Beyond the Ariel

Some have noted the AH340 is on the large side, but not with the bass cabinet 26"/660mm wide. And the AH340/DCM-50 combination offers the potential of a much lower crossover, which is highly desirable.
The DCM50 sounds like a nice alternative. I noticed B&C lists the Voice Coil Diameter as 2", is that right? It looks like the diaphragm would be much larger.
Dan

edit: I answered my own question. The diaphragm isn't a dome like many smaller format compression drivers. Instead it looks like a small cone:
https://www.bcspeakers.com/en/resources/service-kits#kit-diaphragm-76
 
Guys, anyone has one or two Vifa drivers for sale, might be used of course? I have a damaged driver that I need to replace, otherwise my Ariels are gone... thanks a lot for any help.
I have this one, unused.
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I have been a long time lurker on DIY Audio, and seeing new activity on this thread which inspired me greatly to build my current speakers, I thought I had better “give back”.

My current speakers were built in 2018 (30mm B/BB birch ply heavily braced and damped 230 litre cabs with Faital 15PR400 and HF146 HF drivers) which originally had JMLC425 horns. It is similar to one that was discussed on this thread some time ago with the GPA/Altec and Radian drivers, but with European drivers that are more easily obtainable in the UK.

They were a revelation to my ears, and I found them preferable to the Tannoy Windsors they replaced, my previous Lowther based speakers and “conventional” 6.5” cone/fabric dome hi-fi floorstanders.

After living with them for a while I decided that the JMLC horns were just too forward for extended listening sessions. After further research, I decided to replace them with the rounded edge freestanding OSSE waveguides ("Acoustic Horn Design – The Easy Way (Ath4)" thread) that were 3D printed in sections instead of making a wooden mould on a metalworking lathe and laying them up in fibreglass.

This improved things greatly with the HF, reducing colouration and less forward in presentation. Unexpected was the simplification of the HF side of the passive crossover, removing the need for a notch filter on the HF146.

A big thank you to the members of this forum for making available such an amazing resource of knowledge. I would have probably not been able to do it otherwise.
 

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Sounds great to me, I’m not running a theater, I’m sitting in front of my system listening to music 😉 “Beaming” could also be called
“focused”, which means high efficiency and less room interaction. It’s not a negative, just an option. I think wheels have been in use for many millennia and we still seem to think a rolling circle is hard to beat.
Bryan, how are these holding up? Are you still tweaking them?
 
I'm deep in tweakville, after setting up the system about a week ago, and then running a bunch of measurements last weekend to see how it looked compared to what I was hearing. Still a bit of tuning to do, but I'm happy to hear things starting to settle in after 20 hours or so of playing. There were a few anomalies in the measurements that are beyond the reach of the active crossover, but the last step will be adding a custom FIR filter with Focus Fidelity that my buddy CAM is really good at so I'll send him the measurements Saturday then plug it into ROON. Last time he made one for me it was night and day. My room is not the greatest and these are pretty big, actually just TOO big for the room, but the plan is to move everything into the adjacent room this summer which is more than twice the volume and a dream space for setting up a system.
This system is very different now from what I've had in place the last couple years. I'm now biamping with an active Sublime K231 crossover, with tubes on the horns and a beautiful class D Cameron surprised me with, one of the coolest things anyone has ever done for me! And it sounds so so good on the Faitals, which are wonderful drivers.
I'm enjoying what this setup is doing, but it's got it's strengths and weaknesses. The sheer size of things presents in a more realistic way, and being so efficient I don't have to listen very loudly to "wake things up". It's a nice large sound, people sized, and nothing is being pushed, which I guess is part of the natural presentation. But I've been surprised at how the Rosso CD/Azura horn combo images so differently from the RAAL 70/20s on my standmounts. The imaging is there, and there's a solid center image etc, but it's more diffuse, not as cleanly delineated, not as 'hifi'. I admit I love that stuff but this does sound more realistic so I guess that's one of the major tradeoffs. Also the soundstage is not as deep as before, maybe more like a shallow cloud. Not flat, just not quite as 3D as the standmounts. I'm definitely a convert to biamping and active crossover now, and doubt I would ever buy another capacitor to put inside a speaker. But I think actives definitely require well behaved drivers, and these are fortunately pretty well behaved, though I've seen better for sure. Thank God for FIR filters.
I had to make 5 new sets of ICs, 4 balanced and 1 SE, they're all Duelund silver "foil" in cotton with Neotech solid copper helix coils and AECO XLRs and 1/4" TRS plugs (for the Sublime). They were a pain in the *** and I'm done with Helix construction, although they really sound good!

Here's a photo of the wall of chaos (must be a mile of cables behind, violating all proper cable hygiene laws:

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But I've been surprised at how the Rosso CD/Azura horn combo images so differently from the RAAL 70/20s on my standmounts.
This is the most expected difference between these two sources assuming you've corrected for tonal balance between the two. The ribbon is pretty narrow, so it will have a wider horizontal pattern. This will give more lateral reflections which will tend to increase the width of the sound stage and move center vocalists back behind the speakers in my experience at the expense of specificity of individual sound localization. The horn is a large source with a narrower pattern which will have the opposite effect. The perceived difference between the two will depend on their exact characteristics as well as your room.
 
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