Here are some of our favorite eXtreme audio ultra-fi links. I offer these for your enjoyment, inspiration, and because I get a kick out of technology taken to the extreme. Custom built, obscure, exotic, and DIY counts for a lot here, there are plenty of other sites and link pages where extreme = expensive establishment brands can be found. As it currently stands this site is heavy on the triode scene, which is strange, as I am not a devotee of the triode. I have heard some great triode/horn based systems and have also heard great box speakers and panel speakers. I pride myself as being an audio egalitarian, there are many paths to the goal. However the triode devotees do seem to be quite active on the web which I suppose is not too surprising, revolutionaries have always attempted to seize the means of mass communication!

Now it should be understood that we are all big kids and take personal responsibility for our lives both in and out of hi-fi. So when you see a picture here of a amp using transmitting tubes running on 1200 VDC only you can evaluate if that is for you and if you are capable of pulling off such a project without killing yourself stone dead!

Horn loaded Fostex three-way system by John Kalinowski

PHY speaker by John Kalinowski

Direct Heating, the society for audiophiles enjoying music through the Sakuma system. A group in Japan who do things quite differently compared to what you read in Stereophile. Good link site to lots of Japanese web pages.

Sound Practices magazine web site Joe Robert's little mag kicked off the interest in the USA in triode amps, horn speakers, and related exotic lateral technologies.

Tetsu Kimura's Tube Audio Page with more Japanese triode technology. Tetsu has posted tube data and research results along with circuits.

Emission Lab homepage with lovely pictures of tube amps showing superb workmanship. The gorgeous Western Electric 205D based amps pictures at the top of this page came from this site.

EU Valve in mostly Japanese. Exotic tubes for ultra-fi includes some scanned data sheets.

Image courtsy DH WWW site

Webmaster, Takuji Yamamoto

Thomas Dunker shows us you can build an entire exotic hi-fi. Very unique dipole folded woofer array. His pictures and comments in HTML format can be found here thanks to The Speaker Building Page. Also check out his Horn Speaker Page, the Images section is not to be missed, you may have heard of audiophiles who build bass horns into their homes, well Tom has the pictures from France and Japan (and another) to go with the stories!

Mattijs de Vries like Tom has built an entire eXtreme system from pre-amp to speakers. He calls his designs 'MachMat' and is so kind as to not only post pictures to inspire us but also include schematics and circuit descriptions.

Ariel Speaker Page where Lynn Olson shows us that eXtreme Audio can take many forms. In contrast to some of the wilder designs presented here Lynn's Ariel and ME2 speakers look conventional enough from the outside. It's the details that count and close examination show Lynn's years of experience in the audio business and a dedication to doing it right. Additionally his site is a model of how to present projects on the Web, love the North American and International Ariel Builders Club!

Chris's Tube Haven is Chris Brady's site. Tube haven indeed as one look at the design and execution of his four chassis 845 triode amps will attest to!

Audio bizarro is what Ed calls his site. Maybe he is referring to his 700 lb. tube amps driving a bi-amped mono speaker system?

Son of a !@#@#! its Son of Zen by that master of solid state and class A, Nelson Pass of Pass Labs. Honoring a 20+ year long commitment to the DIY audio community Nelson continues to publish his designs despite profiteering from his shared work by the bottom feeders of the audio business. The Son of Zen with its radical simplicity caused quite the stir in the DIY community when Nelson first put it on the 'net with his other designs. Already fans of eXtreme audio have rushed in with examples like the one below by Esben Beck. The eXtreme nature of Son's design can be seen for the fact Beck's is a 6 watt (!) version. Look at the heatsinks needed for 6 watts and scale up to 200 watts, maybe water cooling? Or maybe this?

Son of Zen amp and sandwich cabinet loudspeakers  weighing 97 kg each by Esben Beck. See Guild Crafsman Projects for more details.
 

"evolution 1" amp by The Triode Gang

Image courtesy Triode Audio site

26 DHT Pre-amp by Jim de Kort

Image courtesy VT 52 where Jim shares much more. Good source of tube data sheets, DIY projects, & tube sales.

Transcriptors ( England ) Ltd  was founded by David Gammon in 1960. Under his leadership Transcriptors went on to produce turntables which not only redefined their product and technology but impacted the larger world of modern industrial design.

Transcriptor Transcriber IRL (1976 design with servo-arm fixed to dust cover and radial tracking platter!)

For many more images of turntables see  Turntable Galleria by Werner Ogiers

 Hammers Homepage is in the words of its author Finn Hammer "Dedicated to Do-it-yourself". For some time now Finn has been researching, designing, and now building a speaker based on field coil technology. The preliminary results of his efforts can be seen below.

 Ulrich Haumann homepage has a section on Ion or Plasma speakers. His DIY tweeter is featured along with a gallery of some of the commercial units offered over the years.

Ulrich's tweeter in operation.

 Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg page is all about "The Journey to the Nth Dimension of Music Hyper Space". Many thought provoking articles (in some quarters seizure provoking). All dedicated to better living and aural hygienics through the application of triodes, Alnico, and OTL. The Doctor. . . Has Left The Planet. . But not our Universe. . . He is The Never-ending Search for Ecstasy. . . Musical or Any Other Form. Rage Against Mediocrity!!!! . . . and The Legend Begins! Thanks Harvey for returning me to the path of musical ecstasy.
 
 

 YAMAMURA CHURCHILL built the lovely full range driver pictured used in their truly esoteric systems. Alas as of early 2004 they seem to of passed out of production.

B³9 JBL high efficiency music and home theater speakers

And now for a bit of eXtreme audio from ACG owner Norman Tracy. Below are my high efficiency music and home theater speakers built around classic JBL Alnico drivers. The woofer and midrange duties are handled by a somewhat obscure 15" coax driver the 2150. Built in the 1970s this unit combines a woofer similar to the D130 and a centrally mounted LE5 mid/tweeter. I bought my first pair of 2150s as a lark. At the price it was a "what have I got to loose" deal. Of course when an audio maniac asks himself "what have I got to loose?" the answer is hundreds and hundreds of hours and dollars. One look at the pristine pair my seller delivered and I could see these were far beyond anything from the local hi-fi hut. One listen and I was hooked. My opinion is the combination of extreme precision manufacture, Alnico magnets, and the edge termination of the stiff suspension yields a sound combining low distortion and high dynamics the likes of which one never hears out of typical modern designs. The 2150 was really intended for PA use so the T/S parameters are a bit different. All the box design programs yielded the same result. For bass into the 30s they need a 14 cubic foot enclosure! In best audiophile rationalization mode I reasoned my previous B&W802II and Stax F81 ESLs had taken that much floor space once positioned away from the walls in audio geek approved locations. And they would be sitting next to our new Marantz 60" RPTV. So I went for it. The rationalization lasted until picking up the basic boxes from the cabinet maker. They are HUGE! Before adding the internal bracing we took a picture with both my 6 year old son and 6 foot tall me sitting completely inside the box with its removable back off!! Basic boxes are professionally built to my design and then finished by myself. A blending of modern high end enclosure design and ideas from the classic Onken I call it the B³9 JBL. This stands for Big Black Box #9 as it was the ninth revision of the CAD design. Front baffle is 2 1/4 inch thick multiply birch finished in many coats of wet sanded varnish. The rest of the enclosure is 3/4 inch MDF with extensive bracing. It is finished in a gray speckled laminate to better match the TV and withstand life. Venting is out the back panel via 8 each 2 inch diameter ports per enclosure for low air flow speeds tuning the box to 34 Hz. On top of the main system we see a JBL 375 compression driver mounted to a turned maple horn. This lovely horn is a product of Dr. Bruce Edgar's Edgarhorn company. When these pictures were taken the Edgarhorn had not yet been varnished to match the B³9. Sounds too good to take off line that long! Currently much of the capability of the Edgarhorn/375 combination goes unused. The horn is a 1k Hz cutoff design and the 375 will go even lower than that. For now they are simply functioning as a super tweeter being crossed over with a 20k 1st order HPF to add a bit of sparkle to the 2150's LE5. Future additions of more SET amps and electronic crossover will allow experimenting to tune in just how much of the midrange the LE5 should cover vs. Edgarhorn/375 horn.

B³9 JBL speaker and Doc Bottlehead S.E.X. amp which powers it. Recently a scratch built 2A3 SET amp was completed adding to the tuning options.

The B³9 JBLs at home with Marantz 60" RPTV. The grills are cut from florescent light fixture covers and were selected mainly to protect the drivers from family room traffic. As a bonus they are as acoustically transparent as they are visually. As I became ever more enamored with the 2150 I realized it fit in perfectly with my desire to combine high end audio with new found enthusiasms for triode amps and home theater. Thus I obtained four more 2150 drivers to equip a complete surround sound system. Currently four are in use, the front channels shown above and two rear channels mounted on di-pole baffles. Experiments with a center channel 2150 are part of the project queue along with bi/tri-amping.

 Send your favorite nominations to be added to eXtreme Audio to ntracy@galstar.com. Looks like the fans of mini monitors, panel speakers and big solid state amps need to get some sites up, or at least let me know where they are! Thanks and enjoy.

  eXtreme Audio