too much time to kill...
This sounds like a fun project! I would like to add my comments:
The Pioneer B20 is a good driver at a great price. It does everything well enough until you compare it to more expensive drivers. For example: it’s got great midrange until you compare it to something better… then it sounds a little veiled and muffled. No matter what there always seems to be a slight ‘cupped hand’ quality on both male and female vocals. Without comparing to something better the B20’s always sound balanced and great.
Bass goes pretty deep but again, compared to something better it can sound muffled… treble doesn’t shimmer so this driver needs a tweeter of some kind. It’s easy to make this driver sound good by just stuffing it into a sealed cabinet and topping off with a tweeter…. cross it anywhere you like… whatever suits your fancy. Easy as pie.
Personally, I love this driver for its well rounded ‘full range’ performance. It’s a ‘jack of all trades’ and never leaves me fatigued. I prefer this driver with a super tweeter to nearly every single two or three way I’ve heard over the years and happily live with them in my office. If I never heard Fostex I’d be singing the B20s praises… and I don’t want to hear Lowthers or Supravox thank you! But it does have a certain character making it less than accurate. Warts and all, I’ll take it tho.
My suggestion if you’re going to use it as the ‘main’ driver of a multi-way speaker is to use a better quality woofer down low (Vifa, Scan Speak, Morel, Peerless, etc…) for bass detail. This would free up the B20 to play clearer more effortless mids/upper mids and yes, cross it over to a tweeter of choice and fiddle with the crossover point until it suits you. Blend the tweeter too high and the speaker will sound dull and lifeless… blend it too low and it sounds too bright and fizzly. Fortunately blending a tweeter anywhere from 5k to 20k creates a damn good sounding speaker. I used an L-pad to adjust the tweeter to taste and to the room which worked really well for me. Mounting the B20 in an open baffle may change things for the better or worse… you will have to try it for yourself. But if open baffle fails… a small sealed box should do fine.
I’ve written too much already … but to finish, the B20 throws a pretty big image/soundstage… piano, guitar, sax sounds great… vocals are good (until you hear better, so don’t compare).. Ella, Sinatra, etc. sound great… as does Steely Dan, James Blunt, Holly Cole, Diana Krall, Cowboy Junkies, Supertramp, ELO… even Reggae! They bloom at times and warm your soul… but they ain’t the last word in resolution and detail. The sound they make is big and bold and I can easily imagine a larger, more elaborate multi-way pair of speakers with B20s at the heart of the system charging a medium to large room effortlessly. I cannot imagine some more expensive but smaller diameter Fostex or TB’s working out as well in larger rooms.
At night with my very cheap SI amp… feet on my desk… Eva Cassidy comes to life and sings to me sweetly thru the B20’s and sometimes I would swear she’s in my room along with her band. Everything sounds perfect until I compare to my Fostex.
Peace,
Godzilla
This sounds like a fun project! I would like to add my comments:
The Pioneer B20 is a good driver at a great price. It does everything well enough until you compare it to more expensive drivers. For example: it’s got great midrange until you compare it to something better… then it sounds a little veiled and muffled. No matter what there always seems to be a slight ‘cupped hand’ quality on both male and female vocals. Without comparing to something better the B20’s always sound balanced and great.
Bass goes pretty deep but again, compared to something better it can sound muffled… treble doesn’t shimmer so this driver needs a tweeter of some kind. It’s easy to make this driver sound good by just stuffing it into a sealed cabinet and topping off with a tweeter…. cross it anywhere you like… whatever suits your fancy. Easy as pie.
Personally, I love this driver for its well rounded ‘full range’ performance. It’s a ‘jack of all trades’ and never leaves me fatigued. I prefer this driver with a super tweeter to nearly every single two or three way I’ve heard over the years and happily live with them in my office. If I never heard Fostex I’d be singing the B20s praises… and I don’t want to hear Lowthers or Supravox thank you! But it does have a certain character making it less than accurate. Warts and all, I’ll take it tho.
My suggestion if you’re going to use it as the ‘main’ driver of a multi-way speaker is to use a better quality woofer down low (Vifa, Scan Speak, Morel, Peerless, etc…) for bass detail. This would free up the B20 to play clearer more effortless mids/upper mids and yes, cross it over to a tweeter of choice and fiddle with the crossover point until it suits you. Blend the tweeter too high and the speaker will sound dull and lifeless… blend it too low and it sounds too bright and fizzly. Fortunately blending a tweeter anywhere from 5k to 20k creates a damn good sounding speaker. I used an L-pad to adjust the tweeter to taste and to the room which worked really well for me. Mounting the B20 in an open baffle may change things for the better or worse… you will have to try it for yourself. But if open baffle fails… a small sealed box should do fine.
I’ve written too much already … but to finish, the B20 throws a pretty big image/soundstage… piano, guitar, sax sounds great… vocals are good (until you hear better, so don’t compare).. Ella, Sinatra, etc. sound great… as does Steely Dan, James Blunt, Holly Cole, Diana Krall, Cowboy Junkies, Supertramp, ELO… even Reggae! They bloom at times and warm your soul… but they ain’t the last word in resolution and detail. The sound they make is big and bold and I can easily imagine a larger, more elaborate multi-way pair of speakers with B20s at the heart of the system charging a medium to large room effortlessly. I cannot imagine some more expensive but smaller diameter Fostex or TB’s working out as well in larger rooms.
At night with my very cheap SI amp… feet on my desk… Eva Cassidy comes to life and sings to me sweetly thru the B20’s and sometimes I would swear she’s in my room along with her band. Everything sounds perfect until I compare to my Fostex.
Peace,
Godzilla
Has anyone tried moding the B20s with phase plugs? I'm wondering if that might help out the mids a touch while smoothing and possibly extending the upper end response.
As for the line in OB, well, I love OB, and I'm starting to really like the line, but since you can't have your HF sources spaced so far apart, I was wondering if it would even be worth using more than one B20 at all.
One option would be to mod the LF B20s in your array. Possibly cut the whizzers off everything but the center (HF) B20 in your line. Maybe even treat those cones with damar or puzzlecoat to add mass and lower their Fs.
Also, since you're going to be limited in efficiency to the level of the one HF unit, you could also had inductors in line with the array of LF drivers to raise their Qts since the B20's Qts is only moderately appropriate for OB duty.
Thinking of it that way, maybe it would be best to look at other Pioneer 8" drivers and find the one that best matches the B20 and then add inductors to them in the same way to raise their effective Qts, and by association their bass response in OB (you could actually tune the Bass response to your room by adjusting the inductors used).
Kensai
As for the line in OB, well, I love OB, and I'm starting to really like the line, but since you can't have your HF sources spaced so far apart, I was wondering if it would even be worth using more than one B20 at all.
One option would be to mod the LF B20s in your array. Possibly cut the whizzers off everything but the center (HF) B20 in your line. Maybe even treat those cones with damar or puzzlecoat to add mass and lower their Fs.
Also, since you're going to be limited in efficiency to the level of the one HF unit, you could also had inductors in line with the array of LF drivers to raise their Qts since the B20's Qts is only moderately appropriate for OB duty.
Thinking of it that way, maybe it would be best to look at other Pioneer 8" drivers and find the one that best matches the B20 and then add inductors to them in the same way to raise their effective Qts, and by association their bass response in OB (you could actually tune the Bass response to your room by adjusting the inductors used).
Kensai
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=290-063
>>> Thinking of it that way, maybe it would be best to look at other Pioneer 8" drivers and find the one that best matches the B20...
Here it is again. This driver, the B20 and a tweeter might be a cheap way to do an easy three way.
>>> Thinking of it that way, maybe it would be best to look at other Pioneer 8" drivers and find the one that best matches the B20...
Here it is again. This driver, the B20 and a tweeter might be a cheap way to do an easy three way.
That's the stuff. In a sealed cab, you'd be good to go. In OB, could/should we use inline inductors to raise this woofer's Qts? Sure, you lose efficiency, but since inrank is looking to make a line of them (and the fact that these woofers are a bit more sensitive naturally than the B20) there should be that much overhead that we could eat into with inductors, right?
Kensai
Kensai
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