine the shipping on this thing man forget it but anyway you can build this yourself for cheap all right that's it anything else to add yeah so when I first made the ladybugs um I couldn't get I I couldn't get my room to pressure in terms of Base it never worked I was like what's going on it's I felt like the w5s were weren't working I thought for a while that either the drivers were broken or the amp was broken um but then I stopped to think about it and I think that because of the angle of the driver remember right cuz it's still the lady bugs are still open baffles so they're radiating in in both directions but because of the angle of the ladybugs I had a feeling that the phase of the w15 and the ladybug were were canceling each other other which I find that odd because they're only playing up to 90 HZ but nonetheless if I don't reverse the polarity on the crown to invert the phase on the w5s I don't get uh that quality level of base with the ladybugs basically the lesson here was is when you're biamping or tramping you have to be aware of of phases between your different drivers they have to match usually in a speaker with a crossover it's not an issue um but because I'm not using any crossovers I'm completely dependent on the drivers and the amps that I'm using so when I invert the phase on the crown for the ladybugs it's incredibly good um but if I use the same phas as I use with these the a bugs sound flat thin and dry all right see this is like a secret to the setup if L does not tell you you can spend a year thinking about it and never get the answer or you think your amp is broken or you think that it's crap or you think you need stronger amp or you know yeah guys this is Paradise forget Hi-Fi spend your money on this
