GR-Research X-LS Encore DIY Speakers are Done

@Puma Cat i am curious as to what issues you had with killians work?

 

Killian's work is...okay, but not what I would classify as "advanced". My first pair of speakers were damaged in-transit because of poor packaging (virtually all corners were crushed) and the second pair, while arriving undamaged have some uneven gluing and staining of the veneer. One of speakers is what I would classify as acceptable for a set of DIY speakers, but the other has the veneer has some ripples in it along one side, and is separating a bit from the MDF along a top edge, and the staining/finishing is uneven. The fit and finish is nowhere near the level of a commercially available speaker. Peter, OTOH, is just a much more advanced and experienced cabinet-maker, as he did it professionally his entire career. If you just want to buy unfinished flat packs, Killian's should be fine.

 

Just finished my GR Research X-LS Encores. Are you still listening to yours? What are you driving them with? Do you use them with subwoofers?

Thanks!

 

I find they work well without subs based on how you set them up. I still rotate my pair in from time to time, but I have too many speakers to use them full time...

 

Yep, was listening to them until a couple of weeks ago until I sent them down to a buddy to use in a local audio club speaker demo at their yearly "big show"....

With respect to driving them, here's my set-up:
Conrad-Johnson LP-70S 70 Wpc tube (KT120s) power amp. I use my REL R-305 sub with the Encores with this amp.


Fully dual-mono First Sound Presence Deluxe 4.0 III-Si tube preamp with Paramount SE upgrades...


Shot of internals of main control unit. All internal wirng uses air dielectric for connectors, etc. Pure copper bus bars for I/O connections. Volume pots are all hand-soldered with Holco individual metal-film resistors for each position of gain.


with dual-mono external power supplies with 145,000 uF of filter capacitance/channel.


Sometimes I use the Constellation Inspiration Integrated amp, as well. Don't use the REL with this set-up. This is a superb integrated amp, one of the three best I've ever heard, along with the Constellation Argo and DarTZeel CTH-3550.


Lampizator Baltic 3 tube DAC...

Uptone EtherREGEN (ER) Ethernet switch and SOtM SMS-200 UltraNeo network bridge. Shunyata Omega Ethernet cable. Shunyata Alpha USB cable. AfterDark Master Clock for EtherREGEN on the left, power supplies for the SOtM & ER/AfterDark at the back.


Shunyata Everest power distributor (PD) with Shunyata Sigma XC and NR power cords (for PD and amp, respectively ), Omega QR-s for DAC, and Alpha XC for preamp power supplies. All interconnects are Shunyata Alpha V2 or Venom-X.


The ER, Lampi DAC, preamp, and amp are connected to Everest's Ground-Plane Noise Reduction (GP-NR) system terminals (the four black "binding posts" on the rear panel) using Alpha ground cables. This system notably mitigates ground-plane noise, wihich is a problem in particular for digital devices, e..g DACs, streamers, network bridges, switches, etc, as they generally have a lot of noise on their ground-planes. The improvement in tonality, timbral accuracy and rendition, resolution, plankton, layering, spatial information, and overall "naturalness" in the presentation that the GP-NR system provides is quite notable.

Shunyata Venom-X speaker cables for the Encores (these are pretty amazing speaker cables for the price...)

 

Wow! Awesome system! I’m a little more on the Zen side with just a node streamer and a Peachtree GaN400 amp and PreDAC. The XLS Encores sound really good, have better bass than I expected, but I’m thinking about building two GR servo subwoofers get some fast base to match them.