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My waf dipole speaker design. Waffle.
- Thread starter Ardacer
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Ardacer
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Some pics of the build process first.
My akita inu, really needs to be in the middle of everything.
And my furry bleached asshole for good measure.
Sorry bout the watermarks, recently reflashed the phone, forgot to remove it.
My akita inu, really needs to be in the middle of everything.
And my furry bleached asshole for good measure.
Sorry bout the watermarks, recently reflashed the phone, forgot to remove it.
DrTebi
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Now you can get rid of your dumbbar, you've got some serious speakers to carry around 
Nice job, really good to see someone just going for it. That's what I did some time ago, despite people suggesting to go with a "proven design" first... who dares wins... and if you fail, well, you learn from your mistakes and start over again!
Anyway, so how to they sound? I am mostly interested in the low- and midrange... what midrange driver is this? I find it hard to find a midrange driver that sounds truly natural (even after tuning with REW or similar).
It would also be interesting to hear more about your setup, e.g. what do you use as active crossover, what amps...
Nice job, really good to see someone just going for it. That's what I did some time ago, despite people suggesting to go with a "proven design" first... who dares wins... and if you fail, well, you learn from your mistakes and start over again!
Anyway, so how to they sound? I am mostly interested in the low- and midrange... what midrange driver is this? I find it hard to find a midrange driver that sounds truly natural (even after tuning with REW or similar).
It would also be interesting to hear more about your setup, e.g. what do you use as active crossover, what amps...
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Ardacer
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finally done after all this time
The splotch of energy here on spectrum at 60 hz is irrelevant, only data over 300 hz is sort of believable (all the ribs are reflection cancellations probably). The FR is gated to 2.88ms to eliminate reflections, and is raw without any smoothing. As far as I can see and hear, no real stored energy anywhere.
I'll do distortion measurements and proper bass dipole measurements, and directivity plots next.
I should point out that I'm not objective, obviously, but the sheer power this speaker commands is ridiculous. Insane amount of highly controlled bass is possible, down to what, 10ish hz or so. It's funny feeling that big articulated power coming from such tiny things, and the inherent complete vibration cancelling is great, absolutelly no vibrations anywhere, together with that monstrously powerful bass. It's weird. The rest is a typical dipole goodness, vast articulated soundstage, every single of 16 drivers in this speaker has it's own amp, so levels of damping and control are really good.
the amp is a 16ch class d amp with 250w per channel. the psu for the amp is literally just 3 atx psu's unearthed and in series to produce 36 volts dirt cheap.
I have prepared plans, schematics, cad files for the speaker. Not sure what I'll do with them yet.
The splotch of energy here on spectrum at 60 hz is irrelevant, only data over 300 hz is sort of believable (all the ribs are reflection cancellations probably). The FR is gated to 2.88ms to eliminate reflections, and is raw without any smoothing. As far as I can see and hear, no real stored energy anywhere.
I'll do distortion measurements and proper bass dipole measurements, and directivity plots next.
I should point out that I'm not objective, obviously, but the sheer power this speaker commands is ridiculous. Insane amount of highly controlled bass is possible, down to what, 10ish hz or so. It's funny feeling that big articulated power coming from such tiny things, and the inherent complete vibration cancelling is great, absolutelly no vibrations anywhere, together with that monstrously powerful bass. It's weird. The rest is a typical dipole goodness, vast articulated soundstage, every single of 16 drivers in this speaker has it's own amp, so levels of damping and control are really good.
the amp is a 16ch class d amp with 250w per channel. the psu for the amp is literally just 3 atx psu's unearthed and in series to produce 36 volts dirt cheap.
I have prepared plans, schematics, cad files for the speaker. Not sure what I'll do with them yet.
Out of curiosity ... I'd be interested in seeing a measurement with the Linkwitz top end swapped on to your new bass bin. Reason I'm curious is that Linkwitz spend some time optimizing his baffle shape. Duplicate his crossover points and dial them into your other unit.
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Ardacer
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That would probably work nicely. I might toy around with that idea but I know it would take me a day or two just to do that and I'm just so busy I barely managed to find strength to finish this. I'll measure Linkwitz speakers too, that much should be simple and fast, for now.
Many thanks for sharing this, very aspirational. May I ask where you got a 16 channel amp from?
Very impressive. You obviously possess skills I don't. Again, thanks for sharing.
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Ardacer
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Ok, so I wrote a bit more about the whole project for the orion pluto lx forum (Linkwitz support group) and done a lot of measurements.
Hi all. My name is Ben. I was born on may 21st, so 521 name (it's date when SL designed the baffle) made me very happy. I've built and enjoyed the lx521 for some years now, and have preached everywhere about how great that speaker is. However, after a long time, I've decided to undertake designing and building a second set of similar yet quite different speakers. There were a couple of goals to achieve:
1st - WAF. Lx521 is very beautiful, especially so if you understand what it represents. But most people think it looks at least weird, if not ugly. I also moved to a smaller space with my wife and needed something more practical and "normal" looking.
2nd - keep all the bass performance, no sacrifices in function to gain WAF and practicality.
3rd - audiophile pals at my place and some at audiophile shows comment how voices sound strange on lx521. I thought about it a bit and, they really don't... but I think I got the gist of the issue. LX521 is a dipole behavior all throughout, meaning it kills room interactions as much as possible, both by radiating 8 pattern (not illuminating sides) and by keeping spectrally very similar reflections to the front wave. But in doing so you disconnect voices from the room and put them in the phantom image alongside the rest of the music. They won't sound like they are actually in the room to some extent - and this can be observed. I didn't really want to admit it because I really like SL and 521, but there we go, it's how it is. In order to get the great soundstage and reflections, you sacrifice a bit of intimacy in vocals. I tried to design a speaker that keeps the dipole behavior through the whole spectrum but expands the vocal range of around 1-4 khz by a bit, by making it radiate somehting between a dipole and omni in that range in hope of adding back that "like in the room" vocals. If that makes any sense. I already have a true lx521 reference anyway.
So after a long time, here is the result of my work. The speaker is called waffle. For the waf. My wife finds them pleasing. It's also possible to add black audio transparent cloth to mask them into black blocks.
next to the lx521
The speakers are made with 16 SB acoustics drivers, from my research really only them and SEAS, mybe scanspeak (expensive) and some vifas made sense. You need very well designed and build drivers with specific traits, like vented spider and so on. The drivers are very nice indeed.
Me next to the speaker, I'm 180cm tall.
The speaker has full vibration cancelling and 8 bass drivers total. I should point out that I'm not objective, obviously, but the sheer power this speaker commands is ridiculous. Insane amount of highly controlled bass is possible, down to what, 10ish hz or so. It's funny feeling that big articulated power coming from such tiny things, and the inherent complete vibration cancelling is great, absolutelly no vibrations anywhere, together with that monstrously powerful bass. It's weird. The rest is a typical dipole goodness, vast articulated soundstage, but there is a bit more energy in vocals and they do sound like in the room instead of being more ethereal like. It would be relatively simple to undo this with an attachment to the baffle and some more eq, and make it more like the lx521, but where's the point, just get the lx521 then. The 1-4 khz range still behaves like a dipole, just a bit less so, as you can see in the directivity and spectral plots below.
Every single one of 16 drivers in this speaker has it's own amp, so levels of damping and control are really good.
The amp is a 16ch class d amp with 250w per channel. The psu for the amp is literally just 3 atx psu's unearthed and in series to produce 36 volts dirt cheap.
Some measurements:
2.88ms gated on axis FR
1/12 oct smoothed FR
bass enclosure response nearfield (front and 2 openings on rear)
Lower midrange response nearfield (front and rear)
Distortion above 300 Hz, white line is thd (for bass you need something else, which I can measure/plot, but just didn't have the time and it will be good anyway as there really are no issues)
RTA maximum around my room
Spectral energy - this 60 hz spike is a room mode. I can see no stored energy above Schroder f, but it is raw so it looks ribbed. For pleasure. There is a bit of "fattening" between 1 and 4 khz, as predicted/wanted, but the on axis FR remains neutral.
Raw waterfall plot. Again, ignore stuff below 300 Hz.
Nearfield waterfall for low midrange.
Nearfield waterfall for subs. There is some stored energy but it's way below anything that would be an enclosure resonance (it should appear at 120 Hz, and it does, you can see it on the far right), and I can hear no problems. Not really sure what's going on. Probably room modes.
Directivity. You can see some really nice dipole behaviour up to 1 khz and above 4 khz. 1-4 khz still exhibits dipole like response but it's much less pronounced, as it radiates some energy to the sides, making vocals more "in room" like but the on axis FR remains flat. As I said, it could be modded to be like a dipole all the way, but you can just have lx521 for that, and it would introduce some other problems too actually.
I'm no Linkwitz, obviously, but at least I have a hobby.
Have a nice day, discussion/comments/telling me I suck all welcome.
Hi all. My name is Ben. I was born on may 21st, so 521 name (it's date when SL designed the baffle) made me very happy
. I've built and enjoyed the lx521 for some years now, and have preached everywhere about how great that speaker is. However, after a long time, I've decided to undertake designing and building a second set of similar yet quite different speakers. There were a couple of goals to achieve:1st - WAF. Lx521 is very beautiful, especially so if you understand what it represents. But most people think it looks at least weird, if not ugly. I also moved to a smaller space with my wife and needed something more practical and "normal" looking.
2nd - keep all the bass performance, no sacrifices in function to gain WAF and practicality.
3rd - audiophile pals at my place and some at audiophile shows comment how voices sound strange on lx521. I thought about it a bit and, they really don't... but I think I got the gist of the issue. LX521 is a dipole behavior all throughout, meaning it kills room interactions as much as possible, both by radiating 8 pattern (not illuminating sides) and by keeping spectrally very similar reflections to the front wave. But in doing so you disconnect voices from the room and put them in the phantom image alongside the rest of the music. They won't sound like they are actually in the room to some extent - and this can be observed. I didn't really want to admit it because I really like SL and 521, but there we go, it's how it is. In order to get the great soundstage and reflections, you sacrifice a bit of intimacy in vocals. I tried to design a speaker that keeps the dipole behavior through the whole spectrum but expands the vocal range of around 1-4 khz by a bit, by making it radiate somehting between a dipole and omni in that range in hope of adding back that "like in the room" vocals. If that makes any sense. I already have a true lx521 reference anyway.
So after a long time, here is the result of my work. The speaker is called waffle. For the waf. My wife finds them pleasing. It's also possible to add black audio transparent cloth to mask them into black blocks.
next to the lx521
The speakers are made with 16 SB acoustics drivers, from my research really only them and SEAS, mybe scanspeak (expensive) and some vifas made sense. You need very well designed and build drivers with specific traits, like vented spider and so on. The drivers are very nice indeed.
Me next to the speaker, I'm 180cm tall.
The speaker has full vibration cancelling and 8 bass drivers total. I should point out that I'm not objective, obviously, but the sheer power this speaker commands is ridiculous. Insane amount of highly controlled bass is possible, down to what, 10ish hz or so. It's funny feeling that big articulated power coming from such tiny things, and the inherent complete vibration cancelling is great, absolutelly no vibrations anywhere, together with that monstrously powerful bass. It's weird. The rest is a typical dipole goodness, vast articulated soundstage, but there is a bit more energy in vocals and they do sound like in the room instead of being more ethereal like. It would be relatively simple to undo this with an attachment to the baffle and some more eq, and make it more like the lx521, but where's the point, just get the lx521 then. The 1-4 khz range still behaves like a dipole, just a bit less so, as you can see in the directivity and spectral plots below.
Every single one of 16 drivers in this speaker has it's own amp, so levels of damping and control are really good.
The amp is a 16ch class d amp with 250w per channel. The psu for the amp is literally just 3 atx psu's unearthed and in series to produce 36 volts dirt cheap.
Some measurements:
2.88ms gated on axis FR
1/12 oct smoothed FR
bass enclosure response nearfield (front and 2 openings on rear)
Lower midrange response nearfield (front and rear)
Distortion above 300 Hz, white line is thd (for bass you need something else, which I can measure/plot, but just didn't have the time and it will be good anyway as there really are no issues)
RTA maximum around my room
Spectral energy - this 60 hz spike is a room mode. I can see no stored energy above Schroder f, but it is raw so it looks ribbed. For pleasure. There is a bit of "fattening" between 1 and 4 khz, as predicted/wanted, but the on axis FR remains neutral.
Raw waterfall plot. Again, ignore stuff below 300 Hz.
Nearfield waterfall for low midrange.
Nearfield waterfall for subs. There is some stored energy but it's way below anything that would be an enclosure resonance (it should appear at 120 Hz, and it does, you can see it on the far right), and I can hear no problems. Not really sure what's going on. Probably room modes.
Directivity. You can see some really nice dipole behaviour up to 1 khz and above 4 khz. 1-4 khz still exhibits dipole like response but it's much less pronounced, as it radiates some energy to the sides, making vocals more "in room" like but the on axis FR remains flat. As I said, it could be modded to be like a dipole all the way, but you can just have lx521 for that, and it would introduce some other problems too actually.
I'm no Linkwitz, obviously, but at least I have a hobby.
Have a nice day, discussion/comments/telling me I suck all welcome.
Last edited:
Hi Ben
Congrats for your Waff construction. It is a really nice variation over the orginal LX521. As you've written, you've reached your three design goals. It is great to own those two systems and perform comparissons on the fly.
I always felt the human voices with very natural qualities when reproduced over the LX521. I think the microphone technique has a lot to do with it. I usually assist to classical music live events at sympohony halls and to my ears the real soprano or tenor voices, for example, are very precisely and naturally reproduced with the LX521 given a good recording. So much that I should say that the reproduction evokes the live event to a very high degree in my mind. As you imagine, my main interest is obviously classical music, which may differ with your own tastes. Nevertheless your project is very interesting to my eyes. It not only have considerably reduced the transducer footprint, but also increased the bass capability and also with notably increased force cancellation at the bass bins. So much that you don't need a bridge! Do you thing this cancellation is even beter than the original V-shaped LXsub4s?
On some of your explanations you said something about some LX521 issues. Please would you be so kind to explain a bit? I would find very interesting to know your opinion about it. Sure it is not a perfect loudspeaker and your comments would be very welcome. My main concern about the LX521 is regarding the possible diffraction issues at the upper midrange and tweeter drivers. By design they are not flush mounted and I can see some steps and obstacles that may be concerning at 1/4 wavelenght in both midrange driver (emiting up to 7.000 Hz) and tweeter (7 kHz and upwards). An outside or Klippel measurement could clarify it.
Despiete owning LXmini, LXmini +2 and LxStudio, I almost exclusively listen to the big brother since it is the clearly superior one (although I'm inmersed in some experimentations mixing LXmini full range driver firing directly at the front wall from 40 cms distance combined with LX521 in very close nearfield setup at the sweetspot). I have my system setup in a way that does not excite room modes below 95 Hz. I achieve this simply opposing both LXsub4s front to front and then placing my listening chair between both of them. My ears are at about 50 cms from the perpendicular axis of the bass bins. Sure your 60 Hz offending mode at your listening room may disappear if you try this kind of setup (inspired by John Reekie from hifizine.com and John Kreskowsky).
Thank you very much for posting your construction log and also the nice Waff measurements.
Best regards
Congrats for your Waff construction. It is a really nice variation over the orginal LX521. As you've written, you've reached your three design goals. It is great to own those two systems and perform comparissons on the fly.
I always felt the human voices with very natural qualities when reproduced over the LX521. I think the microphone technique has a lot to do with it. I usually assist to classical music live events at sympohony halls and to my ears the real soprano or tenor voices, for example, are very precisely and naturally reproduced with the LX521 given a good recording. So much that I should say that the reproduction evokes the live event to a very high degree in my mind. As you imagine, my main interest is obviously classical music, which may differ with your own tastes. Nevertheless your project is very interesting to my eyes. It not only have considerably reduced the transducer footprint, but also increased the bass capability and also with notably increased force cancellation at the bass bins. So much that you don't need a bridge! Do you thing this cancellation is even beter than the original V-shaped LXsub4s?
On some of your explanations you said something about some LX521 issues. Please would you be so kind to explain a bit? I would find very interesting to know your opinion about it. Sure it is not a perfect loudspeaker and your comments would be very welcome. My main concern about the LX521 is regarding the possible diffraction issues at the upper midrange and tweeter drivers. By design they are not flush mounted and I can see some steps and obstacles that may be concerning at 1/4 wavelenght in both midrange driver (emiting up to 7.000 Hz) and tweeter (7 kHz and upwards). An outside or Klippel measurement could clarify it.
Despiete owning LXmini, LXmini +2 and LxStudio, I almost exclusively listen to the big brother since it is the clearly superior one (although I'm inmersed in some experimentations mixing LXmini full range driver firing directly at the front wall from 40 cms distance combined with LX521 in very close nearfield setup at the sweetspot). I have my system setup in a way that does not excite room modes below 95 Hz. I achieve this simply opposing both LXsub4s front to front and then placing my listening chair between both of them. My ears are at about 50 cms from the perpendicular axis of the bass bins. Sure your 60 Hz offending mode at your listening room may disappear if you try this kind of setup (inspired by John Reekie from hifizine.com and John Kreskowsky).
Thank you very much for posting your construction log and also the nice Waff measurements.
Best regards
By the way, I've seen that you have placed some kind of high frequency absorbers in the top of the bass bins. Does it mean you have experienced some kind of measurable combing effect on this surface? Did the treatment helped with it? Thanks
Best regards
Best regards
Hi Ben. Don't you worry for the late response. Ok, so not a big difference without the absorbers.
Look, here is my LX521 plus LXmini FR setup in my listening room. There are 12 power amps running. If I'd have to describe the sound I would say it's a LX521 on stereoids. Lots of three dimensional inmersion, laser-like localization and above all a big step up in sound clarity due to 80 cm top-baffles-to-ears distance. It's a very unconventional way to place the LX system that I have been working on for years to optimize. I have also modified the original LX521 xover to include the new FU10 driver at the end of the room (6 m away from top baffles). I am very happy with the results. But I'm wondering if adding another two LX521 top baffles instead of the FU10 would yield some improvements or not. It would imply buying another 6 channel power amp with another DLCP crossover, so a big expense there. But if I finally do it, I would place the FU10 drivers 2,5 meters behind me, near the rear wall to see if they improve to some extent the inmersive sensation.
These photographs are just to give you some different ideas for placement. It works!
Thanks for freely sharing your waffle plans.
Best
Look, here is my LX521 plus LXmini FR setup in my listening room. There are 12 power amps running. If I'd have to describe the sound I would say it's a LX521 on stereoids. Lots of three dimensional inmersion, laser-like localization and above all a big step up in sound clarity due to 80 cm top-baffles-to-ears distance. It's a very unconventional way to place the LX system that I have been working on for years to optimize. I have also modified the original LX521 xover to include the new FU10 driver at the end of the room (6 m away from top baffles). I am very happy with the results. But I'm wondering if adding another two LX521 top baffles instead of the FU10 would yield some improvements or not. It would imply buying another 6 channel power amp with another DLCP crossover, so a big expense there. But if I finally do it, I would place the FU10 drivers 2,5 meters behind me, near the rear wall to see if they improve to some extent the inmersive sensation.
These photographs are just to give you some different ideas for placement. It works!
Thanks for freely sharing your waffle plans.
Best
Last edited:
OP
Ardacer
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Interesting! Glad it works out
No doubt this sounds great 3d wise, Sl experimented in the very same way you did.
Only thing I'd be worried about is hearing the drivers separately due to how close they are. Also, for adding another lx521 baffles into the system, I'm 100% sure SL himself said it makes no difference to using something like minis or what you already have, so there's that, probably he would know
No doubt this sounds great 3d wise, Sl experimented in the very same way you did.
Only thing I'd be worried about is hearing the drivers separately due to how close they are. Also, for adding another lx521 baffles into the system, I'm 100% sure SL himself said it makes no difference to using something like minis or what you already have, so there's that, probably he would know
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