Markaudio CHR-70-Gold Champagne Cone 4" Full Range

I bought a pair of these drivers & built some desktop/bookshelf cabinets for them from the plans available here. I am driving them with a Lepai LP-2020A+ amp. I added a powered subwoofer for additional bottom end. I am using them as near field monitors to listen to online music through my laptop. I am very impressed with the resulting sound. It is way better than the Klipsch 2.1 system that I was using previously. As good as these are for the modest price, it has me very curious about how good the higher priced Mark Audio drivers may sound. I feel another purchase coming soon.

Background, my experience level: I'm not an expert, but I've built a half dozen or so pairs of speakers over the years and made my way through the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook, so I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday either. :-)

There's a lot to love here, especially considering the low price. This is my first experiment with the new generation of full range drivers, and I've found them to be quite impressive! I was a bit nervous when I read that they are made in China. But it turns out that construction quality is quite good, despite the fact that the outer frame is made of plastic. Fit and finish seems excellent. The only quibble I have is that the clips which hold the electrical leads on are made of plastic, which is fine unless you like to solder your wires to your leads, as most people do. The heat from the soldering iron will travel up the lead and melt the plastic clips, making the operation rather tricky. It can be done, but you need to work quickly and have good soldering technique!

The drivers come with custom mounting screws and gaskets - nice touch!

Sound wise, they are simply delightful. I would say this driver's great strength is in reproducing human vocals. The human voice has a lot of harmonics in the same frequency range that is, unfortunately, the normal crossover range for many speakers. Crossovers are never good... even the best ones introduce phase issues, impedance wackiness, etc etc. Since these Markaudio drivers need no crossovers, all these issues can be avoided! As I said, the effect is most noticeable when listening to vocals. Not surprisingly, your ears and brain are extremely well adapted to listening to the nuances of the human voice. These drivers reproduce vocals better than any other speaker system I have heard.

They are excellent on the top end too - I think another reviewer said of a different Markaudio driver, that it makes a better tweeter than most tweeters. I would agree with that, in reference to the CHR-70A. Highs are crisp and detailed, and off-axis response is really great - just look at the graphs and you'll see what I mean.

On the low end? Well, you've got to remember this is a 4-inch driver, so adjust your expectations. I built a center channel and surrounds using this driver in about a 560 in sq box with a 3.5" long, 1.5" diameter port. This is really on the low side of what the manufacturer recommends for volume, but they still sound good. A tad boxy and constrained on the low end, but still quite nice.

I also used these to build a set of speakers for my daughter's bedroom. We used the Pensil R70.3 plans (Google it). These sound much better - obviously, the bass is not prodigious, but for little 4" drivers, it's amazing how much is there. The bass seems to roll off quite naturally and just generally speaking sounds good. And of course the vocal accuracy is icing on the cake. I think you would be very hard pressed to find a better pair of speakers for the very modest price!

I think my only mistake was in pairing these with my existing mains in my 5.1 system. I used a Seas Mimir kit for the mains. Frankly, the larger Seas drivers are much better suited to my large room (24x24 with 13' ceiling). I was on a budget and really wanted to see how the CHR-70As would perform. In retrospect, I can see the wisdom of those who recommend that the mains and the center channel all use the same drivers. The Seas and Markaudio drivers both sound great, but in different ways, and I think the effect is magnified because of the large room. One day I might change something out... I could either rebuild the center channel with the same Seas drivers, but that would mean losing the beautiful Mark vocals. Or, I could swap it all out with Mark's larger Alpair 10A drivers, but that would mean spending money and rebuilding everything. Decisions, decisions!