|
Post by MartinT on Feb 29, 2024 13:44:26 GMT
Steve, I'm confused by the outside versus inside views.
Where does the sound from the Eminence woofer exit?
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Feb 29, 2024 15:50:14 GMT
Steve, I'm confused by the outside versus inside views. Where does the sound from the Eminence woofer exit? It exits directly through the 2 larger taps on the front pyramid into the horn, 1/4 wavelength (at crossover frequency), from the horn throat. See markup pic (now sporting resonance deadening bitumen sheet). Plus... the rear cone excusion bass (bass reflex) exits either side through ports. Right hand shown, there's another one on the left hand side. Again the distance is carefully thought out, but this time the correct distance from the mouth, to max the effectiveness of the bass as a reflex set up. There's neatly no rear or side ports, so easy on room integration. The distances involved give very minimal time lag at speed of sound 340m/s. The cohesiveness is reported to be akin to a small bookshelf speaker but with MORE of everything. It's a very clever design. The bitumen sheet really kills ringing on the knock test. Only had scraps left from previous job, so but patchwork. The soundwaves won't care🙂 I've made the cover out of thinner plywood I had left over, but with a deadening sheet in the middle of the laminate it's very inert. Deader than thick MDF or birchply even! I've found some interesting Danley Synergy posts and videos on Instagram. Fun seeing these being used in fields, concert halls, larger salons. I shall be tickling them in my listening room🎶😁 When we move to France, I shall have a huge banquet hall with these😂 if they sound good that it's.
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Feb 29, 2024 16:12:31 GMT
Fook, that'll be loud and punchy In the wild A medium size room Do you think he's a bit deaf now?!🙂 More hifi Hifi setting - note the Crown amp!
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Feb 29, 2024 17:09:00 GMT
Thanks, now I can visualise the paths.
Very clever out-of-the-box thinking, in more ways than one.
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 1, 2024 9:40:44 GMT
Took longer to get the final fitting, bracing, wadding in, wiring up etc than you'd think. All went smoothly though. Got it in place last night. At the moment it's at the same in the room position as the other side. This one will go back 80+cm more if I want! Will one square horn replace 3 round ones and a tweeter? We'll see today.. Measuring mic will be my friend. X/Os are more or less mapped out by the 1/4 wavelength to frequency dictates. If I really like it, I think I'll build a SM60F / ERS1 alike for the other side to see. Those are with 1 coaxial HF/MF and 2 X 8" woofs. Even more room friendly. I am very happy with the twin tapped horn bass 100Hz down to sub 20Hz. So no change planned there. I've learn a lot, and making them is no real problem. I think I'll use quality OSB next time. Chipboard had been super easy to work with and takes screws much better than MDF (which most speakers are made of..). Bitumen lining chipboard certainly gets the resonance way down! OSB takes screws even better, it's cheap and once lined / braced would work fine too. Gonna be fun today!
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 1, 2024 15:09:02 GMT
The moment is truth! I did a quick dial in, very easy to do in Najda DSP. Set up the X/Os, quick time / phase alignment to the tapped horn. Dialed in the SPLs. Notch PEQ on the BMS 4550 at 2200Hz I will spend much time dialling in, trying different X/O slopes. Aiming for nice phase plot. Quick setup plot from the listening position. (Ignore the 25Hz bump, that's the tapped horn - it's the way I like it, gives huge scale and energy to church organ and electronica etc 🙂). The trail off of HF really isn't noticeable from the chair either! There's relatively speaking plenty of HF action, for me! So, how did it compare? Very interesting! Listening in mono, one side to the other, the sound coverage of the room is amazing. You get the pretty much the same sound no matter where you are! Not so the old 5 way side! It's the listening chair, or nowhere! I had to boost the mid bass SPL to get better balance and more drive, to my taste. The Crown amp and Kappa 12A are up to the job. It's not a bad sound at all! I could tell by how easy it was to dial in and how flat the individual drivers frequency responses were, that it would be promising from the off. Funny how you can tell something will sound okay from hearing the frequency sweeps - when you've heard enough I guess🙂 Surprising balanced and detailed overall impression. Mid bass is good, not slow or bloated, fast and nice timbre. I guess the mid drivers are not run in? They sound pretty good though. Not in your face, or too passive. The HF driver, do compression drivers run in? It actually competes with the 5 way side very well. I would like to build a SM60F style next.. Even more hifi room friendly! Just got to finalise an elegant way to channel HF / MF from the coaxial driver. I will now spend time dialling and positioning, whist I plot/ plan the SM60 alike. Questions: should the woofer sealed rear chamber volume be the same if you only use one driver? What X/O slopes would sound best? I started with 8th order LF high pass (matches the tapped horn), 4th order all else? These are things I will no doubt find the answer to.
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 1, 2024 18:16:19 GMT
After an afternoon of playing the new drivers are sounding better.
Lots of fun voicing the Synergy side to sound more how I like it, though it's a moving target as they break in.
LH old vs RH new is interesting. I used mono tracks. Some things I prefer off the old.. Some things are wow on the new!
Will have different voicing no matter what, but it's getting closer.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Mar 1, 2024 18:51:08 GMT
Are you listening before having created the sealed chamber for the woofer? Doesn't that dramatically affect the balance?
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 2, 2024 18:07:08 GMT
Are you listening before having created the sealed chamber for the woofer? Doesn't that dramatically affect the balance? I made the rear reflex enclosure before listening. The new drivers really did take breaking in well. Still a way to go yet though. I've now moved it right back to the corner farthest away from me. Nearly 5m! I like it more, the bass instantly extended to 50Hz! That's corner loading for you! I played around with the X/Os some more. Apparently with a Synergy you have to phase align with the mic at 1m from mouth. Will do that this evening. Don't know which side I prefer now? Will build another to have a pair to see. Can always sell to some headbanger if it doesn't work out..😂
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 3, 2024 22:53:47 GMT
Wood procured for 2nd Synergy horn. Princely sub of £30! I even had time to cut the 4 pyramid sides out! Today's tweaking was derived by some excellent expert advice from a DIYaudio'er. The full procedure he'd posted up here too. community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/182419-subconscious-auditory-effects-of-quasi-linear-phase-loudspeakers/page/4/#comment-2388972Here's what he wrote to me "The good thing about MEHs is that a simple set of first order crossover filters--that uses the first cancellation (notch frequency) of the lower frequency drivers as the low pass crossover frequency--will always provide time-aligned settings that is a hallmark of the MEHs that Tom Danley promotes ("unity summation aperture"). First order MEH crossover settings produce a quasi-linear phase response (or should I say "minimum phase response" in the case of MEHs) of the lower frequency drivers mounted to the horn (midranges, woofers) without the creation of significant excess phase (all-pass) or large spikes and delay offsets in the excess group delay plot--all of which are audible. They actually need the 90 degrees of phase shift of a first order set of filters to time align the lower frequency drivers, which are closer to the listener, to the higher frequency driver." I understand most of this😀 I've implemented it pretty well. My phase plot is flatter with one peak.. more work required. Damn this design is clever! The sound going from standard 2nd or 4th order X/Os I'd been using before is night and day. This new setup makes the old one, I thought was pretty good, sound just terrible! Amazing progress!
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 4, 2024 7:15:09 GMT
Some more musings on the synergy design:
"The synergy magic ime/ime, is the tight 1/4 wave integration of driver sections. Acoustic close-coupling is truly magic...bless Tom D."
"Reading Tom D's posts it seems the synergy speakers work by pushing the drivers together using acoustic 4th order slopes. These slopes are achieved without using 'conventional named' slopes, ie slopes that introduce phase shift through the xo region. This agrees with Chris's posts regarding 1st order slopes."
Last night I measured each driver with no X/O's in Najda! Sure enough there is the effect of X/Os more or less where you want them, thanks to the above design! Tried 1st order only and it was a huge improvement.
Today I will try only PEQ filters in the right places to assist/shape the acoustic 4th order slopes and see.
This getting away from phase shifting X/Os is intriguing!
The audible difference is palpable. There I was chucking in steep slopes cos' that's what you do, when the design has already done the heavy lifting!
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Mar 4, 2024 9:55:21 GMT
It's an intriguing design, alright. Perhaps a rainy day's experimentation in the offing after moving house. I could always rent a pair.
Since the design is so very coherent, what are your thoughts on the very best drivers available to take best advantage of it, in terms of fine resolution of detail?
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 4, 2024 16:45:44 GMT
Yes, renting would be one way to test. Don't think you could rent HRE1s - there is a dealer I know who is very enamoured with them (doesn't stock normally though it seems). Being a $46000 a pair outlay $🙂$
I've seen various unity and MEH builds with all sorts of drivers. Even TAD2001.
I'd use my Vitavox S2s if I could, but being 1.5" throat they play too deep and not high enough, they would require a tweeter, and that kinda defeats the whole object..
I'd try the SM60Fs, has the same 1" / 5" cone coaxial, as the HRE1s (more domestic hi-end offering).
That said there's not much wrong with the BMS 4550 HF sound. It's not accurate and clean than the S2 but just as fast and detailed.
I'll know more once I have a pair of Synergy's.
Listening A / B old horns to Synergy (now it's getting more dialled), I'm liking that side more and more..
I've assembled the 2nd pyramid, mouth flares go on tomorrow..
|
|
|
Post by mattspl on Mar 4, 2024 19:45:24 GMT
Looking very promising and really impressive how quickly you produced your idea. I look forward to the 2nd one.
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 4, 2024 21:30:46 GMT
Thanks Matt. Labour of love🙂 With help from Synergy set up experts, I'm getting closer to a target less than 45° phase change over the 3 ways of the Synergy horn. Can't rid myself yet of the big dip bottoming at 3KHz though. The change in refinement I'm hearing (just draws you into the music effortlessly), this is producing is quite profound! How Tom Danley does all that in passive XO world I'll never know.. I don't have his exact mid range or bass drivers though - might account for some of it - esp the LF rise.. The MF is well behaved now When you compare this to other multiway systems and not just horns by the way, the phase shifts are huge on them! - clean off the chart, top and bottom, wrapping around over and over. This coherence / symbiosis of driver cooperation is what I'm hearing.
|
|
|
Post by julesd68 on Mar 5, 2024 10:34:05 GMT
Full of admiration for your skills Steve, but sadly I haven't a scooby what you are doing.
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 6, 2024 7:40:33 GMT
Reading up on the HRE1 system..
"Tom's relatively recent four way HRE1 designed for home theaters uses four amp channels and FIR DSP."
I can understand why. Active is good. From what I've read FIR implements any type of crossover, frequency control etc without messing up phase - "linear phase xovers do not introduce any phase rotations, at any order. They introduce excess fixed time latency, like time of flight, instead."
My Najda DSP XO can do FIR. The lower the frequency the more FIR taps required. It does not have enough processor power for sub woofer control, but the 1024 taps available could be enough for the 3 way synergy.
I've always wanted to explore this..
Once the 2nd horn is made and in, if I like the signature of the sound, this would be something I'll explore.
It's not getting any simpler for the grey matter it's it😀
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Mar 6, 2024 8:16:20 GMT
It's not getting any simpler for the grey matter it's it😀 Keeps you thinking and experimenting = young.
|
|
|
Post by mattspl on Mar 6, 2024 21:44:55 GMT
|
|
|
Post by speedysteve on Mar 6, 2024 23:22:10 GMT
|
|