Don't know if anyone has looked at or used this woofer in OB but it looks like it may work very well. http://www.assistanceaudio.com/08_CIARE.html
18"
model 18.00NdW1 price** $210.00
weight 6.3 Kg vc size 100mm
size 18" Fs 29hz
power handling 500W (AES) Bl (Wb/m) 24.85
Vas (M3) 0.29643 Sd(M2) .115209
SPL 1w1m 100.5dB Qms 12.36
Xmax 7mm* Qes 0.32
Frequency 30hz-1khz Qts 0.31
magnetic induction (T) 1.2
18"
model 18.00NdW1 price** $210.00
weight 6.3 Kg vc size 100mm
size 18" Fs 29hz
power handling 500W (AES) Bl (Wb/m) 24.85
Vas (M3) 0.29643 Sd(M2) .115209
SPL 1w1m 100.5dB Qms 12.36
Xmax 7mm* Qes 0.32
Frequency 30hz-1khz Qts 0.31
magnetic induction (T) 1.2
How to measure a driver for use as a dipole
Hi
keeping parameters constant during development allows for good pin pointing to unclear behaviour
(at least sometimes
).
Merging the simulation and measurements plots reveals that there is kind of comb filter superimposed to what is predicted by simulation at the first baffle peak and one or two octaves above
What can be seen is that there is a interval of about 400 Hz. ( blue trace = simulation, black trace = measurement with no chamfer )
Yes JohnK, this irregularity may com from cavity resonance or additional diffraction at the speaker hole ( shouldn't be too difficult to add / verify this in your simulation sheet ) in the OB or both.
To some degree it can be smoothed out by simply chamfering the hole.
What can be seen is that mounting the speaker ( same Peerless 6.5" as in post 1714 ) behind the baffle works better ( upper trace )
I think this is a nice little result of the method of cross correlating measurement and simulation as done in my last postings revealing that edge treatment is even of more interest close to the speaker ( nothing really new but often forgotten ) – partly what Earl was pointing to several times
In contrast I remember a OB posted in this thread where is stated that a BIG cavity behind the speaker was made for improvement – really would like to see the FR / CSD for this one.
Greetings
Michael
Hi
keeping parameters constant during development allows for good pin pointing to unclear behaviour
(at least sometimes
). Merging the simulation and measurements plots reveals that there is kind of comb filter superimposed to what is predicted by simulation at the first baffle peak and one or two octaves above
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
What can be seen is that there is a interval of about 400 Hz. ( blue trace = simulation, black trace = measurement with no chamfer )
Yes JohnK, this irregularity may com from cavity resonance or additional diffraction at the speaker hole ( shouldn't be too difficult to add / verify this in your simulation sheet ) in the OB or both.
To some degree it can be smoothed out by simply chamfering the hole.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
What can be seen is that mounting the speaker ( same Peerless 6.5" as in post 1714 ) behind the baffle works better ( upper trace )
I think this is a nice little result of the method of cross correlating measurement and simulation as done in my last postings revealing that edge treatment is even of more interest close to the speaker ( nothing really new but often forgotten ) – partly what Earl was pointing to several times
In contrast I remember a OB posted in this thread where is stated that a BIG cavity behind the speaker was made for improvement – really would like to see the FR / CSD for this one.
Greetings
Michael
there is a real game here to play with peaks and notches in pink noise (or in music). You will learn or train to hear frequency anomalies but you may also have some fun !
Maybe I should do such a summary page but I prefer that everybody listens for himself.
I have followed the AES and other publications for many years and I was allways a bit frustrated to read about various audible phenomenas and, due to the needed expensive test gear, it was difficult to reproduce the experiments.
Now, with the power of computers and the ease to write quite sophisticated softwares, new types of tests can be implemented. And anybody can easily do the experiments at home and make his own opinion.
But if I do such a page with my own findings, I may call this page "accuracy or pleasantness ?"
regards
Many thanks, jlo, for your software page. Much appreciated!!!
Do any of these modules generate pink-noise, or is there a CD you can recommend that has high-quality pink-noise? (Truly random for at least several seconds, and accurate pink-noise filtering.)
Do any of these modules generate pink-noise, or is there a CD you can recommend that has high-quality pink-noise? (Truly random for at least several seconds, and accurate pink-noise filtering.)
quite all of my software integrate a signal generator with pink noise (you can choose between stereo correlated, uncorrelated or near critical bandwidth filtered ). They also generate sine waves, sawtooth, bonger,...
And if anybody has a good idea/need of a special audio signal, I can try to implement it.
Hi Lynn!
Didn't have the opportunity to read more than the start of this thread, but I wanted to add some comments... gotta roll out on a trip in a few mins, so the rest of the thread details will have to wait.
Horns.
The issues with horns are imho not where it is often assumed!
My views changed dramatically a few years back after a simple audition here in my system. Before that my view was that all horns are/were fatally flawed. Never heard one I really liked, and I had heard an awful lot.
My present view is that if the horn itself is what I will call "good" (proper termination, nil impedance discontinuities causing reflected energy, and the driver is properly loaded by the horn/waveguide) then the real determining factor is the compression driver itself!
Most, if not all of the negative auditory experiences with horns I think now is due to the compression driver's inherent flaws. Most are highly flawed, few are not so.
They're very very difficult to "get right."
So, if there is a direction to go in for horns it is to make the compression driver "better".
I think I have some compression drivers here that are at least an order of magnitude better than any TAD/JBL/Altec offering (that I have heard to date), and this makes all the difference in the world.
I get to run them with a single first order filter, and no EQ!
They measure scary well and flat. (obviously this would be the case if they were to be as good as I am saying)
This coming from someone who still owns large ESLs, and has owned SA tweeters (still extraordinary drivers) in his system, and who claims to have little difficulty hearing the difference between low distortion opamps in his DAC (for example)...
Someone mentioned orchestral music? Large choral pieces? Cake walk for the present horn system here - loads of space, resolution and extreme naturalness. Even if I do say so myself.
More "jump factor" than anything else I have ever heard - as do most good horn systems, but without any "horn sound".
Perhaps the view on horns needs to be revisited starting from the diaphragm of that compression driver and working out and back from there.
_-_-bear
Didn't have the opportunity to read more than the start of this thread, but I wanted to add some comments... gotta roll out on a trip in a few mins, so the rest of the thread details will have to wait.
Horns.
The issues with horns are imho not where it is often assumed!
My views changed dramatically a few years back after a simple audition here in my system. Before that my view was that all horns are/were fatally flawed. Never heard one I really liked, and I had heard an awful lot.
My present view is that if the horn itself is what I will call "good" (proper termination, nil impedance discontinuities causing reflected energy, and the driver is properly loaded by the horn/waveguide) then the real determining factor is the compression driver itself!
Most, if not all of the negative auditory experiences with horns I think now is due to the compression driver's inherent flaws. Most are highly flawed, few are not so.
They're very very difficult to "get right."
So, if there is a direction to go in for horns it is to make the compression driver "better".
I think I have some compression drivers here that are at least an order of magnitude better than any TAD/JBL/Altec offering (that I have heard to date), and this makes all the difference in the world.
I get to run them with a single first order filter, and no EQ!
They measure scary well and flat. (obviously this would be the case if they were to be as good as I am saying)
This coming from someone who still owns large ESLs, and has owned SA tweeters (still extraordinary drivers) in his system, and who claims to have little difficulty hearing the difference between low distortion opamps in his DAC (for example)...
Someone mentioned orchestral music? Large choral pieces? Cake walk for the present horn system here - loads of space, resolution and extreme naturalness. Even if I do say so myself.
More "jump factor" than anything else I have ever heard - as do most good horn systems, but without any "horn sound".
Perhaps the view on horns needs to be revisited starting from the diaphragm of that compression driver and working out and back from there.
_-_-bear
bear said:Hi Lynn!
I think I have some compression drivers here that are at least an order of magnitude better than any TAD/JBL/Altec offering (that I have heard to date), and this makes all the difference in the world.
I get to run them with a single first order filter, and no EQ!
They measure scary well and flat. (obviously this would be the case if they were to be as good as I am saying)
This coming from someone who still owns large ESLs, and has owned SA tweeters (still extraordinary drivers) in his system, and who claims to have little difficulty hearing the difference between low distortion opamps in his DAC (for example)...
Someone mentioned orchestral music? Large choral pieces? Cake walk for the present horn system here - loads of space, resolution and extreme naturalness. Even if I do say so myself.
More "jump factor" than anything else I have ever heard - as do most good horn systems, but without any "horn sound".
Perhaps the view on horns needs to be revisited starting from the diaphragm of that compression driver and working out and back from there.
_-_-bear
I'll second the question - which compression drivers are these?
If they're Cogent's new-production field-coil drivers, or the insanely priced hand-made Ale or Goto drivers from Japan, well, I'm plenty curious about them, although mostly from an academic viewpoint, since all of these are well outside of my price range. It's one thing to spend $200~500 on individual drivers, horns, etc. and quite another to spend many thousands on a single component. Not quite ready for that yet.
If they're unobtanium like Romy the Cat's favorite tweaked Vitavox S2's, well, not so interested, since even discussing out-of-production items on the Internet drives up their ePay and Akihibara prices, and I have no intention of designing anything that uses out-of-production components, no matter how good they are.
A well-known, successful design will have a worldwide effect on the demand for the drivers that used in it - and the last thing I want to do is reward collectors for hoarding classic drivers. Increasing demand for an in-production driver, on the other hand, is good, since it encourages others to enter into the market. This is what we've seen in the transformer market, with the renaissance in tube amps encouraging the entry of many new artisan vendors, at a variety of price points.
I certainly agree that horns/waveguides do not have magical properties of damping resonances and improving the time response - Altec, JBL and Klipsch marketing has gone out of its way to give people that impression, and it just ain't so.
The only thing a theoretically perfect horn/waveguide can do is improve efficiency, decrease distortion, and change directivity - the basic character of the driver at the other end remains the same, no matter what. There is no such thing as an "uncolored" driver - they all have a characteristic sound, simply because they're made from materials with characteristic resonances that fall in audio band.
If a driver has a three closely spaced resonances at 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4 kHz, the horn (or waveguide) won't fix it - if anything, the horn (or waveguide) will strongly react to the irregular wavefront at those narrow frequencies and make it even more uneven by the time it exits the horn.
Unobtainum drivers
Lynn,
The strive for using readily-avail drivers is very commendable and very few can object to that (except maybe those with a crave for wanting to feel "special"). Still, one can note that stating
is under the presumption that the design becomes well-known and successful -- meaning: it can be replicated in reasonable amounts / it is an accessible build.
I'm sure that you had that in mind. Still, (re)stating it wouldn't hurt those patiently following this tread for quite a while
Hope everything is well with your recovery and we'll see some sawdust soon
Florian
Lynn,
The strive for using readily-avail drivers is very commendable and very few can object to that (except maybe those with a crave for wanting to feel "special"). Still, one can note that stating
is under the presumption that the design becomes well-known and successful -- meaning: it can be replicated in reasonable amounts / it is an accessible build.
I'm sure that you had that in mind. Still, (re)stating it wouldn't hurt those patiently following this tread for quite a while
Hope everything is well with your recovery and we'll see some sawdust soon
Florian
A Trip Down Memory Lane
I have no idea how many people built the Ariel and ME2, some 15 years after I first wrote about them in Positive Feedback magazine, and later, on the Web. The early Web, at that - the Mosaic 1.0 days when it barely worked and there were no more than a few hundred thousand Web sites.
I did hear rumors from more than one industry source that the demand for the Ariel and ME2 kept the Vifa 5.5" midbass in production several years longer than it would have otherwise. No way to know since I've never received royalties from Vifa, Scan-Speak, Madisound, North Creek, or any other vendors that sold components for the Ariel and ME2.
The Ariel was a big flop in Portland when it was demo'ed for the Oregon Triode Society, thanks to the Krell KSA-250 amp that was used for the majority of the demo. In the last 30 minutes of the show, somebody had the wit to connect a medium-power Quicksilver tube amp - result, much, much better sound - but by then most of the folks had drifted off and were socializing. So, not many were built in Portland that I know of, except for my own Mark 1.9 versions.
The first pair of Ariels (outside of Portland) were built in San Francisco, as I recall, and the second pair were built by Kevin Carter, then of VAC, now of K & K Audio. Kevin also built the first Amity amplifier (outside of Portland), and that led to him picking up the US distribution of the Lundahl line of transformers, which were used in the Amity amplifier and the Raven preamp.
I've received a fair number of e-mails and pictures from around the world, but I haven't been very diligent in keeping up the "Ariel Builder Club" part of the Nutshell High Fidelity website - to my embarrassment, it's been several years since I've touched that portion of the site, so it's really out of date.
How many people will build this new speaker? I have absolutely no idea at all - my guess for the Ariel/ME2, which feels like it's been around forever, is anywhere from several hundred to several thousand. But that guess is pure speculation - it could be as low as a hundred, which is about how many e-mails I've received from different builders over the last fifteen years since their first publication.
P.S. The title of the post is a bit of a joke - for several years in Portland, I actually did live on a evergreen-shaded street called Memory Lane. The Ariels, though, came to life after I moved to Aloha, Oregon, about 15 miles further west of Portland. At Memory Lane I listened to the LO-2 satellite system, which I built in 1979 as an Audionics prototype. The LO-2 preceded the Spica TC-50 by about a year, and had a similar time-aligned philosophy, but with higher-grade Audax Bextrene-cone 6.5" midbass drivers.
FlorianO said:
Still, one can note that stating "a well-known, successful design will have a worldwide effect on the demand for the drivers that used in it" is under the presumption that the design becomes well-known and successful -- meaning: it can be replicated in reasonable amounts / it is an accessible build.
I'm sure that you had that in mind. Still, (re)stating it wouldn't hurt those patiently following this tread for quite a while
I have no idea how many people built the Ariel and ME2, some 15 years after I first wrote about them in Positive Feedback magazine, and later, on the Web. The early Web, at that - the Mosaic 1.0 days when it barely worked and there were no more than a few hundred thousand Web sites.
I did hear rumors from more than one industry source that the demand for the Ariel and ME2 kept the Vifa 5.5" midbass in production several years longer than it would have otherwise. No way to know since I've never received royalties from Vifa, Scan-Speak, Madisound, North Creek, or any other vendors that sold components for the Ariel and ME2.
The Ariel was a big flop in Portland when it was demo'ed for the Oregon Triode Society, thanks to the Krell KSA-250 amp that was used for the majority of the demo. In the last 30 minutes of the show, somebody had the wit to connect a medium-power Quicksilver tube amp - result, much, much better sound - but by then most of the folks had drifted off and were socializing. So, not many were built in Portland that I know of, except for my own Mark 1.9 versions.
The first pair of Ariels (outside of Portland) were built in San Francisco, as I recall, and the second pair were built by Kevin Carter, then of VAC, now of K & K Audio. Kevin also built the first Amity amplifier (outside of Portland), and that led to him picking up the US distribution of the Lundahl line of transformers, which were used in the Amity amplifier and the Raven preamp.
I've received a fair number of e-mails and pictures from around the world, but I haven't been very diligent in keeping up the "Ariel Builder Club" part of the Nutshell High Fidelity website - to my embarrassment, it's been several years since I've touched that portion of the site, so it's really out of date.
How many people will build this new speaker? I have absolutely no idea at all - my guess for the Ariel/ME2, which feels like it's been around forever, is anywhere from several hundred to several thousand. But that guess is pure speculation - it could be as low as a hundred, which is about how many e-mails I've received from different builders over the last fifteen years since their first publication.
P.S. The title of the post is a bit of a joke - for several years in Portland, I actually did live on a evergreen-shaded street called Memory Lane. The Ariels, though, came to life after I moved to Aloha, Oregon, about 15 miles further west of Portland. At Memory Lane I listened to the LO-2 satellite system, which I built in 1979 as an Audionics prototype. The LO-2 preceded the Spica TC-50 by about a year, and had a similar time-aligned philosophy, but with higher-grade Audax Bextrene-cone 6.5" midbass drivers.
The Ariel was anything but an accessible build, but became quite popular and very well known in DIY circles...certainly hundreds were built. I find it likely that another speaker with Lynn's name on it will have a great head start. AND , It seems almost impossible for an open baffle to be as complex as the Ariel, though we'll see....
I was reflecting the other day that Lynn's early website certainly helped the speaker catch on. It was well written and laid out, and somehow transmitted his excitement about the speaker, back when there were few websites of this type...
The only thing that may stop it, is if a number of expensive drivers and xover parts are incorporated. The Ariel box was a pain, but the drivers and xovers were quite reasonably priced.Variac said:
The Ariel was anything but an accessible build, but became quite popular and very well known in DIY circles...certainly hundreds were built. I find it likely that another speaker with Lynn's name on it will have a great head start. AND , It seems almost impossible for an open baffle to be as complex as the Ariel, though we'll see....
I was reflecting the other day that Lynn's early website certainly helped the speaker catch on. It was well written and laid out, and somehow transmitted his excitement about the speaker, back when there were few websites of this type...
Agree about the Aloha/Nutshell site. It's excellent.
But the new speaker will be a really big rudder, much imposing in a living room. And it will need space front and back and around. Naturally it will not have the building appeal of a an Ariel. Ariel was complex inside but very acceptable for size. The new one will probably be a DIY reference for the no compromise builder with room, IMHO.
One Really Terrific Article
Maybe I'm late to the party, but I've just discovered a really wonderful article by one of my heroes, James Boyk of Caltech. There are some phrases that are so spot-on I have to quote them:
The last line just about says it all. If it sounds really, really unmusical, well then, it must be "accurate"!!! Does make you wonder just a little bit about the taste - or rather, lack of it - in the audio-engineering profession.
It's not generally known, but Bell Labs hired Stokowski as a consultant when they were designing the 300B vacuum tube, the 86, 91A, and 92 theatre amplifiers (which used the 300B), and what was called "Auditory Perspective" - or as we know it now, stereophonic sound. Makes you think, doesn't it?
P.S. About the shape of the new speaker - I've pretty much lost faith in the simulation software, and will probably use a simple truncated-pyramid profile, like the old Apogee loudspeakers. Also seriously considering nothing more complicated than three 18Sound 12NDA520's in a vertical line (with the variable-geometry crossover), with the double-height RAAL 100dB/metre ribbon on the top.
Maybe I'm late to the party, but I've just discovered a really wonderful article by one of my heroes, James Boyk of Caltech. There are some phrases that are so spot-on I have to quote them:
The last line just about says it all. If it sounds really, really unmusical, well then, it must be "accurate"!!! Does make you wonder just a little bit about the taste - or rather, lack of it - in the audio-engineering profession.
It's not generally known, but Bell Labs hired Stokowski as a consultant when they were designing the 300B vacuum tube, the 86, 91A, and 92 theatre amplifiers (which used the 300B), and what was called "Auditory Perspective" - or as we know it now, stereophonic sound. Makes you think, doesn't it?
P.S. About the shape of the new speaker - I've pretty much lost faith in the simulation software, and will probably use a simple truncated-pyramid profile, like the old Apogee loudspeakers. Also seriously considering nothing more complicated than three 18Sound 12NDA520's in a vertical line (with the variable-geometry crossover), with the double-height RAAL 100dB/metre ribbon on the top.