I've been really impressed with the capability of the Lepai TA2020 amplifiers. Inexpensive, pretty good quality, portable. I gave one to a friend for his desktop speakers, and he was pretty impressed. He suggested that it would be cool to have a semi portable system based on the Lepai. Speakers that could be moved to the bedroom for kid gaming, the back yard or possibly for business presentations. I looked through my inventory of smaller drivers, and found 8 of the 830856 Peerless. They modeled well in a small box, are fairly durable (poly cones, no phase plug) so they became the woofer. The Lepai does seem comfortable with 4 ohm loads. I also had the Vifa's on hand and, based on using the woofer in Xavier's HT Mains I wanted something that could get down to 2000 in a pinch.

I wanted to keep the crossover simple as these were not designed for "critical listening". I came up with a 5 component crossover (only the red resistor is real) The woofer coil is 18 ga, the tweeter 20ga. It's what I had in the coil box. The result is very listenable with a bit of BBC dip, and voiced to the "sweet" side. The woofers do a solid job on bass & mids. The crossover is about 2700. The tweeter is pretty nice for $7. Like a lot of small neo's, padding is twitchy. I wound up on the darker side with this voicing. Giving up some of the ultimate sizzle to get rid of some edginess when pushed. The presentation is a bit darker than some designs I've done, but it ought to be more listenable with synthetic sound from games and badly mastered MP3's. My guess is about 87 db senstivity. I picked up a couple of drawer pulls at the big box store to make them easier to move, carry or hang. A couple roller coats of Duratex and they are ready for service. They will get some durable grills down the road.