Winter DIY OTTAWA MEET

[PierreQuiRoule]

Hello Matt

I think you would have enjoyed this.

Let me try to remember... at least four pairs of speakers, six subwoofers, three DACs, one turntable, preamps (both passive and active), ten power amps (solid state and tubes), one tube receiver, five headphones with various amps, two speaker measurement systems, CDs, a music server, vinyl and... many cameras taking pictures!

In short, we had enough gear to keep two rooms going at all times.

Stay tuned for pictures - they should show up after folks recuperate .

Pierre

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

Lets see if I remember.

Rick brought :

RBR's, an OPPO CD player, his SDX15 quattro sub.
Owen brought his towers, his F5 and his DAC, and his Pre-amp
John brought his amp. The true power house of the show!
Dave brought his two ways and a powered sub.
Adam brought his 12 channel Dayton amp and his center channel speaker.
Ron and Dave brought their headphone gear that sounded very nice. Beautifull tube headphone amps and high quality cans.
Daniel brought a highly custom reciever that had a Fischer chassis and output transformer but was totally custom.
Pierre brought his F4 and F5. He also brought his towers PHL woofers with a Raal ribbon tweeter.
Wolfgang brought his turntable and his reciever that to sounded great.
Tyler brought his servo chip amp.

If I forgot anybody I apologise. You all know how great I am at remembering names.

Me.

four subwoofers. All loaded with the same drivers. two 6 1/2" woofers. The box configurations were vented, tapped horn ( a real tapped horn as in one with atual efficiency gain ) a front loaded horn and an unhorn.

All were tuned to the same low end response. And all were put into the corner and gain matched using a DCX and DEQ that I brought to do the setup. We set the subs up using Adams amplifier and we level matched them using the SPL function on the DEQ. We aplied no contouring to the subs response but listened to them as they reproduced their signals.

We shook the place with the front loaded horn and the tapped horn. We almost shook the place with the unhorn and wanted to shake the place with the vented box. The place being a room 40 feet long and 16 feet wide.

Our test material for the real sit down test was the last movement from the Saint Saens symphony number three. The version out of print by Edo de waart and Jean guillou on Philips. Awesome low end.

Each sub had it's turn at playing the last movement. The Front Loade Horn took the first shot and blew the rest away. But the return shot from the tapped horn was quite interesting. I may play a bit more with tapped horns to see what the little wierd sounds I heard were. Measurements and listening wil help me out there.

I found the exercise in building and listening to the various boxes to be very interesting. I had some wonderful help from John (bearberry) he assembled the tapped horn and the unhorn which I cut out and fit up like a giant jig saw puzzle. He also helped me assemble the front loaded horn.

I forgot to mention. Adam and Anthony cleared to room playing some really badass crap ( rap ) I suffered the torture knowing that I would be toturing them later with the Saint Saen's. I have to say although I didn't like the stuff the FLH performed all of it without any trouble what so ever.

Maybe Adam and Anthony will chime in a set things straight.

 

[ripcard]

...and there was much rejoicing.

Awesome weekend folks. Fantastic turn out. Insane amount of gear to play with. Testing, testing, one...two...everything

Some thank yous are in order:

Bob at CSS for providing a great big stack of goodies to give out. Too bad you live on the other side of the continent Bob, I would love to meet you some time. My Quattro 15 impressed both in listening and testing too, by the way. There were others that contributed to the prize table as well. Thank you.

Pierre for organizing the hall once again and running off to get things that we forgot. Thank you.

Dave D. for his patience and willingness to test his little butt off for us. Thank you.

Mark for the sub woofer comparison (that had to take some time to pull off). Thank you.

Owen for the general hook up and trouble shooting of all sorts of gear and impressing us again with what you can pack into a small car. Thank you.

All those that brought their cherished gear for us to poke and prod and helped with set up and tear down. Thank you.

And to those that just dropped by to see what it's all about. I hope we inspired you to take on a project yourself and it's always fun to show our stuff off to more people anyway. Thank you.

Now...on to the pics.

"My driver's bigger than your driver."

Owen makes sure the Quattro 15 doesn't float away by using his amp and a finger while Pierre and John K. stand by to assist.

Adam's centre on the test stand.

Rbrrrrrr...

Ron's headphone tube amp.

Owen, Adam and Anthony working on the set up.

Mark showing a curved baffle for a customer project line array he has started in on.

Owen and Adam working the gains.

Paul, Tyler, Daniel and Pierre listen to the F5 through the RBRs.

Ron listens to a track while John D. makes up connector.

The "Goodies" table. Nobody left empty handed.

Mmmmm...A stack of subs on a stack of subs.

Amp built by John K.

Brian treated us to a pair of Bob Carver tube monoblocks.

Nice match don't you think. Pierre's towers complimented these amps.

Mr. Carver's handiwork.

Mark pulls names for the prizes.

Not the only time Mark had everyones undivided attention during the weekend.

The gear rotated in and out and from room to room.

What would you like to listen to?

Near the end, Sunday evening sub comparison.

In closing I'd just like to say it was a lot of fun and I'm going to try to hold my head as straight as possible for the next couple of days so everything I learned doesn't leak out my ears before I can process it.

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

Yu vant piks!

I has Piks.

Front Loaded Horn January 2011 pictures by mwmkravchenko - Photobucket

UNHORN January 2011 pictures by mwmkravchenko - Photobucket

Vented Box pictures by mwmkravchenko - Photobucket

Tapped Horn pictures by mwmkravchenko - Photobucket

CBT pictures by mwmkravchenko - Photobucket

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

So where are all the subwoofer critiques????

Feedback would be most appreciated.

 

[SteveVaiRules]

very cool! looks like it would have been loads of fun!


Matt

 

[multisync]

I just turned 60, a long time ago when I was 18 I bought my first book on building speakers (the book was 10 years old at the time), back then the math was non existant as it is today. If you wanted to do a simulation, well you had to do a lot of typing on punched cards and rent time on a mainframe. What I remember most from that book which has been lost was a statement from the introduction. "you can't cheat the laws of physics, if you want front row center think "BIG"".

The vented cabinet with 2 little 6 1/2" drivers was fine for what it was and sounded much bigger. I have heard many subs with larger drivers that sounded a lot worse. Most people would be happy with this sub. The unhorn moved more air sounded deeper, but I thought I heard high order harmonics, but what do I know it's only an opinion. The large taped horn impressive and floor shaking wow. The front loaded horn, double wow, floor shaking, window moving, light rattling and no doubt about it the winner among all of the subs.

Size does matter

oh yeah all were driven by the same small amplifier. You don't need Kilowatts.

johnk

 

[PierreQuiRoule]

So where are all the subwoofer critiques????

Feedback would be most appreciated.

Mark - First off, thank you for your commitment and help since day one. I don’t know many who would show up at 8 am on a Sunday morning with four subs in their car when it is below minus 30 degrees outside!

Now, on to the subs… Preferences are of course very subjective, recording and room dependent, etc. All four subs worked well and filled in the bottom octave(s) below the mains. Now since you ask, and although I am no expert is subwoofers (as you know), I found that in that large room, listening to organ music at realistic levels, the two larger subs provided a realism that the two smaller subs could not. An “I am next to the pipes” feeling versus “I am listening from a distance”. This is hard to explain - especially considering that the levels were matched. But that's how it felt to me. Between the two larger subs, I slightly preferred the tapped horn (tall narrow, labelled number 1, and played second after the larger front-loaded horn). Pedal notes were a little more even, easier to distinguish from each other, and combined better with the keyboard staves to form a whole – or single instrument. This is just my two cents of course… And had I sat elsewhere in the room I might have preferred a different sub .

Thanks for allowing us to participate in this shoot out. It was fun. I look forward to reading what others think.

Pierre

 

[PierreQuiRoule]

Many thanks to those who posted pictures of the event. I hope others will follow and post theirs - for I remember seeing many cameras busy here and there .

John (bearberry) asked me to post the details of a particular CD we listened to and apparently provided some enjoyment. You may recall that we listened to this symphonic music in the smaller room. I felt at the time that Owen’s new DAC was doing a fine job extracting all there was from the recording, while Brian’s Carver monoblocks kept a tight grip on the speakers, extending their dynamic and frequency ranges without strain.

So here it is. I have no clue whether this is a reference version or not, but it certainly is well conducted:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5, Serigu CELIBIDACHE: Münchner Philharmoniker, EMI Classics 7243 5 56522 2 5, recorded live, 21 May 1991.

We listened to the second movement - Andante Cantabile, Con Alcuna Licenza.

Pierre

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

Thank you John and Pierre. Your observations are interesting. John was sitting very close to my location. Pierre was closer to the back of the room.

I to heard the harmonic distortion from the tapped horn. It did it's best to get the lows out. Currently it is residing in my car as the car sub. I will figure out a way to measure it in he car and see what it is doing there. In a smaller room I think it would be a great performer. Same thing with the vented sub. The efficiency tricks I pulled with the different boxes really made a difference. The gain in efficiency from the larger enclosures really made a difference. Talking to Adam who setup the gains on the amplifiers there was quite a difference from the most efficient to the least efficient. But all were driven with the same 100 watt amplifier section from the 12 channel amp.

Pierre I was also impressed with the tapped horn. It actually performed better than I was expecting.

Ron, Rick I know you guys have critical ears. What did you think?

Rick you have your behemoth to compare them to.

Adam your Father of behemoth is also a useful comparison.

Yes there are larger subs than Ricks.

 

[ripcard]

House keeping note- I'd like to ask everybody to look through their gear boxes for an extra Craftsman Phillips #2 screw driver please. It didn't make it back with me in my kit.

For the sub comparo, I was standing at the very back of the room. I am not familiar with pipe organ music, recorded or live, so I'm not sure I can be of much help. I'll describe what I heard though.

The first and largest sub definitely dug very deep. Some buzzing of either the light fixtures or pictures hung on the walls was heard. It seemed to me that #1 sub was also the only one that had a throbbing or pulsing in the really low notes. I must say, I found that unpleasant compared to the almost as deep #2 sub. I preferred the quality of sound I heard from #2 over the larger one. Whether it was a more or less realistic reproduction of a large pipe organ I have no idea. I just preferred to not hear the pulsing/throbbing of the real low tones.

The smaller boxes were impressive, given the drivers and physical dimensions, but it was a large space to fill. In a head to head comparison with their bigger brothers they could not compete.

On the Saturday, while testing was going on in one room, we did listen to the Quattro for a while, mostly playing rock music. While I built it purely for home theatre, it didn't seem to have any trouble keeping up with the music. The gain was kept low and crossed at 60 Hz to the RBRs. The Quattro tested very well, it's a solid 20 Hz sub with plenty of SPL. Maybe Dave D. can post some of the test files for us.

The Quattro was not in the Sunday end of day comparo mostly because I didn't have the energy to lug it back in. Also because of the cold, it would have required too much time to warm up. It had been in the van for almost 24 hrs at -25 C.

I'm going to do a final coat of finish and move it into my family room with the home theatre and give it a workout on some action movies. I'll give a report in my build thread sometime in the near future.

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

Thanks Rick. I appreciate your comments. It sure would have been interesting to have compared your sub to the FLH!

 

[Redshift187]

I thoroughly enjoyed Sunday (other than the temperature of course!). It was great to finally get to listen to a lot of different gear. Now I have to decide how many new projects I should start!

As requested, the version of High Hopes and a few other tracks I played were from David Gilmour In Concert, as far as I know only available on DVD.

 

[PierreQuiRoule]

All - There was one power bar remaining at the very end. If you are missing one, please PM me.

Pierre

 

[PierreQuiRoule]

One more picture...
A pleasant surprise: we were able to listen to some vinyl. Wolfgang’s restored Dual 721 did a fine job. And he sure knows how to clean records! Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms sounded as good as I remember when it came out. The dynamics and detail blew away the CD versions I've owned (including the XRCD2). Here’s a shot of the turntable. Notice the audiophile-approved turntable isolation rack .

 

[PierreQuiRoule]

Hey! No picture of Rick the photograph? Got to fix that. Here’s one where Dave is explaining to Rick how the ‘Recession Buster Reference’ measured. Dave generously tested every speaker that showed up . What a gift to and golden opportunity for all of us speaker builders.

Pierre

 

[DDF]

Thanks to all for the great time last weekend and to all the organizers (you know who you are). There was so much nice equipment to absorb, not only great sounds but fine construction skills as well. A more pleasant group of audio nuts you'll never find!

When I get back to Ottawa, I promise to post all the measurements along with the presentation I pulled together.

Mark, the upright tapped horns were fantastic from my vantage. They just sounded natural, deep and at ease, and loud without sounding loud if you know what I mean.

John, I really liked the grip your amp put on my speakers, its making me rethink my power needs. You're a terrible influence.

Dave

 

[Kravchenko_Audio]

Yep nothing like the head room a couple hundred watts will get yah.

Or nothing like the head room a horn loaded enclosure will get yah.

Wait till the next meet there will be at least one CBT and probably one two way horn loaded enclosure.

That will change everyones perspective once again.

 

[multisync]

Dave if I could find a transformer that is 55-0-55 or 60-0-60, for the right price of course, I could change the amp to put out 300-400 watts maybe for the next diyfest. You could bring your speakers in again and if you are brave enough.........

 

[bearberry]

House keeping note- I'd like to ask everybody to look through their gear boxes for an extra Craftsman Phillips #2 screw driver please. It didn't make it back with me in my kit.

I have it. PM me to arrange a pickup.

John