High Efficiency Speaker Asylum

Posted by Norman Bates (A) on August 26, 2007 at 21:50:58

In Reply to: RE: questions to norman bates posted by angeloitacare on August 25, 2007 at 04:57:31

Now I'm in a small apartment so I sold my fireworks system. And now it has to be pretty, and small, no more refridgerator speakers for me.

I never had the beyma horns.

I was thinking of the radian coaxes but came across a post telling of it (coax) not having the coherency of a full range driver, so I chose against them, but trying to get a friend to buy them. If the compression driver was time aligned, that I'd like to hear.

I like small setups now. An ideal setup now needs to sound dynamic and extreme intelligibility (coherency) all at 80db (not an easy requirement).

I had a pair of e-stats, accoustat spectra 11, the dispersion was so small it'd throw surround sound like no other. But 5' from the front wall was a pain, 80db 1w/1m, difficult 2ohm load in placed, and I was into flattening home theater then, so I sold them. If I had the room I'd also jump at $300 for a pair but they arc (went snap, crackle) at high volumes.

My favorite was 2x15" eminences a side, a tossup between the bowtie horn with a altec 291 vs. a more echo-y ev hp640 with dh1a (but I want the ev hr90 as that horn is soooooo clean and non echoy), then a piezo on top (crossed above its resonance). This also had 2 dual 18 push pull bins 6th order boosted (all actively crossed 24db/octave using 4 amplifiers). My kid said "You know when you told up not to turn it up? We realized this was for our protection, not the speakers." Lol

I had a large eminence w-bin but I stupidly used it as a sub (it hit 100hz and rolled off natually), but that 7ft2 of mouth felt more like a drum kick and bullet impact (run in a 3 way) than even my 4x15" with 4x18 subs, but there was no bass in front of it, but down the hallway or 10-15' away, you got pounded. Someday I'll build 100hz front horns.

I also had a lot of luck with an pioneer b20 crossed to the same piezo (motorola 1038a) at 5k (oh yea it was time aligned too, actively crossed). Excellent coherency with that one. But not much beef and bass would distort mids.

I tried the pioneer by itself later in life (with a 10 band eq) and it was a bit honky (somewhere along the way I got sensitive to that also, dang it). I removed 1/3 of the whizzer and about 2/3 honk went away but needed more eq, so my dumb butt cutt all the whizzer of and guess what ? No amout of eq could bring the highs back. I almost got 2 more of them and the phase plugs by planet10 but $50 for 2 phase plugs for 2 $25 speakers, my head couldn't wrap around that one.

I also had luck with 1 w3-971s on an open baffle (with a foam box behind it) but kept banging my head against the bass garbling it. Excellent intelligibility, best I've heard so far, but think 75db max. That dang setup has made me sensitive to boxiness or chestiness in male voices. I'd run my 3 way vega left of the tv and the little guy on the right with just enough vega volume to add some bass or turn up the tang band to add intelligibility to music.

I've had 3-way cerwin vega dx9's and recommend them in working condition for $300 as they kick tail, but they have to be cranked to sound best. 99db 1w/1m, they need 1 watt before they start to sound good. HAd a 1 watt tube console driving 1 once, damn james taylor sounded nice.

I played with ambiophonics, but that was a pain.

I also had 3 of the vega v12f (left, center, right), last of their home line. Seems the drivers in them are quite good and suprisingly deep bass, but vega designed the tweet waaaaayyyy too loud, best with 2 facecloths over the tweet. I sold 2 and blew the midrange in the other one (yea I listen loud with powerfull amplifiers). Think I'll use the 12 in the cabinet combined with something else someday or keep an eye for a replacement mid on ebay.

I've been on a huge full range driver kick lately.

Now I'm using an older yamaha 3 way (the ones sears used to sell, 3 way with an 8") with a disconnected tweeter (supposedly coming in at 13k or so). I put a better cap inline with the midrange, and added stuffing (and learned you can put too much in). Without the supertweet, listening to dvds was much easier on the ears (i should notch a ringing out of it but good enough for now). That firing diagonally from a wall combined with spaced 14g magnet wire (as speaker wire) and spaced 26g magnet wire (interconnect) driven by an old sansui g-6000 receiver (dang thing cost me $20 at goodwill and sounded vastly better than my new $800 yamaha dolby digital, grrrrrrrr).

Lately, I've been desperate to make something (anything !) so I've been looking at the scanspeak 9500 tweet (not so detailed so as to make your bad recordings unlistenable) after hearing some vienna acoustics baby grand beethovens and thinking "I can make something like that for less than that $3,500". Even descided on the scanspeak 5" http://www.madisound.com/pdf/scanspeak/15w_8530k01e.pdf
shorting rings, etc, etc, but $200 each, yikes. D'appolito diy would run more than $500, a bit much for an experiment for me.

I'm in process of getting a focused line array using 12 of those tang bands, maybe crossing at 100-200hz. I was thinking of the $30 that russel uses in his ids25 flat array, but I like my tang bands which have no dustcap.

So yea, I guess I've had a few over the years.

Norman