Volt-8

I recently moved from the Klipsch RP Series to 1099s for my LCR and HT-8s for surrounds. I have two rows of seating but with very little space behind the back row and ceilings smaller than 8', I decided to just go with a pair of overheads for the front row for Atmos. I wanted to keep the depth to a minimum and a pair of sealed Volt's at a good price matched my needs. I didn't get them with flat packs, but building smaller custom sealed boxes for these with the drivers flush mounted was pretty simple. It's really hard to review just a pair of these for Atmos only, but I did do some testing with these listening to music in Multi-channel stereo mode and they sounded good seem to blend well with my existing afore mentioned speakers. My surround system is now complete with all DIYSG speakers and I'm extremely impressed. It was a big upgrade over my Klipsch series speakers and should have made the jump years ago.

I purchased one of these kits along with two angled Volt-6s. The Volt-8 is my center channel and the Volt-6s are my surrounds. I have a pair of BIC RTR-EV15s for my mains (and, effectively, subwoofers) and was looking to upgrade my old center channel, which was a low-efficiency design that just couldn't keep up with the BIC monsters. The Volt-8 is perfect of this purpose, and I think the coaxial design is awesome for a center channel because it allows for a compact cabinet that fits easily in my TV stand but still offers excellent off-axis performance so dialogue sounds good all around the room. I think it sounds very smooth in the midrange for the price point, so voices are natural and crisp. Unfortunately since I only built one of these, I never really got to put it through its paces for music, but I did listen to some stuff in mono when I assembled it for testing, pre-finish, and was very impressed. Obviously these don't play low, but the midbass kick was impressive. I painted them with Duratax, which worked great. Great speakers.

Obviously the packing, flatpacks, etc. were as good as I'd been lead to believe by reading about DIYSG on the forums.

My 1st try at speaker building. After following the instructions carefully, everything came together well. Was pleasantly surprised at how good they sound. The harsh treble that I was use to with my old Yamaha speakers is not there with the Volts after just a few hours of burn-in. They play louder that expected also and am just continually amazed at good they sound. They seem to get better with use. This kit comes the crossover board that is optional with some other kits. I highly recommend getting the board if it is optional because it makes the drivers and binding posts easy to connect. Have just ordered the HT 10s for 2nd go around and looking forward to the building process. Thanks to Eric and DIY sound group for great products and customer service.

Really impressed with the improvement in SQ while decreasing in size of enclosure. I went from some very large and extremely deep Polk LSI9 bookshelf speakers for surrounds. These kept the speakers twice as close to the wall which was a huge plus and the main reason I was looking to change my surrounds in the first place. I’m not sure how to rate the level of immersion in movies, but it’s almost as if I really didn’t have surround sound before and I thought the LSIs were pretty decent speakers. I’m considering upgrading my amp to feed them a little better!

These are really great sounding speakers. I truly enjoy them as stereo music listening as well (adding a subwoofer). I have used them as stereo speakers for music listening and truly enjoy them for that purpose as well. I am buying another 2 so i can set up my atmos in my theater room. Nothing comes near to beating these in terms of sound quality and bang for the buck.

I bought my 4 Volt 8 speakers along with my 3 Titans for my HT setup... While I was building my Titans I had not choice but to hook up my Volts as my mains until the Titans were complete.
I have to tell you, these sound amazing... I honestly thought a time or two that these could easily be used as mains in a normal sized room. Very crisp and detailed, they image well and have good mid-bass... enough to make ya jump when unexpected. I bought the flat packs and am glad I did, I had all four of these built in less than half a day...

Erich is a great guy to deal with and I will likely keep my future business exclusively with DIYSoundgroup for providing both a quality product and customer service.

I’m currently using 4 of these in columns as surrounds and back surrounds. They sound fantastic. Initially I was concerned about them fitting in my 6” deep columns and after talking with Matt and Erich, I proceeded. We watched several movies which use surrounds well and we love the experience. I am not sure of the technical term for this but the side surrounds sound great for both first and second row seating (bar table).

I purchased 4 of these for atmos duty in my theater. I have a fairly low ceiling at around 7.5 feet so off-axis response was even more important which is why I picked these over the volt 10s as they were slightly better. I also planned on powering these with my AVR as I didn't want to purchase 2 more amplifiers right away to power these. The rest of my 7.2.4 system is powered by external amps so I didn't expect the AVR would have any issues with these. I am currently using them in an infinate baffle (no box) setting. They are just screwed to a board and laying on top of a drop ceiling tile. So far, they have met all my expectations. They mix rather well with the volt 10s and my fusion 12s and fusion 8 center. Obviously they don't have quite the authority of the Fusion 12s but it is not noticeable unless you are really listening for it. Most flyover atmos sound where it would be noticeable is so quick it doesn't matter. There are no issues with them keeping up during demo sessions at reference level either with only the AVR since they are so efficient. Overall they are a fantastic value that doesn't break the bank.

Having been really pleased with the DIYSG 893s I built recently (see https://www.avforums.com/threads/diysg-893-easy-build.2142132/ for my build thread) I guess it was inevitable that I would go the extra mile and replace my already excellent XTZ S5s with some Version 2 Volts and boy am I glad I did.

My room is unusual in that I sit across the width rather than down the length and this means that my side surrounds are as far away (10 feet) as my mains so I needed something that could keep up with my 93db efficient 893s. My S5s with an efficiency rating of only 87db and which could only handle up to 150w were struggling to keep up with the 893s and their 400w capability. That’s where the Volt 8s came in, virtually identical efficiency and power handling to the 893s. My rear surrounds are only 4 feet away so I used a pair of angled Volt 6s for that.

The Volts were a big improvement over the S5s. They can now keep up with the 893s and throw a massive wall of sound around the entire room. Dolby’s ‘Amaze’ demo track has never sounded anything like as good as it does now. I have gained as much as when originally replacing my previous mains with the 893s which I find really surprising.

I ran the unfinished Volts in for about 50 hours each pair using the TV for a cross section of different material and like others have said in the past, these would make good mains (particularly the 8s) in a smallish room. The 6s in the angled enclosure are particularly good with speech without the need for any EQ. They both need a sub of course but the 8s alone would probably do for quite a lot of music that doesn’t have too much bass content. What I did notice though was that their sound character changed noticeably, they need a lot of running in. Used as back surrounds I doubt whether they would ever have been fully run-in! Perhaps they aren’t even now…

Post Dirac I love my 893 mains and what I never really realised before was that the XTZ cinema series I had previously, great as they were they just didn’t allow my DIY sub(s) to get into their stride. If I turned things up to a level where you could feel it in your chest, they over-powered the whole system. The 893s and Volts now allow me to get to that level.

The Volts blend perfectly with the 893s and once having got everything bedded in nicely I carried out a Dirac calibration of the whole setup. I’m still on my first calibration, it is just the default target line, but it is simply perfect for me. It is totally immersive. The Volt 8s revealed useful output in my room down to 50hz and the Volt 6s to 60hz.

I was always expecting good things of the 893s when I made the move to DIYSG and I wasn’t disappointed but I wasn’t quite expecting the difference that the Volts made. They’ve just brought everything together perfectly. I can’t recommend them highly enough!