Alpair 10 wide bass driver and Alpair 10 Fullrange

[MJK]

Originally posted by planet10

Like any new drivewr, it takes some time to get them out into the field and get some designs going.

I have looked at three of the Alpair drivers in a couple of enclosure concepts, including resonant enclosures (TL's) and even some OB concepts, and they look very promising. If the manufacturer's specs are accurate I think the drivers might generate really high perfromance designs at very reasonable prices. The one thing I do find confusing is the two different color cone options which seem to offer different performance trade-offs according to the manufacturer's website.

[Jim Griffin]

Let me check-in to say that I do have a design cooking for the Alpair 10 which is a MLTL. I started with the GM 48" Jordan JX92S (also used in my Jordan with a ribbon MLTL version) dimensions. Using Martin's spread sheets quickly yielded a suitable design for the A10. I'll report in a couple of weeks when the assembly is complete and I've had a chance to listen. Looks very reasonable so far.

Jim Griffin

[CSS/XBL]

Hi,

I'll have Mark look at this when he gets up but I think the only case where there is a spec difference indicated by colour is with the 2 Alpair5 models.

The Alpair6 units are denoted by basket shape and the Alpair 10s come in either full range or bass and I don't think there's any spec difference between the 2 different colour Alpair10 full range. The Alpair10 bass unit was designed to match the Alpair5 with the same colour.

Bob

[spedmetal]

Thanks guys for the input. Its been a great help!

Originally posted by alspe


What boxes are desingned for Alpair 10 FR? I haven't found anything. I am considering Konus Essence clone, the one used with Jordan JX92s. Very nice looking speaker.


Spedmetal, have you wrote here?

There are 2 designs on the MarkAudio website:

http://www.markaudio.com/plan/alp-10

http://www.markaudio.com/plan/alpair-10-simple

Ive heared the Konus clone, and owned the smaller GM MLTL and I liked the mass loaded better. Both with Jordans.

MLTL would propably work best, but still I think ill try the Harvey. If they suck together, I can allways go MLTL..

No I havent written there. How so?

[eeyore]

These sound like a great speaker to test with, and to compare to the JX92s. I have a pair of the Jordans and am building a sealed enclosure, with a mating subwoofer, and was thinking of building a very similar Alpair 10 to compare with. The price of the A10 is very appealing.

What are the opinions of the 10 to 20 litre sealed enclosure?

Just how far down does the A10 really go in a correctly design enclosure, like ported or MLTL design?

[Jim Griffin]

The Alpair 10 models to a F3 in the 35 Hz area in my MLTL simulations. It models a few Hzs lower than my Jordan JX92S version MLTL. Of course like any TL or ported speaker you have limited power handling for low frequencies--especially below their resonance frequency. Hence, you will not have chest pounding bass with drivers the size of the Alpair 10 and the Jordan JX92S but listening to music will be just fine (the exception would be 32 Hz organ notes at high volume levels and the cannon shots in the '1812 Overture'). Furthermore, don't think of them as subwoofer replacement in your home theater set-up.

My work indicates that a 15 liters vented box would work well for the Alpair 10. The box size wants to be a little larger than the Jordan driver needs. In an independent design Bob Reimer of CSS tells me that he is using a 14 liters cabinet with a 2" flared port at 9.25" in length (45Hz tuning). You can stuff the port tube if you wish to act like a sealed box.

Jim

[eeyore]

Jim,

Thanks for your response, that is why I would like to setup my system with a active crossover (3rd order) for and keep the stereo subwoofers to a low as crossover as possible, say around 100Hz to a max of 150Hz, and it seems that both the Jordans and the Alpair would allow this to occur. With this scenario, I could use a simple passive first order High pass filter, which given the lower Fs of the two drivers, could work well, except for some phase coherence issues. Which leads to me build smaller speaker cabs for both drivers, as the stereo subwoofer would be doing the heavy lifting at 100Hz and below. Can someone who has done something similar provide some info on whether or not the common frequency covered by the sub and the fr speaker in the 50Hz to say around 100Hz region needs to be controlled to prevent a hump, or will the natural diminishing ability of the Jordan/Alpair to really output high SPL in this region be enough to create a nice natural transition between the two?

If the F3 of the FR drivers are around 40Hz, should the sub be crossing over at say 50Hz?

Will play with the MC models and see a good combination of box sizes and volume. Further, I wanted to build this out of local (Australian) hardwood oak, and thus have limited board widths, which adds another variable to juggle. (Off note, but I built a pair of Fostex 127e dipole with the hardwood, with a french polish finish, and they look great, the sound is another story...)

Thanks

[eeyore]

Here are my preliminary specs for a MLTL design with the Alpair 10 and the Jordan JX92.

Overall Size with 19mm panels. 600mm high by 235mm wide baffle and 273mm deep. Volume at 21.4 l, minus various, approximately 20 l. 0.5 lb per cubic foot stuffing.

Port at 381mm from top (inside) 20mm radius port 100mm long and 110mm deep for A10. Driver mounted as high as possible.

[eeyore]

Jordan SPL Response.

[eeyore]

Alpair SPL Response.