rowuk
Been here a while!
Pain in the ass, ex-patriot yank living in the land of sauerkraut
Posts: 1,011
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Post by rowuk on Aug 16, 2013 12:31:56 GMT
Hi all, I have been out for a while with personal issues but still managed to get my new speakers finished: Eminence Deltalite 12" woofer BMS 1.4" horn driver modified Faital horn Infinity EMIT high energy tweeter my own custom Xover Transmissionline box with curved, sand filled sides. The amplifier is an EL34 PP UL design with a MOSFET driver stage. This will probably change soon as the new speakers do not need 40 Watts+. The plan is to build a 3 channel amp with each channel specifically chosen for the speaker driver intended. That means 5-8 Watts for the woofer, 1-3 watts for the midrange and tweeter. When the amp is finished, I will experiment with passive line level and/or MiniDSP. My record deck is a round marble slab with a top of the line Kenwood direct drive motor and modified platter (resonance dampening) The tone-arm I built using the Opus3 Cantus as inspiration. The wand is damped carbon fibre: Keep your Pron cumming.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2013 22:38:26 GMT
Very nice, I hope it gives you a lot of enjoyment.
They match your decor too!
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Post by madmac on Oct 15, 2013 17:00:42 GMT
I don 't understand why you use a horn in a speakersystem that's being used inside the house ? Plus both tweeters are not alined so the horn's sound reaches your ears first. Without an active filter with delay settings I believe their sound can never be balanced this way
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2013 20:10:54 GMT
There's a certain 'live' dynamic achievable with horns. Great pics - hope you get what you're aiming for.
Derek
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rowuk
Been here a while!
Pain in the ass, ex-patriot yank living in the land of sauerkraut
Posts: 1,011
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Post by rowuk on Jan 2, 2014 19:40:48 GMT
I don 't understand why you use a horn in a speakersystem that's being used inside the house ? Plus both tweeters are not alined so the horn's sound reaches your ears first. Without an active filter with delay settings I believe their sound can never be balanced this way Madmac, I think you should ask questions before making assumptions....... All three drivers are very precisely acoustically aligned - by ear and by microphone for my listening seat. This is not especially difficult to do with a bit of practice. When you get the alignment right, there is no going back. Millimeters count! The acoustic center of the horn is in the driver, not at the horn mouth. For reasons that I cannot explain, the acoustic center is NOT exactly at the driver or voice coils - with the woofer/mid it is slightly behind the voice coil and for the HF horn it is about 1.5cm behind the horn throat on the BMS drivers that I am using. The planar tweeter acoustic center is in fact at the diaphragm. In any case, alignment is not something that can be "eyeballed" - at least not with any speaker that I have ever used. No need for any delay - or an active crossover for that matter either. The miniDSP and a couple of other active solutions did not pass the "transparent enough" test anyway. That doesn't mean that they sounded bad, it just means that it wasn't as good as before without them. It did help me make some value decisions however with the voicing of the entire system. The miniDSP is an excellent tool to set up speakers quickly. I use a horn for specific sonic goals and am quite happy with the integration with the other drivers. I would also use a horn for frequencies from 100 - 1,000Hz if I had the space. The advantages are many - especially when interfacing into a real room. Talk is cheap though and unfortunately there is almost no qualified information available info on the internet on how this can/should work. I know of no "reasonable" mainstream forum discussions when it comes to horns as there only seems to be blind love or hate. I am interested in neither. No one talks about "Sound" or "Emotion" anyway - my primary reasons for audio in the first place. My 3 channel valve amps are almost done and they have the (passive) crossover built into them between the driver and output valves. No extra parts in the signal path. Pictures will come in the next couple of weeks. Derek, actually, the "dynamics" were not really part of my goal with the horns. The charm of a relatively simple, excellent 1-2 Watt amplifier and everything that can be accomplished sonically at that "low" power compared with the "issues" when you need much higher power were much more interesting to me. I have even used a headphone amplifier (like the Sunrise) with surprisingly good results (this is not my solution however). These horns sound so smooth and matched to the other drivers now that "electrostatic" descriptions are what I hear from my guests the most. I am very close to being able to live with this solution for a long time. A new preamp for my record playback and a buffered volume control are pretty much all that is left to do after the power amps are finally voiced.
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Post by PinkFloyd on Jan 2, 2014 21:34:37 GMT
Good to hear from you again Robin.... looking good
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Post by madmac on Jan 12, 2014 20:06:18 GMT
I don 't understand why you use a horn in a speakersystem that's being used inside the house ? Plus both tweeters are not alined so the horn's sound reaches your ears first. Without an active filter with delay settings I believe their sound can never be balanced this way Madmac, I think you should ask questions before making assumptions....... I don't make assumptions, I know my way around drivers from pro audio. That's why I made the delay remark. Pro X-overs have delay's to make the tops sonicly allign with the subs. So if I look at the ribbon tweeter, it provides extremely direct sound. Underneath you've got this massive horn which is more diffuse because of it's construction. So I can't imagine this set up sounds balanced. But still, my main question was "why the horn" so that has been answered
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rowuk
Been here a while!
Pain in the ass, ex-patriot yank living in the land of sauerkraut
Posts: 1,011
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Post by rowuk on Mar 29, 2014 18:48:43 GMT
Why this specific horn? Because it integrates well with the woofer/midrange, has the softness, clarity and presentation that in the context of my stereo creates the sound that I look for. I have had magnetostats, electrostats, full range drivers, multi way speaker systems. The changes have always been one at a time after identifying something that I was not completely content with. Many alternatives only lasted a couple of days, others years. Human voices, acoustic instruments, chamber music, symphony orchestras all have the "tone", "geometry" and cohesiveness that I enjoy. That is not to say that I am finished - there is just nothing currently that changing anything in my speakers could solve. The biggest advantage to high efficiency is that we have great control over the "sound" produced by each driver. It is not voodoo or magic - or distortion. Even changing the connection between the 8 and 16 ohm taps for a specific driver brings subtle nuances that can manipulate the final "big" result. It is "easier" to get a couple of watts optimised than trying to integrate more power than I could ever use. Burning off power in the crossover seems to be a pretty stupid way to get balance - especially with the increased difficulty of getting the most out of the driver. There is nothing "diffuse" about a properly integrated horn. There is also nothing "direct" about a properly integrated tweeter - regardless of technology. Granted, plugging the EMIT into a 200 watt solid state amplifier crossed over at 5K would change its usability in my context - that is why I do not do it. The horn has about 60° coverage in the frequency band that I use it in. The EMIT is used over 12K and has "more" coverage than that - which I specifically want. I am using a 6dB/8va crossover so the transition to the EMIT is very gentle without any noticable problems. In fact exactly the opposite is true - the presentation of that last octave stays remarkably out of the way. Pro audio horns that are digitally managed are not designed for reproduction of smallest musical details. They need to control directivity and to get some semblance of "flat" frequency response, they do not invest in getting the horn or driver sonically right - they simply equalize what they consider to be problems out. It is like a professional photographer spending a lot of time getting the lighting and mood for a shoot correct versus using Photoshop to "compensate" for lack of attention to detail. The artifacts are similar between the two disciplines, and they both have their "markets". Just for info, I have built a RH307 Super designed by Alex Kitic. This uses an old pentode as a pentode and gets remarkable results. About 9 watts of power, it needs a little over a volt to get that power. The remarkable thing since I finished it, I am listening to complete works instead of single movements or zapping around. I consider this to be a very welcome aspect of the stereo as a whole. Draw me into the music - don't bounce from one spectacular aspect to the next. Here is the link: rh-amps.blogspot.de/2013_09_01_archive.html
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rowuk
Been here a while!
Pain in the ass, ex-patriot yank living in the land of sauerkraut
Posts: 1,011
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Post by rowuk on Jul 6, 2014 13:56:28 GMT
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