Long time lurker, don't say much but love reading everybody's opinions. It steers me in the right directions.
Audio is a great winter game here in the NW. I'm retired and an avid hiker, hence the name of these speakers.
I've built several speakers the past few winters, mostly line arrays, and also destroyed many speakers afterwords. I really liked the arrays, but not the way they dominated the room; fun to build though and sounded great. Ideally for me line arrays would be built into the walls and not seen.
These are the result of my many miles on the trails of the Great NW staring at the giant trees. I wanted something that was pleasing to look at and sounded very nice. And reminded me to get off the easy chair and go play outside. Hiking clears my head of all the city crap.
It might be a long read, but there are lots of details in speaker building, and besides reading what others have done is enjoyable, to me, and hopefully you also.
But this is mainly a blurb for DSP.
Being a hobby, I could not the experimenting I do without DSP.
I use a low end DA dsp-408, simply because of price, and it works fine for me. My brain fills my head with ringing constantly and loudly (tinnitus) since childhood, and being older I can't hear over 10k anyway.
Having many drivers to choose from in my little stash of audio stuff, I chose to build these out of some Neo 8's I've had for years, and some 10" ADS l1590"s woofers I got on the cheap a couple years ago. Actually got the complete speakers for 100 bucks, brought em home and measured em and they were flat from 28-20000. So they worked and I was happy. But not enjoyable to look at. I still have the crossovers and tweeters if anybody is interested.
There are no specs online that I can find for the woofers, so I just copied the cabs they came in for size and subtracted a little for my build. They have good xmax and play plenty low. They are also less than .5% distortion their full range, which drops off at about 2500, near where I cross them.
I've also build a few OB's, and know the bass degradation as you get off-center. The way I remember the dif between a dipole and a bipole, is the bass ("dies" with dipoles) when your at right angles to the baffle. So these are bi-pole woofers, wired in electrical phase with each other, giving a 5-ohm load. Huge bass when at right angles to the baffle. Less in the front, but plenty, and sounds normal that a 10" would give. Of course the Neo 8 is di-pole, so the rear is out of phase with the rear woofer, but since it all bounces of the rear wall anyway, I can't tell because it is secondary reflective sound to the front in phase drivers. Overall it is precise in front, with a large soundstage.
I couldn't find any speaker covers to match the tree look, so I conjured up some stranded copper wire and copper coated nails. The copper and sparkle that the stranded wire gives off mates well with the semi gloss over the rough sanded live edge wood. Also a little artsy not covering the complete woofer in front.
So thats the speakers, now onto DSP.
With dsp the possibilities are endless. Any driver combination. What ever your heart desires. Big fun.
The crossover options are the key as far as I'm concerned.
Unless one owns a capacitor and inductor factory, then money is the name of the game, and I'm cheap.
Ideally, I guess, using a dsp to get the crossover figured out and then buying the passive stuff to build it would be preferable, but it is beyond my electrical experience to completely flatten a pair of drivers with passive parts. And your still left with the problem I explain below. Building a high quality passive x-over would compare price wise to a good dsp, so why not just buy the dsp? Besides if you don't like what you built, then just continue on with the dsp.
I can experiment with crossover points for the two drivers in this particular case. Endless options here.The neo-8 rolls of about 300 or so, and the woofer about 2500. If I choose a x-over point at lets say 500, and make it flat, it sounds ok, but not great. Same with 300 or 800 or 1200, or whatever frequency I want. That is because if I play a saxophone piece for example, and if I have leveled the volumes of the two drivers to be equal at where I'm sitting, then as the sax plays up and down the frequency range, I hear the sax traveling up and down the baffle. Distracting. But if I can crossover the two drivers at different frequencies, then the sound does not travel on the baffle face because both drivers are playing the same frequency, until you get to upper frequencies of course, so their are limits. Also the voices sound more like a point source. If I place my head between the drivers the sound is coming from in between the two drivers, not one or the other, for the frequencies they are playing together. Then I dsp the volumes, then add 1.5 ml delay to the Neop-8 to get the phase close , so it sounds more like a point source than a t/w combo.
These speakers play +/- 1db their full range, which is near 20hz.
This particular speaker is crossed over with a 12db l/r for the woofer, and a 24db l/r at 150 hz for the Neo-8. I'm not done fine tuning, but it is close.
This would be crazy to do with a passive x-over, considering the drivers are not meant to be used together, given their respective efficiency differences, delay offsets in the cabinet, etc.
I can change amps anytime and compare. I'm currently using a 4 channel AMC amp. AMC was lead engineer leaving NAD and doing his own thing in Cali. I toured his shop years ago, nice old gentleman. I will probably move to my allo+ amps soon with these speakers. This 4 channel AMC amp is only 45 wpc and the bass is great at any volume.
Another huge plus is measuring from my seating position, thereby eliminating the room. You just simply can't measure from near field or the 1 meter standard, and expect great results from the seating position; the room is a nasty monster that wants to destroy everything. Dsp tames the monster. And it will still sound good when I get up and go the the adjoining kitchen.
If you haven't had the opportunity to play with dsp, and you like the hobby, then by all means give it a try.
Enjoy the hobby.
Audio is a great winter game here in the NW. I'm retired and an avid hiker, hence the name of these speakers.
I've built several speakers the past few winters, mostly line arrays, and also destroyed many speakers afterwords. I really liked the arrays, but not the way they dominated the room; fun to build though and sounded great. Ideally for me line arrays would be built into the walls and not seen.
These are the result of my many miles on the trails of the Great NW staring at the giant trees. I wanted something that was pleasing to look at and sounded very nice. And reminded me to get off the easy chair and go play outside. Hiking clears my head of all the city crap.
It might be a long read, but there are lots of details in speaker building, and besides reading what others have done is enjoyable, to me, and hopefully you also.
But this is mainly a blurb for DSP.
Being a hobby, I could not the experimenting I do without DSP.
I use a low end DA dsp-408, simply because of price, and it works fine for me. My brain fills my head with ringing constantly and loudly (tinnitus) since childhood, and being older I can't hear over 10k anyway.
Having many drivers to choose from in my little stash of audio stuff, I chose to build these out of some Neo 8's I've had for years, and some 10" ADS l1590"s woofers I got on the cheap a couple years ago. Actually got the complete speakers for 100 bucks, brought em home and measured em and they were flat from 28-20000. So they worked and I was happy. But not enjoyable to look at. I still have the crossovers and tweeters if anybody is interested.
There are no specs online that I can find for the woofers, so I just copied the cabs they came in for size and subtracted a little for my build. They have good xmax and play plenty low. They are also less than .5% distortion their full range, which drops off at about 2500, near where I cross them.
I've also build a few OB's, and know the bass degradation as you get off-center. The way I remember the dif between a dipole and a bipole, is the bass ("dies" with dipoles) when your at right angles to the baffle. So these are bi-pole woofers, wired in electrical phase with each other, giving a 5-ohm load. Huge bass when at right angles to the baffle. Less in the front, but plenty, and sounds normal that a 10" would give. Of course the Neo 8 is di-pole, so the rear is out of phase with the rear woofer, but since it all bounces of the rear wall anyway, I can't tell because it is secondary reflective sound to the front in phase drivers. Overall it is precise in front, with a large soundstage.
I couldn't find any speaker covers to match the tree look, so I conjured up some stranded copper wire and copper coated nails. The copper and sparkle that the stranded wire gives off mates well with the semi gloss over the rough sanded live edge wood. Also a little artsy not covering the complete woofer in front.
So thats the speakers, now onto DSP.
With dsp the possibilities are endless. Any driver combination. What ever your heart desires. Big fun.
The crossover options are the key as far as I'm concerned.
Unless one owns a capacitor and inductor factory, then money is the name of the game, and I'm cheap.
Ideally, I guess, using a dsp to get the crossover figured out and then buying the passive stuff to build it would be preferable, but it is beyond my electrical experience to completely flatten a pair of drivers with passive parts. And your still left with the problem I explain below. Building a high quality passive x-over would compare price wise to a good dsp, so why not just buy the dsp? Besides if you don't like what you built, then just continue on with the dsp.
I can experiment with crossover points for the two drivers in this particular case. Endless options here.The neo-8 rolls of about 300 or so, and the woofer about 2500. If I choose a x-over point at lets say 500, and make it flat, it sounds ok, but not great. Same with 300 or 800 or 1200, or whatever frequency I want. That is because if I play a saxophone piece for example, and if I have leveled the volumes of the two drivers to be equal at where I'm sitting, then as the sax plays up and down the frequency range, I hear the sax traveling up and down the baffle. Distracting. But if I can crossover the two drivers at different frequencies, then the sound does not travel on the baffle face because both drivers are playing the same frequency, until you get to upper frequencies of course, so their are limits. Also the voices sound more like a point source. If I place my head between the drivers the sound is coming from in between the two drivers, not one or the other, for the frequencies they are playing together. Then I dsp the volumes, then add 1.5 ml delay to the Neop-8 to get the phase close , so it sounds more like a point source than a t/w combo.
These speakers play +/- 1db their full range, which is near 20hz.
This particular speaker is crossed over with a 12db l/r for the woofer, and a 24db l/r at 150 hz for the Neo-8. I'm not done fine tuning, but it is close.
This would be crazy to do with a passive x-over, considering the drivers are not meant to be used together, given their respective efficiency differences, delay offsets in the cabinet, etc.
I can change amps anytime and compare. I'm currently using a 4 channel AMC amp. AMC was lead engineer leaving NAD and doing his own thing in Cali. I toured his shop years ago, nice old gentleman. I will probably move to my allo+ amps soon with these speakers. This 4 channel AMC amp is only 45 wpc and the bass is great at any volume.
Another huge plus is measuring from my seating position, thereby eliminating the room. You just simply can't measure from near field or the 1 meter standard, and expect great results from the seating position; the room is a nasty monster that wants to destroy everything. Dsp tames the monster. And it will still sound good when I get up and go the the adjoining kitchen.
If you haven't had the opportunity to play with dsp, and you like the hobby, then by all means give it a try.
Enjoy the hobby.
