A whimsical Monitor 4.6 upgrade, with pics

Conradicles

Those look stupid good. Great work as always.

geoff727

Thank you all for the compliments, I really appreciate it!

They have had most of the day playing music to start to come back to life. Overall, my feelings about them are good. On the plus side, they are much more dynamic than I remember them being pre-upgrade. This doesn't surprise me, with the changes to the enclosure and vibration treatments in several areas. I get this impression across the whole frequency range.

Alongside this, I think the tweeters are behaving a lot better. It's difficult to say definitively, because I have them playing through my desktop system using the CD-ROM drive for CD's and Windows Media Player. They are in a rather harsh digital environment that is not conducive to good sound. In fact, the only way it could get worse is by switching to MP3's! But, this is where I had them before so the comparison is probably valid.

There is some papery chestiness in the lower midrange/upper bass. Usually, I opt for about 70% fill in the enclosures, and usually like lining the walls with Sonic Barrier or some other treatment. On these, I didn't do any of that, instead just using the original amount of polyfill. Again, this is a time/cost thing because these are now someone else's. However, I have a feeling that past listening experiences with polyfill and anti-reflection material for the midrange region would probably be valid for these too, and that those applications would yield the same 'cleaning up' of the midrange and mid-bass.

Overall, though, I am pleased with them. The increase in dynamic range alone makes them worth listening to.

G~

Nightfall

These and those RTA-12's you did a ways back REALLY wants me to get a pair of my speakers in your hands.

geoff727

Nightfall wrote: »

These and those RTA-12's you did a ways back REALLY wants me to get a pair of my speakers in your hands.

Hey thanks! Well, if you are in Colorado, maybe we can go have a beer at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest next month? I'm flying into Denver on the 10th.

Nightfall

geoff727 wrote: »

Hey thanks! Well, if you are in Colorado, maybe we can go have a beer at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest next month? I'm flying into Denver on the 10th.

That would be a lot of fun. I cook in a restaurant so I work every weekend, it's the busiest. Let me see what I can do, though. I'll PM you if I can get some time off. There are a few other CO members here that might be interested as well.

teekay0007

Awesome job - again! - Geoff, and I've come to expect nothing less from you. Those have got to be the nicest pair of Monitor 4.6s there ever was.

Thanks for sharing with us.

PolkieMan

Sir you did a very fine job of updating those 4.6, the carbon fiber was something that I never would have thought of, very nice.

j1mmy

+1... nicest pair on the planet. CF looks top notch.

geoff727

Thank you all again for the nice words.