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Upcoming Tom Danley Hifi speakers

Stu Pidasso

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Have you ever heard any of the Unity rigs that were in operation in the PNW about 15-20 years ago?

The reason that I got interested in Unity horns, waaaaaaay back in the day, was because I had one of those Dot Com jobs where we knew our employer was "circling the drain" but we had to keep showing up for work while we waited for the layoff notices to show up. That was over 20 years ago.

Since there was very little work to do, I used to read patents all day. Since they were technical it kinda made it look like I was studying. That's where I learned about making Unity horns.

Around this time, there was a company out of Seattle or Eugene that was doing raves with a set of SPL TD1s and some SPL Subs. I heard the set up at one of the USC raves in Seattle.

At the same time, John Sheerin had built the first DIY Unity horn (that I'm aware of) and I vaguely recall that we met at one of the "Vacuum Tube State of the Art Conferences" that used to be held out in Silverdale Washington.

It is very likely those were my TD1's and SDL5's given that USC (and other rave / party groups) rented equipment from me. Did you ever hear the Focus Field boxes I would send out on that rig? They were typically used for Stage Fills - which was truly a shame - but I digress.

If you ever frequent(ed) the Contour, Pink, or See Sound Lounge (in Seattle,) I was responsible for various combinations of @Tom Danley 's various unity horns, tapped horns, and torque drive devices in them.
 

redshift

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Can you elaborate what you mean here? In particular, how can you ‘overpower’ the modal response of a room?

Why would you want to combat the room modes? For the most part all rooms are perfectly fine. It’s the speakers and their placement that suck. Specially if you shove in big behemoths in small rooms.

You gotta control the energy dispersion.
 

kyle_neuron

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Why would you want to combat the room modes? For the most part all rooms are perfectly fine. It’s the speakers and their placement that suck. Specially if you shove in big behemoths in small rooms.

You gotta control the energy dispersion.

I’m still not following, sorry. Maybe I need another coffee. You said the speakers in question ‘overpowered’ the room modes, and I’m curious what you mean by that - before we get into the ‘why’ or whether that’s a good or bad thing.

I’m not sure if you’ve looked at the polar response for say the SM60F from Danley, which is the foundation of the hifi product that started this topic? It’s quite good at controlled dispersion if that’s something you want?

Edit to add the (unprocessed) horizontal and vertical isobar and normalised polar data from their GLL file for the SM60F. I've tried to set the range of colour mapping to 30 dB to approximately match @amirm
EASE_GLLViewer_15 July 21 - 5WT7jy1QcE.png

EASE_GLLViewer_15 July 21 - lDwwU34r13.png

EASE_GLLViewer_15 July 21 - OVqvE73FRs.png

EASE_GLLViewer_15 July 21 - 8IRYR3lFYs.png

EASE_GLLViewer_15 July 21 - VMzui5FO2d.png


However, that comes as part of being ‘big' because that’s how horns achieve pattern control.

The speaker doesn't seem to have been centred in the vertical spin here, but I've left it as is. The scale on the transfer function is also pretty 'zoomed in'.
 
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ctrl

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Erin recently provided a little insight into the SH-50 measurements.
I am already very curious about the further measurements (as already written several times, especially on the decay behavior).

It is a pity that Erin will not or can not participate in the discussion here in the forum (for the known reasons).

Ground plane versus NFS measurements:
1628773221132.png
 

kyle_neuron

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Erin recently provided a little insight into the SH-50 measurements.
I am already very curious about the further measurements (as already written several times, especially on the decay behavior).

It is a pity that Erin will not or can not participate in the discussion here in the forum (for the known reasons).

Ground plane versus NFS measurements:
View attachment 147138

For reference here's the GLL data at 4 meter distance, driven by broadband pink noise. No air attenuation, on-axis, and 1/24 Octave smoothing with magnitude on the left Y-axis matched to the screenshot from Erin's video there:
1628811518845.png

I've attached the exported data table too for comparison directly if Erin makes his files available:
 

Attachments

  • SH50_ver4.1.txt
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hardisj

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Erin recently provided a little insight into the SH-50 measurements.
I am already very curious about the further measurements (as already written several times, especially on the decay behavior).

It is a pity that Erin will not or can not participate in the discussion here in the forum (for the known reasons).

Ground plane versus NFS measurements:
View attachment 147138


Since this was a teaser I didn't explain the results fully; the black line is not the true anechoic response. (despite what the legend says)
I ran the test a couple ways to determine where the true acoustic center was. The one I have shown in the black line in the video is with the reference placed at the "baffle" (or mouth). My groundplane testing confirmed the acoustic center was actually at the throat; right in front of the tweeter. Which means the "real" results and the groundplane results are actually an even better match. :)


My data is pretty much ready to go. I had planned to post it and the video this weekend but life took over and I didn't have time to finish it and publish it.

I can't post links to my website here anyway since they are treated like spam, though, so I guess that doesn't really matter. Just keep an eye out on my site or YouTube channel ... hopefully this week it'll be up. Barring any other things unexpectedly happening.
 

ctrl

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My data is pretty much ready to go. I had planned to post it and the video this weekend but life took over and I didn't have time to finish it and publish it.
Looking forward to it very much. It's not the usual shoebox-sized 2-way speaker, thank goodness ;)
 

ctrl

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He did it. For those interested, Erin's review of the SH50 is online on his website (erinsaudiocorner).

@hardisj
Can you please also show the culmulative spectral decay (CSD) of the loudspeaker.

In my eyes, the most exciting aspect of this concept is the use of the "diffraction slots", which are used in an ingenious way in this concept. But the "diffraction slots" are also Helmholtz resonators and this usually causes decay problems.

I had tried to show this here, with a simple simulation.
But after I had received Tom's measurement of the SH50, no abnormalities showed up in the CSD - always from the point of view that the SH50 is a PA speaker, so the CSD is allowed to be less good.

With your measurements this looks completely different. Around 250Hz and 1000Hz there seem to be pronounced resonances.
 

tomtoo

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Listening test had to be done with good eq'ing. That they need eq to shine was clear.
 

Stu Pidasso

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I can't post links to my website here anyway since they are treated like spam, though, so I guess that doesn't really matter. Just keep an eye out on my site or YouTube channel ... hopefully this week it'll be up. Barring any other things unexpectedly happening.

Huh? You're sofa king kidding aren't you? Wait, I see your tag is obfuscated. OMG.

I can't believe it. Tempest in teapots.

That grown men can become so overwhelmingly butt hurt. I just don't get it.
 

Stu Pidasso

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Probably off topic and no one cares but I just learned about the drama and I'm donating to Erin and will cease activity on ASR. Feels as though Amir's interests are not in line with what they should be, to inform, share, and learn. That's a shame he started off doing so well. It's clear this is a business endeavour for Amir. I have also noticed an increase in "laziness" and contradictory statements across various data sets from Amir.

Hope you like the donation Erin. Sorry Amir, maybe learn how to work with people in the future.
 

Stu Pidasso

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I think just about all of us are a bit taken aback @joshmelo and I have been wrestling with exiting here as well but have chosen to stay because there are a lot good people here. Amir's explanation for why he treated Erin so poorly just doesn't hold water, and I have never noticed requests for money in any sort of excessive degree from Erin's videos or his site.

Additionally I noted that Amir finds nearly all Harman products to be "recommended" while many other manufacturers he gives poor marks to, case in point B&W and Dynaudio.

I donated $50 to Amir before this went down but you know I'm regretting that now. I was going to request a refund, but obviously he needs the money more than I do.
 
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