I thought i share my tinkering with DIY planar magnetics for a change

[Jazzman53]

Well i revisited a novelty weird planar i made as a test a 180 degree curved one. i am not to shure yet if i like it (180 is to much i think with this radius). it needs EQ and is not as flat as a regular flat one. (i need eq to get things.... flatter)
And by the standards here it might be rubbish (people are always rather harsh) .. i myself like planar sound and especially since i make things all myself, with is allot of fun. so dont ask me for spinorama measurements etc...

the goal was to make a tweeter that can be crossed rather low (600hz range) that is planar magnetic but with good dispersion, something that is rarely a thing. if it has good dispersion its only horizontal, or vertical... in this case given the low frequency it can reach, its performs rather well when i move the audio recorder. in the new video or in the old video where i use binaural mics. i linked to the music, if you want to hear me talking for an hour watch the whole thing. but i cant imagine !

use headphones, for the binaural, and prefered for the normal XY recording to.. since my room adds allot of low end thats not there when i listen to the video and so does yours (+ the room its recorded in, been 180 degree even more then normal) , its more a show and tell on the dispersion

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I'm always mesmerized by your videos, and your inventiveness and energy to do this seems boundless.

Your workbench in video 1 reminds me of my own when I have a project going... that is; rather busy, and I think reflects the mind of the builder.

Keep dreaming and building amazing speakers.... I love it!

 

[Joppe Peelen]

I'm always mesmerized by your videos, and your inventiveness and energy to do this seems boundless.

Your workbench in video 1 reminds me of my own when I have a project going... that is; rather busy, and I think reflects the mind of the builder.

Keep dreaming and building amazing speakers.... I love it!

Jazzman as in the Jazzman from Diyaudio ? love your work with the ESL's and im certain many others do !people asking me about esl's often mention your builds and i always had to say well , i made some but if you want to make such panels better ask you ! by the way we might know each other under my name on diyaudio.com WrineX.
Charlie i believe ?

 

[Jazzman53]

Jazzman as in the Jazzman from Diyaudio ? love your work with the ESL's and im certain many others do !people asking me about esl's often mention your builds and i always had to say well , i made some but if you want to make such panels better ask you ! by the way we might know each other under my name on diyaudio.com WrineX.
Charlie i believe ?

Yes, my name is Charlie and I am the same Jazzman from the blog Jazzman's DIY Electrostatic Loudspeaker Page, and my user name on DiyAudio is CharlieM.

Love your videos Joppe!

 

[Joppe Peelen]

its so funny, small world !!

 

[Joppe Peelen]

by the way. i really dig you big panels with all those small pieces of wood ! its hard to do this correct with these small tolerances !! i also watched some videos a few years back ! i still want to make some esl mid high panels, but i hope i can find someone that cant finally make a direct drive solid state setup i know wishfull thinking.. but i would like to have slightly more efficiency then the dual antec transformers can put out they might work perfect for bigger panels with DSP, but for more tiny panels i had trouble getting to mate them with regular woofers.

 

[Jazzman53]

by the way. i really dig you big panels with all those small pieces of wood ! its hard to do this correct with these small tolerances !! i also watched some videos a few years back ! i still want to make some esl mid high panels, but i hope i can find someone that cant finally make a direct drive solid state setup i know wishfull thinking.. but i would like to have slightly more efficiency then the dual antec transformers can put out they might work perfect for bigger panels with DSP, but for more tiny panels i had trouble getting to mate them with regular woofers.

Yes, the interlocking oak lattice stator support details must be cut with fair accuracy, and I don't have a CNC machine... I cut them on a table saw. The tolerances are not perfect but they don't have to be because the wires and lattice details are assembled against a flat reference surface in my stator assembly jig.

My jig is the saving grace here, as any gaps between the wood joints due to minor fit errors merely fill with glue, and all errors are pushed outward from the reference surface, as opposed to inward into the critical diaphragm-to-stator gap.

As for the transformers; I now use and recommend these single-primary 50VA 230V/6V toroidal transformers, which sound better, have less inter-winding capacitance, and are more robust than the dual-primary Anteks.
https://www.rapidonline.com/vigortr...sformer-230v-single-primary-50va-0-6v-88-5190

The tandem pair has a combined power rating of 100VA and a step-up ratio of 75:1 which works fine for a hybrid panel operating above 200Hz but would not be suitable for full range application. Of course, higher ratios could be obtained by ganging together multiple smaller s230V/7V or 230V/9V toroids but the tradeoff would be poorer high-frequency response, especially for ratios higher than 100:1.

I've actually never built a small panel. As you can see on my webpage (linked below); my panels are fairly large (active area 27cm x 118cm) and I'm using very close (1.5 mm) diaphragm-to-stator spacing, and wire spacing, which gives pretty good efficiency. In fact, the panels can crank out more sound than my ears can comfortably tolerate.

You brought up a good point about DSP though, as any tall, narrow unsegmented flat panel will have a rising, peaky frequency response due to a combination of beaming highs and dipole roll off of the lower frequencies.

The rising response can be mitigated/flattened out with DSP equalization. Or, if using wire stators, passive electrical segmentation (multiple wire groups with the correct value series resistors inserted between them) can yeild essentially flat response. Segmentation also resolves the flat panel's beaming by spending out the dispersion pattern (curving the wave front). This works amazingly well... hearing is believing.

Jazzman's DIY Electrostatic Loudspeaker Page

DIY electrostatic loudspeakers

jazzman-esl-page.blogspot.com

 

[solderdude]

Indrukwekkend knutselwerk !

 

[MAB]

Indrukwekkend knutselwerk !

You got me to look this up!
@Joppe Peelen what a great project!

 

[Hayabusa]

Indrukwekkend knutselwerk !

Ik kan het daar helemaal mee eens zijn!

 

[Multicore]

its so funny, small world !!

Well, it's a small number of people who do this kind of work and the Internet exists for them to find each other.

Anyway, I need to spend time on your YouTube when I'm back at home base. I love this kind of thing

 

[mhardy6647]

Well, it's a small number of people who do this kind of work and the Internet exists for them to find each other.

That can be a double-edged sword, though.
Fortunately, the stuff of this particular thread is benign, interesting, beautiful, and probably not unlawful in most jurisdictions.

 

[bennybbbx]

Well i revisited a novelty weird planar i made as a test a 180 degree curved one. i am not to shure yet if i like it (180 is to much i think with this radius). it needs EQ and is not as flat as a regular flat one. (i need eq to get things.... flatter)
And by the standards here it might be rubbish (people are always rather harsh) .. i myself like planar sound and especially since i make things all myself, with is allot of fun. so dont ask me for spinorama measurements etc...

the goal was to make a tweeter that can be crossed rather low (600hz range) that is planar magnetic but with good dispersion, something that is rarely a thing. if it has good dispersion its only horizontal, or vertical... in this case given the low frequency it can reach, its performs rather well when i move the audio recorder. in the new video or in the old video where i use binaural mics. i linked to the music, if you want to hear me talking for an hour watch the whole thing. but i cant imagine !

use headphones, for the binaural, and prefered for the normal XY recording to.. since my room adds allot of low end thats not there when i listen to the video and so does yours (+ the room its recorded in, been 180 degree even more then normal) , its more a show and tell on the dispersion

Last video

Old video

Hello. what happen when you play sine tone of around 900-1400 hz on only right speaker with your tweeter ?. set the frequency so that the position of the sinus tone can not good hear on speaker. What happen when you rotate your head left or right ?. does it change alot. to compare you can use a headphone and play the testtone and put both headphone and speaker 1 meter away. teh headphone is use to simulate a open planar driver. so position 1 headphone ear system simular as speaker. now make the volume of the speaker same as the headphone, rotate your head and hear if it is diffrent locatable.

On my partly damped room i get very bad sine tone location from 900-1200 hz on speaker. It sound as sound come from left speaker too and surrounding me and give strange feeling in ear. but with the open headphone with flat membrane i can locate it very good and it did never sound as it come from left side and no strange feeling in ear. I have my speakers damped with foam stand. it is also possible that the headphone sound much better because it have a flat membrane.

best true sound is always when sound can locate good on speaker position at any frequency. room reflections and speaker problems give end results. on many frequencies all is accdeptable, but not on this frequencies. arc 4 room correction at least show a trick what can do. reduce the level of such frequencies that can not locate good.

ypu also have test planar driver i see in threads. what happen when you do the location test with a planar speaker ?. better position location ? in compare to headphone ?

maybe in mid range cone speaker is worse and get even more worse when speaker get larger. I use 4.5 inch bass mid upto 6.5 inch 2 way systems for tests

 

[Joppe Peelen]

You cant compare headphones vs speakers, the biggest problems are the acoustics, an open baffle in de mid and top makes that even a little worse if you got such a small room and cannot move them further from the wall, the fact the tweeter in this contrapion is not concentric to the baffle also makes a difference, the baffle difraction is different left of the speaker vs right of the speaker. not ideal, some designers design speaker like this on purpose, with most planar magnetics fullrange speaker its more of a practical reason (else you need 2 bass panels and things becomes rather large )