New Maiko cabinet for the Feastrex D5nf

[mluckow]

The great cabinet designers of Frugal Horn, Scott and Dave, have given me the privilege of announcing a new cabinet that they are now designing specifically for the Feastrex D5nf driver. It is a BVR that in some way resembles the “Freddie Chang” design, but it differs in a number of important ways. For example, it will have two big vents instead of one so it is taller and will produce fuller sound including more bass, it has no enclosed areas behind the angled deflector plates so there are no unnecessary resonant pockets, it has a double-fin stand in the rear to provide stability and inhibit resonance, it has mouth braces, a suprabaffle is being added, the reflex chamber is improved, and so forth. A preliminary rendering of the new cabinet is shown below, though the final version will be different in some ways. Dave is also currently preparing CAD drawings.

The new design is called “Maiko” after my daughter, and in honor of the culture of the young “maiko-san” apprentice geisha girls of Japan. The cabinet has been specifically designed with an elegance that incorporates artistic design elements of that culture, such as the Japanese sakura (cherry blossoms) in the fin, the graceful curved figure, and other elements that will appear in the final design. I am very proud and honored that Dave and Scott have invited my daughter Maiko to participate in the design process. For example, she drew the sakura blossoms in the stand and she is now working on other design elements as well.

We wanted to announce this now, before the design is complete, because some people with Feastrex D5nf drivers are currently making decisions on what cabinets to build for these drivers and this could influence their decision. Rich has found that the “Freddie Chang” design sounds great and brings out a lot of the capabilities of the Feastrex drivers, and Dave, Scott, and I hope that the Maiko cabinet will sound even better and will extract noticeably more from the Feastrex drivers.

I’d like to thank Scott and Dave for putting so much time and effort into creating this design for those of us who have Feastrex D5nf drivers. I think the work they have done will greatly enhance our enjoyment of these great drivers. Thank you very much, Dave and Scott!

Mike Luckow

[planet10]

I'd like to thank Mike for being a guinea pig on this one.

A couple notes on this design to keep things right up front.

Maiko is special... Scott and i are retaining commercial rights to this design. So even thou Maiko is a Chang she is not an open source Spawn, and will be known by the given name only. The open source Spawn version is Phat Freddie Chang (we figured if the if the single mouth Chang is a Half Chang then the double mouth Freddie had to have a adjective that implied bigger). The differences between Phat Freddie & Maiko are in the design expression, so i guess you could call them fraternal twins.

Plans for the diyer will be available for both (ie to the individual diyer nothing has changed)

dave

[chrish]

With all of the different names of the spawn family, the site is starting to look like an IKEA catalogue

Cheers

[planet10]

The SO & i went to Canada on the WE. We managed to go all the way thru IKEA and only spent $8.



dave

[BTW]

Hi Dave,

Great looking design you got there ... Looking forward to see the final speaker box.. Btw what's the height of the Maiko.. just trying to visualize how they fit in my room....

[Phil Townsend]

The Cabs Look GREAT...

I need a pair right now.
Hey I even have the driver.

Plans, I need plans...

Have saw...
Will build...

[tinitus]

That "foot" on the back looks very difficult to get right and make fit the cabinet

[Russell Dawkins]

Originally posted by planet10
The SO & i went to Canada on the WE.
dave

How delightfully VI-centric.

For those in other parts of the world - we live on an island off western Canada which actually should be an independent republic, but for the fact that the capitol of the province is also on "our" island.

[Godzilla]

The design looks fantabulous! Why not use the cherry blossom or some other meaningful design cutout for inside the upper and lower mouths rather than circles?

I can also imagine some kind of engraved art on the sides of these cabinets. In keeping with the lavish design and cost of these drivers why not make the cabinets musically engaging and artistically appealing adorned with all the accoutrements. Maybe a set of three golden balls as spikes referencing the ball shaped magnet design within?

Good luck with the design. The drivers needed more than rectangular shaped cabinets to retain and justify their exclusivity and price. Neato.

[Richidoo]

Congrats Scott and Dave. Thanks for designing an all out assault on the Feastrex driver. When single driver fanatics start to hear the Feastrex for themselves, they will want it. So having a state of the art DIY cabinet ready to go is a great blessing.

I had a big listening G2G at my house this weekend where I played the Freddie Chang for about 10 guys. Even the super audiophiles heard the single driver benefit, and nobody complained of lack of high freq extension. Rock tunes had enough bass to enjoy the music, nobody complained of wimpy bottom end. The newly added bracing made it sound a little too bright, but that was really the only criticism, and caused by my inexperience in tuning a speaker. Two serious audiophiles actually said they liked it just the way it is, which of course went straight to my head. The overall perception of everybody was good, but not everyone is of the single driver persuasion. Only a few sat down in front and actively tried to "get it," and both of them were very impressed with it.

My experience with Freddie has been very positive overall, but as my first audio DIY project ever, there was a lot I didn't know, so I made some minor mistakes. With total materials cost around $20, no biggie... and it still sounded great, right off the bat. Curing resonance was the biggest problem, and I see you have incorporated some elements to fix that in Maiko.

2 things I wanted to mention for your consideration. First is the vertical stability. I propose adding some kind of base support to Phat and Maiko to keep them vertical when the odd human earthquake (my 7yo boy) walks past. Thin steel rods painted to taste and attached to the base would add stability and remain inconspicuous. Designing a decorative wooden base in the Maiko tradition is another idea that I would prefer to the steel rods, maybe a big flower shape, or two flowers, one on each side, or simple arcs coming off the front of the bottom horn and meeting again at the rear legs. Throw in some adjustable spikes and problem solved with even more opportunity to decoratively enhance the design. I would love to hear any other ideas!!

The other thing is the driver mounting. For the Freddie, I flushmounted the driver in the baffle. It looked great and avoids the step issues. I rear mounted it using the M8 blind bolthole on the rear of the driver, as Chris suggested a couple months ago, and as Feastrex does on their own designs. I just used spruce crossbrace, attached to spruce blocks on the sides, glued and screwed, with a small weather strip in the driver baffle inset. I think it also reduced box resonance. If I add a crossbrace in the center of the Maiko box to use as driver mounting beam, will that screw up the resonance management plan that you have established in Maiko already? Is some resonance in the box desireable?

When I added dowel bracing to the Freddie, it helped a lot with the low freq resonances. But it did shift the resonances up to higher freqs, although softer, it did become more "forward." I would not use solid pine wood again because it is just too difficult to tame the resonance. The material should be naturally dampening to some degree. I plan to experiment with 9 ply marine Birch (lots of epoxy layers) and also constrained layered MDF/greenglue to see which I prefer. I can't wait to hear the Feastrex with minimal box coloring.

One more thing, when I had the rear panel of the Freddie removed, I could snap my fingers inside the driver chamber, and with my ear near the driver I could hear the snap easily, with no perceivable muffling at all from the thin paper driver cone. Interior reflection distance front to back makes the interference centered ~690 Hz. Treble and mid clarity improved a lot by adding a piece of 1" cotton batting over the rear panel, directly behind the driver. Putting any more padding in there took up too much volume and killed the bass. It also made the speaker's efficiency go way down, and the speaker sounded much more hifi (stuffy and slow.) The single cotton pad did not noticeably affect the bass performance, but improved the treble very noticeably. I also added a piece of cotton to cover most of the top surface of the horn, which killed off a noticeable horniness that I started to hear only when all the previous tweaks were done, including 2 dowel crossbraces in the horn mouth.

With all said and done, I am very happy with the Freddie, and looking forward to building the Maiko to make it even better. Thanks again!
Rich