Whoa Srajan, your updated Viper piece really has me excited. Greg's enthusiasm for the project is totally palpable and with his track record at Cube and Qualio, our man clearly has mastered the dark arts of not just speaker design but driver design and driver manufacture. That makes his choices of Mundorf air-motion transformer and Dayton super woofer and passive radiators all the more inspired and far more promising than the average guy just starting out in a garage workshop. Working all of it into a wholly 3D-printed enclosure of that sophistication then takes the cake. Why do you think it is that such ingenuity so often comes from very small outfits not from the big established power players? Those tend to own the distribution and presence in the remaining High Street shops to get all the traction but it's this kind of thing that I find far more appealing and would love to see a lot of people find out about. Good on you for giving it some space in your pages. I can't wait to see how this story unfolds. Good job, Srajan. Mica
Your enthusiasm is quite palpable as well, Mica. I'm similarly stoked. My intro wasn't made up. This kind of design is very much my ideal for a compact nearfield or midfield monitor. Seeing it manifest in such intriguing fashion when I wouldn't know how to do it myself is really something. And as you point out, Greg rather does have the track record which merely adds to the promise and possibilities. Let's see how soon he signs off on final filter tweaks and gets a sample to me. As to why not from the majors, I think that a lot of true creatives are at odds with the corporate structure and big business. It's not where they tend to end up because there they work for shareholder profits and must design by committee. In my book that must be one big reason why a lot of ingenuity and resourcefulness can often be found far off the mainstream. Take this instance of a small one-man show who can't afford to place a big order with a wood shop to get cabinets done to anywhere his ideas of not yet another MDF box. If necessity is the mother of invention, it led him to 3D printing it, never mind taking 120 hours to do a single cab. It puts him in charge without the need for big costly box inventory and nets a construction that's more sophisticated. Meanwhile a major brand whose opening order for a new model might squash what Greg will sell in a lifetime could probably not countenance spending five non-stop machine days to produce a single raw cab. How many 3D printers would they need to satisfy their global distribution partners? Sometimes being small and obscure has real advantages. You get to do things in ways you couldn't justify scaled up. In such cases, having the wisdom to remain small can be key. Srajan
