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Post by speedysteve on Apr 20, 2023 17:11:04 GMT
Are your lathes getting bored, Steve? No, I regularly turn counterweights, tonearm replacement pieces and ebony / African Blackwood armboards, for various record decks, among other things.
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Post by speedysteve on Apr 26, 2023 22:36:13 GMT
The horns I'm going to build will be 1.7m long and reach down to 52Hz. That's low for straight horns.
Only need a single deep bass horn / tapped horn below that, really.
Switched to Tidal to try it. I'm not trying MQA btw.. I'm sure they are not standing still development wise regarding their streaming platform.
So far no glitches in Bubble/Ultrarendu/Gustard.
Once I'd upped the volume levels of the upper mid horns and tweeter channels a dB here or there, the sound quality / tonal balance is actually very good indeed. It's a slightly less in your face presentation than Qobuz, and that actually reveals as much if not more on some tracks.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 27, 2023 7:08:52 GMT
The horns I'm going to build will be 1.7m long and reach down to 52Hz. That's a BIG horn. I hope we'll see construction photos once you start?
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Post by speedysteve on Apr 29, 2023 17:25:48 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Apr 29, 2023 17:28:31 GMT
Where do you get a 'woffer' from, then?
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Post by speedysteve on Apr 29, 2023 18:11:39 GMT
At them there Woffer stores
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Post by speedysteve on May 5, 2023 21:17:34 GMT
We were at a gig on Wednesday. Small to Medium sized theatre venue, I guess you'd say. Sound reinforcement, Horn arrays, not sure about the bass bins / scoops as they were in the dark, no tapped horns though🙂 Treble was a bit harsh at times, probably JBL2435s or similar, mid bass to bass was a bit muddy. Down to 40Hz. Gobs of kick and relentless punch in the chest though. That said, it wasn't too loud👍
Okay for live, your eyes see and your brain fills lots in, I think.
On another bass / mid bass chat forum, consensus was anything over 10ft from the bass horn mouths was in punch/kick territory. Closer and you get pretty polite!
Got me thinking...
This evening at home we moved the seating position from about 10ft away from the mid bass horn mouths to over 13ft! Toed the horns out accordingly to keep the image width and re-time aligned.
Def more midbass / kick / bass punch!
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Post by MartinT on May 5, 2023 21:58:20 GMT
I didn't think you had much room left behind you to move?
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Post by MikeMusic on May 6, 2023 9:03:20 GMT
He's outside the door on the stairs !
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Post by speedysteve on May 6, 2023 11:59:35 GMT
Just means the office / tennis stringing / soldering station area is cosier. Still plenty of room behind me.
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Post by speedysteve on May 6, 2023 20:29:54 GMT
Interesting cause and effect going on.
Sitting further away, toeing out accordingly has given rise to a bit more SPL, even slight harshness 😱 noticeable in the upper frequencies. I suppose it's more distance for the tweeters and the upper freq horns to merge their waves before they reach the ears? Sitting closer they function less as a unit - more individually?
To fix this I've swapped out the 3uF caps (1st order X/O), on the Vitavox S2 compression drivers, for the softest sounding ones I have (also the most expensive).
I also changed the X/O cross in point on the Raal Lazy ribbon tweeters, raising it from 11500Hz to 12100Hz, (they are also 1st order). This way they overlap the S2s slightly let = slightly less SPL.
I will try them on 2nd order Linkwitz-Riley later on. I made the inductors for this some time ago, and have the caps still if course, but went back to good old faithful 1st order after trialling.
It's sounding mighty fine across all material. Noticeably more kick drum to rock and the like, which underpins the rhythm, but I'm also getting enhanced cohesion in the mids and higher frequencies - revealed by the changes above. Where there was slight harshness there is now detail and harmony.
How is this possible now - when I tried sitting a bit further away before, but moved back again? Answer, this time I'm even further away!
The room mode gods are obviously with me🙂
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Post by MartinT on May 6, 2023 20:58:50 GMT
I'm so very lucky that I got my speaker positioning almost perfect a good while ago and tweaked it a little recently. All the system changes I've made show that the speakers were well setup from the off and have never needed further adjustment.
What my current sound tells me is a) my speakers remain the perfect ones for me and b) the improvements I've made were all core system changes.
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Post by speedysteve on May 7, 2023 10:37:14 GMT
Part of the hobby for me is having an almost infinitely configurable speaker setup. Making changes, and testing things when the mood takes me. I might run for a year or two, or even longer with things pretty much the same, then I get enthused / interested by something and want engineer. It might be a listening experience or reading others experiences and sharing wisdom. Improvements or just changes are nice to experience. This is no chore.
It also keeps my skills fresh. X/O building and testing, measuring and setting with the likes of Holmimpulse, DSP control etc.
In hifi playback & sound reinforcement systems at gigs etc, there is no such thing as perfect - we strive, deem it good enough for the performance.
Sonore Ultrarendu V2.8 SW is so far working as it should.
I guess I'll never know if I received V2.9 in error. Jesus didn't think it was released when he was first involved!
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Post by MartinT on May 7, 2023 11:08:57 GMT
Spot on, Steve. If it stops being fun (when I've taken a wrong turn), I just revert and put the music back on. Honestly, that doesn't happen much any more as a) I'm pretty much there and b) I guess I'm getting better at knowing what might work.
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Post by speedysteve on May 8, 2023 12:35:09 GMT
Listened a lot last night. Best sound I've ever had, across all genres. Having thought about it for a while I thought I'd actually do it.. Rainy day project🙂 Passive X/O on the mid horns. Drivers are JBL2482 phenolic 4" diaphragm, alinco mag, 2" throat size compression. Frequency range on the right horn they'd do 300Hz up to quoted 5KHz. Don't want to go anywhere near as high as that (I have tried them to 3KHz, in my 4 way test project). I use them 350Hz to ~1200Hz (on paper), 2nd order bandpass X/O, but the interaction with the next up driver pair (Vitavox S2s), they sound and measure better crossing out at 750Hz. S2s are on 1st order, so play deeper at reduced dB. Want all that S2 loveliness! So what does a passive X/O look like? I have the inductors and caps from years ago, when I did all 5 ways on all passive. Let's build and listen / measure / tweak.
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Post by MartinT on May 8, 2023 12:40:32 GMT
2nd order should be a nice slope, not too steep for phase effects.
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Post by speedysteve on May 8, 2023 16:21:34 GMT
Lashed up the 2 X/Os on breadboards. The JBL2482 drivers are a JBL quirk of that era, so in that in spite of having Red and Black terminals, they are in fact Black = +ve. Red = -ve😂! Allowing for the 180° phase shift of the 2nd order X/O I reversed the polarity on this channel pair. Therefore it's +ve to Red and -ve to Black🙂 I played quiet music through just this channel first, with the DSP X/O in place. Yes sound comes out. Pretty quiet. Double X/O effect? Then set the DSP X/O to off for both slopes, left and right sides. The DSP is only doing signal in / time-alignment / signal out! Played music and quiet volume. Bit louder and seems bandpass working. Mute input. Switch on the other 4 amps.. Plays okay! Way too much volume on the mids though! That's the same effect I get with the S2s on 3uF caps rather than DSP X/O! No idea why! Reduce a few dB.. Hey! This sounds all right. Can't actually say it's any better or worse yet. Okay, lots of mid loaded tracks needed to analyse. I'll do a passive vs active X/O frequency measurement later. By ear the passive X/Os sound to be doing what they should. No nasties or wrong freqs getting though. Forgot a pic of the one of the channels X/O lash up! Note the Inductors in parallel to get the right sum mH value, ditto one of the caps. Elec doesn't care🙂 Added: not sure yet if the time-alignment is affected by a few hundred trips around the inductor coils at near light speed etc😂? Measuring will reveal. Can't hear any issues..
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Post by mattspl on May 8, 2023 19:01:21 GMT
I like your direct, circuit board less crossover wiring, very Wilson Audio.
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Post by speedysteve on May 8, 2023 19:38:07 GMT
I like your direct, circuit board less crossover wiring, very Wilson Audio. 😂
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Post by speedysteve on May 8, 2023 19:42:46 GMT
Next stop fully passive, physically time-aligned (apart from tapped horns), back to grass roots system🙂 That's what I think I'd do if Najda and spare, ever breaks.. The mid bass amp I use has X/O facility built in ✔️ Have modded Behringer 24/96 DCX in the loft, that could be used on the tapped subs only ✔️ Would get away with it's SQ on deep bass only. Have DAC✔️, just need a Pre amp - sold the TVC and Puresound L10 active tube pre I was using, what 12 years ago! I made this schematic to depict
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