Wide-Ranger on the Stove

[cuibono]

Hello all,

After reading MJK's OB design article, I've decide to have a try at it. The main difference is that it's going to have an active crossover (biamped), and it will be using more expensive drivers. Oh, and I will be using Thuneau software for a PC crossover. So its a little different.

The main goals are to get deep clean bass, and very nice mids and highs. This is not going to be a budget system - I want to build a higher quality system than anything I've built yet.

Right now my short list: a Dayton IB 15" with a Visaton B200. These seem well recommended (thanks JohninCR). I plan on adding phase plugs to help the B200s. I want to XO at 200Hz or less, probably at a steeper slope.

These drivers are $120 and $135 each, respectively. That is probably the max I want to pay per driver, so if anyone has recommendations for higher quality drivers at that price or less, please speak now or forever hold your peace. Particularly, there are a number of wide range drivers that are of high quality around this price, and I'm not familiar with them. If anyone feels there is another mid/high driver that would work well, please holler. I'm mostly after getting the mids right, the highs might get massaged by a supertweeter later.

Stay tuned.

[planet10]

You aren't going to find a better LB 8: than the B200... the Hawthorne Augie is another woofer candidate. Acoustic Elegance is also now shipping their version of the Llambda OB helper woofer... don't know if that would fit your budget (it would be my 1st choice)

dave

[mashaffer]

Just a thought for flexibility. If you went for the Dayton DVC 15" sub instead of the IB you could use the second voice coil for resistive loading to adjust the Q to your liking and even chance it to suit one room or another.

Just adds another whistle to the bells and whistles.

mike

[cuibono]

Thanks for the suggestions - it looks like I'll be staying with the original drivers. Before I order them, I'm going to be building the amps for the woofer channel, and getting to know Thuneau. I'll be building a jig for drivers, I'm planning to magnet mount them. I just haven't decided on the aesthetics yet (some WAF necessary). So hopefully I'll have the drivers running within a couple of weeks.

Till then..

[cuibono]

OKAY! ALRIGHT!

Six months later, and they've arrived! And they are awesome!

[cuibono]

The drivers are a Visaton B200 above 150Hz and an Eminence Alpha15
below 150Hz. XO duty is being done in the computer, buy Thuneau's Allocator software. I am very happy with how it works!

[cuibono]

The B200 is magnet mounted, the cardboard baffle is 19.5" wide total. The woofer is in an H-frame, with 16" by 16" openings, just like MJK suggested.

[davidallancole]

Why did you go with the Eminence 15" instead of the Dayton IB you were talking about?

[cuibono]

As you can see, I am very excited with how these are sounding! They are still breaking in, but right off the bat, they sound very good. Better than any other freshly minted speaker I've made. My fiancee usually laughs at me for all this messing around, but this time she was really impressed. She even said they sound very 'open' and like 'the singers were in the room with us'! Pretty good coming from someone who doesn't do any of this stuff.

Anyway, they are going to burn in for a couple of days before I really critique them. The highs are a little pronounced, like the B200 frequency response suggests, and the bass is powerful. The mids don't seem recessed at all though. They need to burn in, but even without it, they sound great.

I highly recommend using Allocator, it works very well, particularly with Winamp. I've used it some, and it took me less than an hour to get it running for this setup.

On the low end, Peter Daniel's gainclone feeds the Alpha15, and on the top, I've got 10W 6BM8 monoblocks a friend designed. You can see them sitting on top of the H-frames.

I'm just starting though: I'm going to add phase plugs, possibly a wave guide like JohninCR did, Enable the drivers (thanks Ed for the kit!), make a real baffle, and do a little FR and time alignment in Allocator. I've got to do some fixing around the preamp - things are jury-rigged just to work, so they aren't perfect.

[cuibono]

Dave -

I went with the Alpha 15 drivers for a couple of reasons - I've been using MJK's spreadsheets, and believe what I was seeing, and what he and others have said about the particular benefits of using an Alpha15 open baffle. They are a bit cheaper too. Altogether, the drivers were about $400usd. Using the Daytons would have added quite a bit.

I obviously can't compare the Alphas to the Daytons, but I am not disappointed. The bass is strong, and the drivers have not been broken in or tweaked yet.

If I had a very large room, and wanted to do high SPLs, I might have done two Daytons per side - I think that is where they would shine. They are made to handle a lot of power. But in a moderate to small room, a single Alpha15 is plenty. The H-frame makes them particularly size efficient too...