Frugal-Horn Sub-Woofer

[dbailey]

Hi,

I'd like to hear from people who have matted a sub-woofer with Frugal-Horns. Did to find a sub what complemented the frugal's particularly well? Any subs that just flat out didn't mate with the frugals?

Any other full-range and sub comment/recommendations will be appreciated.

For what its worth, my amp is a RH84 with 12at7 driver, my source is a Squeezebox Touch. My listening room is 12' x 9' x 20' and my music listening preference is electric blues.

Thanks in advance four your input.

Cheers,
Dave

[chrisb]

Originally Posted by dbailey

Hi,

I'd like to hear from people who have matted a sub-woofer with Frugal-Horns. Did to find a sub what complemented the frugal's particularly well? Any subs that just flat out didn't mate with the frugals?

Any other full-range and sub comment/recommendations will be appreciated.

For what its worth, my amp is a RH84 with 12at7 driver, my source is a Squeezebox Touch. My listening room is 12' x 9' x 20' and my music listening preference is electric blues.

Thanks in advance four your input.

Cheers,
Dave

Which FHs?

Yup, a "sub" or more accurately described, bass augmenter, can be very helpful with either of the FH designs. We've been quite happy with results with CSS SDX7. We use them a lot, mostly because we happened to acquire a goodly quantity thereof, and they can fit into very small enclosures - but any decent 6-8" driver such as TangBand, Silver Flute, Peerless, etc should suffice.

This might be as a good a time as any for Dave to post sketch of the "stealth" design - basically a triangular prism enclosure that sits in the FH's rear firing mouth acting as a deflector, and with the driver mounted on the rear panel. Due to dimensional constraints, it works best with external amp.

[planet10]

I don't actually have a drawing (yet). The design process went like this (and probably over the phone): let's do a right triangular prism the height of the FH3 big enuff to give the 14-17 litres needed to accomodate a sealed SDX7. Shortly thereafter proto-units appeared at my door.

Here is a quick picture.



The key to making a helper woofer work is extended top end (700-1000 hz minimum). Many dedicated subwoofers don't qualify. But there are tons of decent midbasses.

It would probably work a bit better as a deflector if the angle was as in the FH1, but we chose 45 degrees since it is a less complicated build.

One could also do it as a diamond shaped prism for more volume.

dave

[dbailey]

Thanks Dave & Chris - all good information.

Dave - what are you using to power the woofer; a dedicated amp or just your main amp?

Cheers,
Dave

[chris661]

Dave, I'm curious: why does a helper woofer need to be able to go so high?

dbailey, it's probably a dedicated amplifier for the woofer: trying to passively (post amplification) cross over between speakers at low frequencies leads to large inductor+capacitor values, which can be rather expensive.
Consider something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-100w-TK205...item519b659864 to power the woofers - valve amplifiers (probably due to their relatively high output impedances) aren't best suited for the last word in low frequency reproduction.

Chris

[planet10]

Originally Posted by dbailey

Dave - what are you using to power the woofer; a dedicated amp or just your main amp?

Currently a pair of Foster plate amps mounted into an external box, with signal picked up off the mains speakers. Once i buffer the sub outputs on my pre-amp i'll be able to use a wider range of amps.

dave

[planet10]

Originally Posted by chris661

I'm curious: why does a helper woofer need to be able to go so high?

To get good integration with a FR it just seems to be needed.

dave

[banglacx]

Originally Posted by planet10

let's do a right triangular prism ...

nOrh tried that with their Prism series. They also tried the pyramid shape, with interesting results. Here's my pair of Prisms with Vifa drivers.
norh-prism.jpg

[planet10]

Those nOrH are definitrly of similar configuration, if the slopw was on the other side you'd have close to the shape of the other deflectors we have here (sand filled).

How do those sound? If they have good bass they could be pressed into duty as stealthWoofers.

dave

[banglacx]

Originally Posted by planet10

How do those sound? If they have good bass they could be pressed into duty as stealthWoofers.
dave

They do sound very good. Two way design, the crossover was designed by DACT and they used Vifa drivers. There were several variants and the larger units could do -3dB / 33 Hz. If you want I can post pics / specs. The prisms aren't in their product line anymore.