Fidelio with Fostex Sigma 208s by Craig Schmidt Is there a life after Lowther? A lot of people say there isn’t. Hell, I don’t know. I have never even heard them let alone own a pair. Never the less, Lowther and James Melhuish’s websites are responsible for me getting involved in the full range driver/DIY part of this hobby. Deciding what to build was a problem because I am basically cheap and this stuff is expensive. After careful study I decided to build the Fidelio cabinet (a Lowther designed horn) and I would use a pair of the Lowther DX2 drivers. For those of you out there in audio land; do not make a horn cabinet your first project unless you are into angst or woodworking is your forte. They are difficult to construct and take a lot of time. I know. It took me three months. I won’t go into detail about the construction but I did do some things differently. First, I used solid poplar for the interior of the cab. This gave me a nice smooth surface on both sides of the pieces. Horn surfaces must be smooth. Solid poplar was much easier to screw together than plywood. Second; I used Deflex material behind the driver. This semi liquid/semi solid stuff is supposed to lessen the creation of standing waves (which are a no no). I did not recess the driver as the plan calls for because I decided to try Fostex drivers (which are deeper than Lowthers and would not fit the cabinet if recessed). Lastly, I filled all voids with lead shot and sand. As the cabinets were nearing their completion I knew I would need to get drivers. The Fostex 208 Sigmas looked interesting. They are designed for horns and the price was right. I did not expect them to equal the Lowthers but hey; this was a fun/experimental type of project. The cost for the 208s was about three hundred and fifty dollars. That’s less than half of the DX2s. I decided to take a chance. You can now purchase these drivers (but not their entire line which is a shame) in the USA. When the units arrived I was amazed at the build quality of these beauties. The frames appear to be cast aluminum. The magnets are huge and the efficiency rating is a high 96 dB. They come with a nice gasket for sealing the driver to the cabinet and even come with eight screws per driver. That’s right, eight holes instead of four. When mounted it’s as sturdy as you can get. With the drivers installed, my wife and I lugged the hundred and two pound beasts into the listening room (she’s still cursing me and I don’t blame her—THEY ARE HEAVY). Since reading that full range drivers need a lot of break-in time (but not really believing it) I figured I would hook up an old transistor amp (why waste my tubes) to my new creations. I would let them run for a while and just not really listen to them (yeah right). When I first turned them on I was horrified. They sounded like a little hand held transistor radio. I stamped around the room like a mad man until my wife said, "why don’t you let them warm up". Isn’t she sweet? So realizing that they did really need some breaking in, I left them on and went out for the rest for the day. When I came back things were much better. There was now some bass and much less brittleness (for lack of a better term). As time went on the sound improved to the point where it was time to hook up my little giant killer power amps. The Electronic Tonalities Parasex mono blocks are real sleepers. They are so reasonably priced I almost passed them by. At a massive five watts per channel they are perfect for horns. So, after a few weeks, how do these speakers sound? Well, first off, no speaker is perfect and these are no exception. The good points first. The midrange (where most of the music is) sounds impressive. There is quite a lot of detail and is very clear. If you are switching from a standard type of loudspeaker to a horn loaded full range single driver, be prepared to listen to every piece of recorded music that you own. I can hear things in every record and disk that I did not notice before! It’s like getting a new record collection. Information that I have read, about horns, suggest that there is no real bass available. I do not agree. There is ample bass, not excessive like a lot of speakers. The soundstage presented by these monsters (they are big) is great. They produce an excellent illusion of whatever you are playing. I feel this is the most important aspect of whatever loudspeaker you use. It has to be able to fake you out with a good illusion of reality. If your speaker can’t do that forget about critical listening. Ok! What are the drawbacks? These drivers do beam. They are not as bad as a Quad but there is definitely a sweet spot. It’s just a little wider than most beamers. Angling them towards your ears helps a lot. These drivers probably don’t have the high frequency extension that others might have. It doesn’t bother me but it might bother you. Probably the Lowthers would work better in this area, hell maybe in every area! Being a new kid on the horn loaded loudspeaker block, I have learned that you need quiet electronics with highly efficient loudspeakers! When you listen at low volume levels (especially at night when there is much less normal/daily noise) you will hear any hiss or hum. For me this is very distracting. When using my transistor amp, which for years I thought was dead quiet, had an awful hiss. Whenever the music stopped or became very low in level, there was that hiss snapping me right out of my illusion and back to the real world. The Parasex amps do not do this. They are hiss free and hum free. Another negative aspect; you need to fool around with positioning to get the best sound. This is a drag because of the weight and because these speakers were designed to be placed in corners. There is not much room to groove so to speak! Moving them just a little bit changed the bass and the imaging. The last drawback is; as good as I feel these loudspeakers sound, if you can afford the Lowthers, they would probably sound even better. After all the cabinets were designed for that driver. As I said I am cheap. Sometimes that can be good. In this case, for me, it was. Top