Nightclub speakers - what makes them sound like they do?

[Ramon Cota]

Below is a low level ~80 dB THD measurement from REW for a LaVoce SAF184.03 18" driver. It stays well below 1% from 20 Hz to 800 Hz.

View attachment 531387

that lavoce is a winner !
but i have a severe lavoce loser as well

LAVOCE WXF15.800

Woofer 15

www.dibirama.it

 

[Juhazi]

Ready made party speaker with hifi sound

Cerwin-Vega XLS Series Dual 15” 3-Way Floor Speaker -

Cerwin-Vega XLS-215: Dual 15" floor speaker. Earth-shaking bass & massive power for ultimate home audio.

cerwinvega.com

 

[Sigberg Audio]

red line , mostly
between 40 and 180 hz
narrow peak of 2,7 % thd at 70 hz for scan speak and much broader peak of 4 % for much much larger pro woofer.
actually b&c loses with SS anywhere between 40 and 180 hz at 90 db
do you see it now ?

But do you see how the Scan-Speak falls completely apart at 102dB? At 90dB you can easily have peaks at 102dB or even more. So maybe the B&C doesn't sound like the one distorting the most in practice.

 

[levimax]

red line , mostly
between 40 and 180 hz
narrow peak of 2,7 % thd at 70 hz for scan speak and much broader peak of 4 % for much much larger pro woofer.
actually b&c loses with SS anywhere between 40 and 180 hz at 90 db
do you see it now ?

That site doesn't have a lot of serious pro drivers on it. If you look at the Faital 12HP1060-8 it is pretty good high and low. I believe Faital has more higher end pro drivers in their line up as well. There are no Eminence of LaVoce drivers on the site which are the most popular "Pro" drivers for Hi-Fi use and from what I have seen have no problems with distortion high or low frequency or SPL.

 

[Chr1]

Indeed. This is why I hate generalisations. Of brands or applications.
Far too comon unfortunately.

 

[levimax]

I saw these at Costco yesterday, not cheap at $747 but looks like fun at a party.

 

[levimax]

that lavoce is a winner !
but i have a severe lavoce loser as well

LAVOCE WXF15.800

Woofer 15

www.dibirama.it

As has been mentioned if you want to use a "Pro Driver" for Hi-Fi uses you need to evaluate each driver individually as there is a large variation between drivers. The WXF15.800 looks to be designed for efficiency i.e. 98 dB at the expense of extension and some distortion. For some application this could be a winner, for Hi-Fi use there are better choices.

 

[Chr1]

My ultimate party speaker.

 

[Audionaut]

actually b&c loses with SS anywhere between 40 and 180 hz at 90 db
do you see it now ?

If the graph is to be believed, the B&C crosses the 3% threshold at around 70 Hz. The Scan Speak is just barely below that. What stands out most to me is that the professional driver still delivers volume and pressure where the hi-fi driver has long since faded out.

 

[Audionaut]

the conslusion was that pro woofers distorted more at lower levels untill they reached 95+ db and only then started to distort less compared to hi-fi speakers

When making such a sweeping statement, it’s important to keep this in mind

Also, I would add that there's often quite a lot of difference between the models of drivers made by each manufacturer, and therefore sweeping generalisations about brands often don't accurately correlate to a specific models performance.

Every PA company manufactures a wide range of specialized products, and in the subwoofer sector in particular, you’ll find solutions designed to address a variety of different needs.

You’ll also find ultra-low-distortion woofers featuring multiple demodulation rings, minimal mechanical losses, and—as the name suggests—very low distortion.

 

[HiMu]

I think, in summary, I need to create a more even response with a wider and taller "sweetspot" higher up the frequency response

I highly recommend looking into diy multiple entry horns like the Scott Hinson MEH* for home dj'ing/studio stuff, great sounding speakers with enough headroom and surprisingly low reaching bass. Everyone has asked if they can listen to the speakers without subs, which were muted all the time. I think these MEH/Synergy horn type of speakers are approaching the "perfect" marriage between PA, studio monitors and HiFi speakers.

I'm not saying they are perfect but they are pretty damn good speakers and on par with significantly more expensive midfield studio monitors.

*or JW Sound Solana, and if size isn't an issue, something like @gnarly showed or the JMOD MEH. https://www.jwsound.live/designs/jmod

 

[Tell]

I highly recommend looking into diy multiple entry horns like the Scott Hinson MEH* for home dj'ing/studio stuff, great sounding speakers with enough headroom and surprisingly low reaching bass. Everyone has asked if they can listen to the speakers without subs, which were muted all the time. I think these MEH/Synergy horn type of speakers are approaching the "perfect" marriage between PA, studio monitors and HiFi speakers.

I'm not saying they are perfect but they are pretty damn good speakers and on par with significantly more expensive midfield studio monitors.

*or JW Sound Solana, and if size isn't an issue, something like @gnarly showed or the JMOD MEH. https://www.jwsound.live/designs/jmod

A pair of DIY MEHs are definitely on my todo list! Point sources with very well controlled directivity that can be built at quite a low cost, and you get the fun of doing it yourself, what's not to like?!

 

[krabapple]

Using club speakers in my living room. Got several pairs of Tannoy V12s as I love big coaxials.
Getting plenty of volume using a wee Topping Mini 300 here presently, but have bigger Crown Macro-Techs if more Watts needed...
There's no replacement for displacement when it comes to "slam", I reckon!

View attachment 510057
Edit : I also love the fact that big passive club type speakers are actually super "eco" when used at home. Their high sensitivity means they need minimal Watts, even to go loud.
I can easily get my windows rattling with the wee Topping!

Jesus. I hope you don't have neighbors.

 

[Duke]

Honest question. Let's say a speaker is designed to play at 100+dB all day long. The voice coil and associated components would be engineered to dispose the heat and account for thermal expansion. The suspension systems would be similarly quite stiff and robust. What happens if you take that speaker and play it at 60+dB in a domestic setting? @Duke?

I think that having to build in sufficient power handling and robustness to put out 100+ dB all day in a studio setting would probably result in trade-offs to low-level resolution that could have been avoided if the requirment was 60+ dB in a domestic setting instead.

But I would expect the designer to have made choices that attempted to preserve low-level resolution, rather than maximizing robustness and SPL over everything else.

I don't have much to add to what @Audionaut posted. In general I like a low Rms figure (low cone mass & low resonance frequeny & high Qms), but push it too far in that direction and in some cases a midwoofer can sound "soft" in the low end.

And there are exceptions to the rules; I've seen at least one midwoofer with a fairly low Qms perform quite well at low levels, the Acoustic Elegance TD15M.

In general, for situations where a low-Rms woofer isn't practical, perhaps due to power handling requirements, I like to have a fairly high (Bl^2/Re)/Mms ratio (power-to-weight ratio corrected for voice coil resistance) and low flux modulation.

And imo if the midwoofer is going to be used fairly high up, it should have a benign frequency response curve both on AND off-axis. The off-axis curves should track the on-axis curve well up through the crossover region.

 

[Flaesh]

What happens if you take that speaker and play it at 60+dB

Nothing out of the ordinary. As usual – 2.5" tweeter, 4" MF, 3" midbass in 40 liters, four 4" subwoofers (two of which are inaudible (well, almost (I was working near the rear subwoofer right now, it's sometimes noticeable))). The voice coil diameters are listed. It's nighttime here now, around 60 dB.

 

[Somafunk]

Lol. Some of my best clubbing memories, (plus lack thereof), were at a small place in Edinburgh called "The Venue".

I lost so many weekends from nights at Pure (twitch/wilkes) , we usually ended up with a bunch of us regrouping at the Meadows to lounge about on a Sunday afternoon, sharing tales of our adventures to weird and strange after parties whilst sharing joints and getting coffee from the local cafe nr to Edinburgh bike, met so many decent folk that are still mates.

 

[Chr1]

Aye. For me too.

Fridays: "Pure" with Twitch and Brainstorm, was the seminal techno night in Edinburgh for many years.

Plus Saturdays: The more obscure "Wave". Great techno, but also played obscure things like OnU Sounds etc.
Early Derrick May set available here:

DERRICK MAY "THE SUNDAY SERVICE" (MIXING DESK RECORDING) @ WAVE, THE VENUE, EDINBURGH, 11/04/93

A Baptism in Techno: Derrick May at the top of his game. Long-awaited mixing desk recording of this legendary, mind-blowing set.

www.mixcloud.com

Also on Saturdays "Tribal Funktion" with George T and co. Very good house night.

The Venue. Gone but never forgotten!

Jesus. I hope you don't have neighbors.

I do. But thankfully they live in Holland most of the year!

 

[Audionaut]

sharing tales of our adventures to weird and strange after parties whilst sharing joints and getting coffee from the local cafe nr to Edinburgh bike, met so many decent folk that are still mates.

Two Scots.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been to your country, where from I’ve only ever met lovely people. My English teacher was Scottish and often gave me a lift home in her car, as she had a similar route to school as I did.
She was fairly strict in class but, in private, extremely warm and very funny.

The British NATO headquarters was still based in Mönchengladbach at the time, and her husband worked there.
To be precise, the former JHQ (Joint Headquarters) was located on the Lower Rhine in western Germany, near the Dutch border between Mönchengladbach and a little Town, where I live. During the Cold War, it was one of the most important British military headquarters outside the UK. Various British and some multinational NATO command structures were stationed there, including parts of the British Army of the Rhine.

For many years, the base functioned practically like a small British town in Germany. At times, many thousands of people lived there, including soldiers, their families and civilian staff. It had its own schools, supermarkets, sports facilities, pubs, churches and entire residential areas. It even had a cinema and its own medical services. For many people from the region, and for me, it was therefore completely normal to come across British families in everyday life, for example whilst shopping, in restaurants or even in clubs.

After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the site gradually lost its strategic importance. The British armed forces were downsized and many units were relocated back to the UK, until the JHQ was finally closed in 2013.

For the region, this also meant the loss of a slice of everyday British life and culture that had been a natural part of the landscape for decades; some of the friendships and bonds formed during that time have endured, in some cases to this day.

Military personnel were also able to buy high-quality hi-fi equipment there at reduced prices and duty-free, and some sold it as ‘second-hand goods’ to German friends, which wasn’t entirely legal.

That’s how, as a schoolboy, I came to own my first big Pioneer integrated amplifier, which I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. This also happened thanks to the kind assistance of my Scottish teacher, who had already realised back then that audio was a hobby of mine.

So: Best wishes to Scotland

 

[Chr1]

Thanks mate.

Traveled through that area last summer, en route to Trieste on my motorcycle. Spent a night to the west of Dusseldorf...
Land of Kraftwerk, Neu! etc, home of "motorik" music.

All the best from Edinburgh, aka "Auld Reekie"!

 

[111db]

You mean like this View attachment 531249

Well, probably. Looks promising, anyway. What are the passbands of the drivers as-configured? And their sensitivities? And what is the distance to the listening position? Given the visible toe-in, I'm guessing pretty short, in which case you are likely well covered on the lowest passband. Not as confident about the midbass and domes, which may disperse too widely for ideal projection of forward "club" energy. Would love to give it a listen!