88-Special

I have a pair of the 88 specials and absolutely LOVE them! I can't tell you how big of a fanboy I am of these speakers! I'm making a complete DIY Sound Group home theater setup that would include a 15 speaker atmos system using the anthem avm90 for processing.

Bought the 88 to use as a center between F15s. Couldn't fit a third F15. Since they share the WG and CD the sound is very similar once a xo to a sub is added. The horizontal coverage is better than expected. No problem covering a three seat couch 12 feet away.

An 88 for center channel duty matched up to a pair of F-12’s for R/L duty. It’s been almost a year and even my wife loves this speaker. The room isn’t that big and has its furniture challenges but there isn’t a bad seat in the room with the SEOS 15 horn.
Now I’m going to build four more for surrounds. Overkill, yes, but matched and again, SEOS 15 horns will provide an immersive experience.
Easily a $1200-1500 speaker at your local hi-fi store.
Oh, and easy to build, and plenty of opportunity to finish them off any way you like.

Purchased LCR. What a speaker! After about a week of break-in (on and off use) they settled into sounding awesome. Super detailed, with clear dialog and a super wide soundstage. These will be the perfect pairing for my 15" midbass and um18-22 full marty. Next on the list is pair of volt 6 v2's for surrounds. Great work!

(Posted on 7/26/17 from the old site)

I bought a pair of Tempest 12 kits and a Cinema 88 Special in 2014 (much apologies for my late review, Erich!). Three years later and I'm still ECSTATIC about how how well they perform. Everybody who has been to my house has been amazed at the sound quality. Multiple friends have been so impressed with my speakers that they decided to buy & build their own! The packaging was perfect and Erich is great to do business with.

My prior speaker building experience was assembling a kit from Parts-Express which included soldering a crossover. For these kits, assembling them is like getting new Lego kit; the building is more than half the fun! The crossover diagrams are easy to understand even for an inexperienced person. I built my own boxes for the 88 Special and Fusion 12's, but I love woodworking.

As for the 88 special, the dialogue in movies is infinitely better than my previous Polk CSi 3 and my friend's Polk CSi 5. The dispersion field is pretty nice too with the 15" waveguide. That was the main reason for the whole build. The seating configuration in my room is not ideal and I have two sofas nearly touching in the center. This results in a relatively wide seating area instead of having two rows. Unfortunately, this also means the dialogue sounds subdued when on the ends of the sofas. After upgrading to the 88 Special, there was a remarkable improvement in these seating positions and it has made it possible to still hear the dialogue when sitting in those off-center positions.

The 88 special is a great speaker and works very well when coupled with the Fusion 12 Tempests. Much thanks for the guys designing these speakers and Erich!

(Posted on 7/21/17 from the old site)

I've built fusion-12 tempests. I've built fusion-8 alchemys. I've even built Quarks.
I've also built more than my share of overnight sensations for friends and family. Now added to that list is a pair of 88-Specials.

I was a bit nervous recommending a pair of 88 Specials for mains use without a sub (I'm building these for an associate) because of the highish f3 of these speakers. I was wrong.

The closest speaker in the diysoundgroup lineup that sounds close to as good as this speaker is the fusion 12. In fact, the wider waveguide of the 88-Special actually gives it an edge on the tempest as far as imaging is concerned. The fusion 12 does noticeably dig deeper, however. That said, I would definitely not hesitate to use an L-C-R arrangement utilizing 3 88-Specials for HT use if timbre matching was a high priority. Even for a non-HT, traditional 2-channel music setup a pair of 88-Specials would be a viable route, though in either scenario an active sub is required to fill out the low end.

Testing these out in my living room has been absolutely devastating. I'm almost certain now that I must have made an error when I assembled my Fusion-8s because there really is a huge leap in performance between these two. Yes, I know the Fusion-8s are literally half the speaker these are, but technically speaking, the Fusion-8s are supposed to be the "better fit." Perhaps I over-stuffed my Fusion-8 enclosures...

This pair of 88-Specials is going to a largish space to provide background music (ran without a sub). I will cherish the weekend I will get to spend with these bad boys.

(Posted on 2/18/17 from the old site)

The flat pack makes these very easy to build. Do yourself a favor and get the crossover board from Matt. This speaker is much easier to drive than my previous speaker. Dialogue is very clear. I am hearing things I could never hear before. The large waveguide throws a nice wide sweet spot. One of the best upgrades I have done in a long time. Going to pair this with the cinema 10 max for my front pair.

(Posted on 9/5/16 from the old site)

You won't miss any dialogue with this speaker! I have it with a pair of Fusion Tempest. Its really, really good. I don't do sound measurements and that kind of nerdy stuff. I put in a DVD audio of Dire Straights-Money for Nothing and judge from that. This is by far the loudest I have ever been able to play that song, Thats how I judge!

The crossover is challenging to get it all on one small board and mounted inside. Keep in mind you can only fit it behind one the woofers. The horn is too deep and it can't bridge the brace between the woofers or the woofers will hit it.

(Posted on 8/21/16 from the old site)

This was my first DIY speaker build ... would have loved for the crossover to come pre built ... if your having reservations about DIY speakers this is really your only hurdle as the rest is pretty much a cake walk.

The Packaging was EXTREMELY well done! Couldn't have pictured it any better than how it was done.

The sound these speakers are able to reproduce is truly amazing ... Couldn't be happier with my decision to go with these DIY speakers .... Only con in my opinion is having to build the crossover .... granted once you figure it all out you won't be disappointed with the quality of the sound these speakers can reproduce!

(Posted on 1/26/16 from the old site)

I really wanted the Seos 15/ Denovo 360 combo for my center channel to provide the widest possible sweetspot, so that all listening positions are covered. This speaker really delivers, from subtle details to bombastic sound effects. This is as close as you can get to an upright design center while avoiding many of the traditional center pitfalls (lobing and sound nulls). The waveguide is a work of art, and just looks cool which matters to me. I paired this center with the Cinema 8's and Volt 8's for a perfect envelopment of sound.

(Posted on 1/22/15 from the old site)

I have purchased four of these speakers. Each will be used for surrounds.

I had never heard these speakers before purchasing, but had heard many other DIYSG offerings (a few of which were designed by Jeff Bagby).

The Cinema 88's narrow depth of their cabinet was excellent for wall mounting, the wide 15" waveguide is great for dispersion/room coverage, and the high sensitivity was high enough to keep up with my fully horn loaded very high sensitivity front stage.

I have the ability to build cabinets, but the flat packs were well worth the little extra money to save time and effort of buying my own supplies and cutting material. The flat packs glued up easily and I used about 10 clamps per box as I glued each piece of the flat pack at once and left the glue to dry overnight (overkill as 2 hours is usually enough cure time for the glue I used). Even though the MDF will fail before the glue, I still used some brad nails to help secure the flat pack cabinet. I also drilled the pilot holes for speaker terminals and secured the terminals in the box. I did use the terminals from DIYSG.

I was a virgin to building crossovers, but some quick googling to understand the crossover schematic was all it took to pick up the various crossover components and get to work. I went to a local craft store and picked up 4” wide, ¼” thick, 4 feet long piece of plywood for $1. I cut this board to size, and placed the crossover components on a piece of the plywood for soldering and assembly.

After assembling the flat pack and crossovers, I used some Dacron to line the entire box (about 2 layers). However, I put no Dacron on the bottom sides where the ports are located. Jeff Bagby has said in forums that he used Dacron in a limited capacity on ported enclosures. I did the same since he was the designer of these speakers. I may experiment by adding some polyfil to the cabinets in the future, but at this point, I am just sticking with the Dacron.

After having the box ready, I rested the included baffle on the box and did a dry fit of the waveguide and woofers. I wanted to see where I could fit the crossover and make sure there were no other issues.

I ended up screwing the crossover board I made to the back wall of the box behind the right woofer. I used a piece of the packing foam in the shipping box to keep the crossover board floating off the back of the speaker box. So, the crossover board is on the foam, the foam is on the box, and the screw goes through the crossover board, through the foam, through the Dacron, and in to the back inside of box. One screw in the middle of the board keeps the board tight and wiggle free. The foam makes sure there will be no vibrations of wood on wood. There is no evidence of the screw on the outside of the box.

While doing the dry fit of the waveguides, each waveguide were unable to fit in the baffles. No matter which way I rotated the waveguide, it just was not going to fit (even if I hammered it). So, I grabbed some gritty sandpaper and sanded around the rounded corners of the baffle where the waveguide was hitting. This probably added an extra 2 minutes of build time per speaker. After the sanding, the waveguides fit in the baffle very tightly (still needed some elbow grease to get them in, but that was because I preferred a tight fit. I could have sanded more to loosen things up...)

Now that everything was fitting, I assembled the waveguide and driver, hooked up all the internal wires to each driver and placed the woofers and waveguide in the baffle. At this point, the baffle is just lying on the box with the drivers connected to the each other, the crossover board, and the speaker terminals. I then hooked up the speakers for a test run. During the test runs, I began smiling as I had assembled my first speakers and crossovers. Also, everything sounded great even in this dry-run-test configuration.

After the test run, I unhooked and removed the drivers and woofers from the baffle. I then glued and clamped the baffle on to the box and let the box sit for the glue to cure. After curing, I again added some brad nails.

At this point, all I had to do was add the gasket tape, hook the drivers back up to the internal wires, solder the wires to the drivers, and screw the waveguide and drivers to the baffle (please make sure to create pilot holes for your screws). Also, follow DIYSG’s advice and shield the driver while screwing. You do not want to accidentally put a hole in the driver surround or cone.

I hooked up the fully assembled speakers as an L & R for testing purposes. The clarity, detail, and dynamics were excellent. I would have no problem using them as mains (with subs), so they are going to be excellent for surround duty.

These speakers provide the low crossover point that the 15" waveguide offers (great for directivity), a high sensitivity, and an excellent sound quality that all fit in a fairly small box. Unless you don't want to use subs or have enough room for another speaker that uses the 15" waveguide, I see no reason not to get these speakers over the other current DIYSG offerings.

Thanks Erich and Jeff.

(Posted on 1/2/15 from the old site)

I needed a shallow center speaker that could blend well with the fusion 15v2 so I decided on the Cinema 88 special.

I previously owned a Dynaudio Contour Center speaker which is quite high end and expensive. Besides being too deep for my remodelling of my theater it didn't have the dynamic impact movies demand. I was a bit dubious switching out this essencially 15 times more expensive speaker! So I kept it while I listened to the Cinema 88 special.

They sound remarkebly similar! However in the movie "Hurt Locker" the barret gunshots are much more dynamic. Nearing reference levels the Dynaudio went out of steam whereas the 88 special keeps going.

The Dynaudio is now sold and I am currently building fusion 15's.

Highly recommended. Are there better speakers out there? Probably but the price will be 10x for this performance.

(Posted on 12/18/14 from the old site)

I built 3 of these bad boys to replace 3 Elite 3 way in-wall speakers that were used for my LCR. My AT screen was only about 7" away from the wall and I could only move the screen out an additional 6" without major modifications so I was limited to a shallow cabinet. Finding these was fantastic as is DIYSG and the customer service you receive from Erich.

The speakers went together very fast and the wiring diagram was easy enough to follow for a virgin builder. I had hardly any trouble configuring the layout and soldering the crossover board.
Once all 3 were completed and hooked up I was immediately blown away by their clarity and elevated loudness.

I was a bit reluctant about making this purchase since I was unable to give them a listen and was only going by what I had gleaned from the internet. Well I can now say that it was very good decision and an incredible experience with the fantastic benefit of getting some amazing speakers.

Thanks so much DIYSG, Erich and Jeff B.

(Posted on 10/27/14 from the old site)

Let me start by echoing the majority in saying that Erich should be commended for his tireless effort to our "community" of audiogeeks looking for value in speakers.

I'm also not going to make comparisons to other speakers, as I don't believe that such comparisons are relevant/accurate. I will say this- I went from using B&W 601 S3 for LR and a LCR60 for center, and am currently running LR Special 88 with Phantom center (until I purchase the third 88)- and the impression from anyone who has experienced the new system is very positive. All the usual comments- very detailed and crisp, non-fatiguing at volume, etc.

The kit was easy to put together, I used clamps and Titebond III, and placed Neutrik SP4 metal connectors with the accessory airtight rubber seals on the side so that they could be wall mounted. I'm using Hangman "French Cleats" to wallmount them an inch below the fixed screen frame.
A recessed pair of 5way binding posts recessed into the back would have been better looking but I hope to be running these behind an AT screen in the not too distant future and appreciate the simplicity of the Speakon when it comes to disconnecting/reconnecting the speakers.

Crossover is pretty easy to build- I had never done this but didn't have any problems.

Two fabrication notes- one SEOS-15 had just a tad too much material around its perimeter to make it into the CNC flushmount- a little light sanding with a file on the backside of the WG took care of it- the second SEOS/cabinet didn't suffer this problem. Second- I used 1" acoustic "eggcrate" foam to line the cabinet- this makes the ports a little difficult to install- they cam a bit as the foam pushes the port- I will/would omit the foam from between the side of the port and the cabinet wall in the future, as taking a deadblow hammer to the ports caused them to break at their flange. Conversely, a little epoxy and a clamp under the flange on the baffle would have been smarter than my "beat it to death" technique.

I appreciate the 13" distance between the bottom of the cabinet and the center of the WG- this will allow me to position the entire speaker inside my AT screen's frame and have the WG at ear-height- you'd have to step down to a Fusion Alchemy-8 and its EOS-8 to get the same bottom:WG span in a more traditional offering.

If you have room for the Sentinels then they are likely a superior speaker (though ignorance is bliss), but the 88's unique form factor fit where many comparable speakers would not and only give up <80hz performance to the vastly larger and less flexible speakers.

I'll update as I add more 88's to the front soundstage.

(Posted on 9/18/14 from the old site)

This was my very first DIY speaker build. I had upgraded from Polk Monitor 60s and a CS10. The build was very straight forward and with a little help from google I was able to put together the crossover without much trouble.

The speaker is outstanding. I don't have them in the ideal place but the soundstage is fantastic. There is not a dull spot in the room even in the back row where I had trouble with the Polks hitting a sweet spot back there. I really don't have much to compare them to but they blow my polks out of the water. I plan on building the Volt 8 or 10s when it comes closer to finishing new house.

Great job Erich and Jeff!

(Posted on 7/12/14 from the old site)

This is a special DIY project and I am very glad I put 3 of these in the front of my theater. The drivers, crossover, and flat packs come together perfectly. Someone really nailed the design and execution on this.
The high sensitivity means your normal receiver will get these things to play much louder than you would think. Huge clear dynamics are the norm with these.
I am most impressed with how clear the speakers are from very soft levels all the way up to concert level volume. The voices come thru clearly. My theater is 12x16 and the sweet spot is the whole room now, every seat sounds great.
I initially was thinking this design with the SEOS 15 on it may have too much treble and rip your head off highs, that is not the case. These are balanced and smooth. I have not needed to EQ these speakers to make them sound good. The voicing of this speaker is spot on.
Allow some break in time for these speakers to come to life for you. The woofers start off pretty stiff but will loosen up. The snappy bass just gets better and better.
This is a LCR speaker that makes you forget you are listening to a speaker and just focus on the content being played.

(Posted on 7/4/14 from the old site)

I bought this as a replacement for one of my "Cheap Thrills" LCR speakers I had previously built because it was a little huge and awkward for my non-dedicated listening space as I am using a Plasma TV and not an AT screen and projector. It functions as an awesome center channel speaker. The hf throw from the SEOS 15 creates a huge sweet spot making all the seats in my space the "listening position" and the lower cross to the DNA-360 makes dialog extremely clear, even more so than my SEOS 12 equipped Cheap Thrills. This would make an ideal center channel for any SEOS speaker.....sounds great and fits much better under my TV than my previous center did and is just as capable (high praise as the Cheap Thrill is no slouch with a massive 15" Midrange/Woofer). Also, this speaker would make an awesome boombox.....super efficient and capable! The bass this speaker dishes out was impressive; might not be too suitable for dubstep, or other EDM, but works great from about 40hz up as long as you aren't throwing 500 watts at it. I'm almost tempted to use these for my LCR as they pack so much into such a small package......just awesome!