Ladies & Gentlemen - The Emken

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Further Fiddles

Happy New Year All :D
An up-date:
For the last two weeks I've been mucking about with tweeters.
(1) The Fostex FT17H were connected up and I swapped caps in and out, tried them in their hole below the 12Lta, on the 'top deck' inside through to outside, toed strait/in/out, in and out of phase, then a borrowed pair of L-pads to see what happened....... things got far better with a much reduced output BUT still sounded wrong - still cant put my finger on or describe why this is so, I've had dealings with this tweet before and things were good, though I must add that it was a far older version.
So I concluded that, for MY ears, that the tweeter was wrong.
Time to improvise.
(2) I tried the 'plastic' (for want of a better word/description) tweeters of about 19/20mm dia rescued from a pair of MS10.1's again, with various caps.
They sounded as horrid as before.

(3) I then tried the 25mm dia metal domes that reside in my 'out going' 2.5 way towers with various caps and things got a bit better, nothing startling, nothing offensive and no reason to keep them blu-tacked/precariously balanced on the top deck.

(4) Pair of tweeters made by Wharfdale, rescued from a dinky pair of Diamond 2 way towers that had water damaged cabinets, model number '0318A' 25mm/1 inch fabric dome of unknown sensitivity. I went strait for 2.2mfd and that sounded a lil weird, so I spent the next two days 'choco blocking' caps / wire in and out and have finally settled on the initial value of 2.2mfd with 18ga copper wire stripped from an unknown value cross-over coil.
All I can conclude is that the out-put of the tweeter / crossing cap is just right, there is still a slight roughness to the upper reaches of the 12Lta, but then short of doing a proper cross-over..... occasional 'scratchy-ness that was there before adding tweeter, revealed by pluffing, just a bit of 'character' as I believe Godzilla said ;)
Here is a link to a 'bay seller of these tweets: Wharfedale Model 0318A Tweeter (used in Diamond Series) Brand New | eBay

These have now been in system for a week, Will's and other friends have listened to them and said there is a huge improvement with the pluff / Wharfdale tweeters.
With my venerable and freshly fettled / restored Cyrus 2 / PSX / CD63Ki hooked up, Claire Jones's harp is tight and HUGE, Holly Cole has lost the 'cuped / breathing through a veneer tube' and sounds.... everything that gets played sounds better, Even my sim-racing sounds astonishing, a Ferrari F430-GT3 round Monaco, into Grand Hotel hairpin one gets the diff winding up on down-shift into 1st gear, big brakes going 'Shssksssss' and the tires all a twitter.... Yesterdays Race Club event at Spa Francorchamps was a full GT3 field BMW M6/Z4, Audi R8, F458, Gallardo LP600, Merc SLS, 997 etc 60min sprint race....... one of my neighbours said it sounded like the race was running round the village!
I'm totally and utterly chuffed with my Emkens.
And there's a bit of good news about the 'Thick Felt' - a surfer friend runs an upholstery busyness and can get by the roll, so there could be a chance I can help others obtain the correct stuff in the UK:)
 
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Well, earlier today I delved my hand into the bag of 'pluff', teased what I thought was a suitable amount for one driver and thought 'how to ensure equality?'
....Borrowed a pair of electronic scales that weigh in .01 grams, weighed the pluff at 1.7g, teased and weighed a second dose out, teased it out and had to used more force than expected to get it betwixt whizzer and the main cone.

Top mod, Lady GaGa's The Fame becomes, for the first time, really really easy to listen to.
You know, I cant be diddled with too much gushing 'Blah de Blah', so in Short:
The whizzer must have a HUGE output in its working range, even going by the posted graphs, both for stock and modded drivers, don't really tell the whole story. The effect of killing off the reflected rear out put is not subtle, EmKen on its own with (my) current porting DOES DO SKANKY BASS!
It was masked by the whizzers output!
Claire Jones's harps long strings, at last, go 'Plommmbbbbb'.
One can hear the odd 'wibble' as the Lta gets right up the freq range, I can accept that because everything else is 'Just Right'.
I've been listening for near 7hrs without fatigue and I wish I could listen for another 7 - pity I've got to curfew cos the lil lass who lives above is near her bed-time.
:cloud9:
Thanks Dave..... so worth the pains and waiting.
Etocynedd, pity you didn't get in on this from the get go - I'll assure you here and now that if you buy the plan-set, build with even half decent ply and do the mods detailed in this thread, YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.
You'll learn a heap and have fun too :)

Holy i bet!
I had big dreams of doing this, but it seems the money finds a hole to go down.

I still intend to do them, ill definitely buy a set and build them.
the whole resistively ported concept intrigues me.

The most astounding sound i've heard has always been large drivers or the original instruments.

Any pics anywhere?
 
Here's a pic, only of the one because my flat has turned into a total 'man cave' since my gf and I moved in to 'our abode'.
There is a phase plug in there, unfortunately the borrowed cams battery decided to die when the flash was turned on and the plug has a dark enough red tone to become invisible under room lighting.
They still remain slightly un-finished as I am slooooowly working on low Fq reinforcement ideas.......
LAB12 in an EmKen shaped / size box, BR ported
LAB12 type horns (stock 3 fold or 2 fold special)
15" or 18" in big (huge!) sealed boxes
The 12lta takes A LOT of running in, free air them for a bit, put them in the cabinets and then find a place where you can give them a damn good thrashing. I say this because after the times mine have been beaten a bit, they sound a bit better.
 

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EmKen

Digging up old bones here but are the plans for the EmKens available?

Hi there S: I tried Googlle search, I did not find anything on plans. You might try M-H Audio calculators. First column, click on "Onken bass reflex calculator". You may be able to conger-up a design for the 12Lta driver (or an equivalent bass driver, since the OP used a tweeter in the original EnKen and in the last posts was looking to add bass reinforcement). If you do not have a driver with suitable T/S parameters, the M-H Audio Onken Calculator is a bitch to operate. ...regards, Michael
 
Thank you Dave.
I was hoping you would chime in as I wanted to get your opinion on the EmKen with the 12lta's. After reading this entire thread and a couple others I didn't find a definitive answer as to your thoughts for hifi use .
I plan on using a powered sub as a helper and also looking at a Selenium super tweeter for highs. Found the design only by searching for a full range speaker that didn't require a crossover.
I like the idea of using a large fullrange. My thought is that they may have enough oomph to play rock and if designed correctly, also handle critical listening.
If you have a better suggestion than the EmKen I'm all ears/eyes.

Thank you again,
SS






The EM-Ken plans are one of the monster miniOnken paid plansets. $10 USD. Details here: planet10-hifi miniOnken Plan-Set Subscriptions

dave
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
The purpose of our designing this box was for small PA use. I had to do a whole lot of work to the drive unit to make it just tlerable for MY (or chris’) hi-fi use. Your mileage may vary. Daniel (our electonics whiz) who ended up with ours while i was in hospital, really likes them and uses them with a set of the big AMT dipole tweeters.

My personal opinion is that 4-5” is the optimum size range for a full-range driver (i recently read that Ted Jordan had the same opinion), but i did recently hear a 2nd 8” that i might be able to live with long term.

Keep in mind that in speaker design the art is in the choice of compromises that you make, because all speakers have large numbers of compromises.

dave
 
The purpose of our designing this box was for small PA use. I had to do a whole lot of work to the drive unit to make it just tlerable for MY (or chris’) hi-fi use. Your mileage may vary. Daniel (our electonics whiz) who ended up with ours while i was in hospital, really likes them and uses them with a set of the big AMT dipole tweeters.

My personal opinion is that 4-5” is the optimum size range for a full-range driver (i recently read that Ted Jordan had the same opinion), but i did recently hear a 2nd 8” that i might be able to live with long term.

Keep in mind that in speaker design the art is in the choice of compromises that you make, because all speakers have large numbers of compromises.

dave

Dave,

Do the full rangers you use (4-5" ) require a crossover of any kind?
If so, is there a certain size that don't require them or do all need some sort of padding?
My initial want for an FR is to be rid of crossovers. At least for as many octaves as possible.
Relatively new to diy cabinets and want to keep it simple.
Hoping this first attempt will be enjoyable enough that I don't feel the need to do another.
If the weather clears will be starting the sub this weekend. Using one BFM design tuba 18 for now and will add a 2nd later on.

Thank you for your help thus far.

SS
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
Our favourite 5.25” drivers (MA Alpair 10.3/p) are essentially good for at least 9 octaves when in something like Frugel-Horn XL so are as near full range as you will get with one driver. One does have some limits with ultimate loudness but this is not an issue with the majority of people. The smaller Alpair 7.3 will not reach as low but has a tiny bit greater DDR (ability to reproduce small details). Many people do not have the front end to expoit this extra capability so the larger drivers become the overall leaders.

Nothin g between the amp & the speaker except speaker wire (and terminals).

We have not come close to exploring all possible driver options, many of which are quite a bit pricier, but we do have a wider range of experience than most.

dave
 
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