Hi,
Does anybody know anything about the quality of the new AE speakers, in general or especially the IB15
4 x 15" woofers at 100USD each doesnt seem much
Drivers seem exstremely well designed but say says nothing about build quality or quality control
Shipping and taxes is a lot and its a very long way if just one driver would have to be returned...hopefully its not another "Hemp-story"
http://www.aespeakers.com/drivers.php?driver_id=8
Does anybody know anything about the quality of the new AE speakers, in general or especially the IB15
4 x 15" woofers at 100USD each doesnt seem much
Drivers seem exstremely well designed but say says nothing about build quality or quality control
Shipping and taxes is a lot and its a very long way if just one driver would have to be returned...hopefully its not another "Hemp-story"
http://www.aespeakers.com/drivers.php?driver_id=8
Thanks
Yes, they do seem serious with measurements and such, but not a lot going on on their forum site
Semms to me that they were made already in year 2006, so they may be "leftovers", hence the bargain price
I have mailed them about shipping but no response yet
I do plan to order 4 drivers fore my future OB
Yes, they do seem serious with measurements and such, but not a lot going on on their forum site
Semms to me that they were made already in year 2006, so they may be "leftovers", hence the bargain price
I have mailed them about shipping but no response yet
I do plan to order 4 drivers fore my future OB
tinitus said:OK, sounds good
btw...does that mean that "specials custom version" is a possibility
Yes depending on what you want. I am not the one building them anymore but John will do whatever people are willing to pay for. I once had a guy go through the backplate/tyolk stash to cherry pick the best 20 for his tower project that had all the motors facing out. He then polished them and had some serious chrome plating done. Gave them back and made some seriously pretty speakers from the back side.
panomaniac said:Well.....
Not my 1st choice for OB.
With the Open Baffle losses, you're going to need tons of power.
Looks pretty, tho.
1. Hawthornes Silver Iris Maggies are around 88db...used with what main driver...97db ?
The hard facts are that even a high SPL pro woofer wont have higher SPL at sub frequencies...its all relative
2. I plan to use 2 x IB15 each side...I expect that subs will have to be attenuated in relation to mid/tweeter
3. I would never use an OB speakers fore playing loud...these are intended to be used at moderate levels, power should be no issue
4. I have another project which will use 18" PRO woofer, 12" midwoofer and a CD/waveguide
Saurav said:
These would be very very very close to what you will find with this driver:
On axis:
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30 off axis:
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45 off axis:
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Wow, that's a 15" driver?
I've been resisting the idea of going with a 15" driver because I'm sure it'll look pretty big in my room and my wife won't be too thrilled about it... but this is making it harder to resist. I need something that'll fill in the bottom end of an OB, and can cross at 400 to my midrange. So far I've been considering a pair of Dayton RS270s per side. But these look... well, perfect
Humph... back to the drawing board, now I'll need to model my OB with this driver.
I've been resisting the idea of going with a 15" driver because I'm sure it'll look pretty big in my room and my wife won't be too thrilled about it... but this is making it harder to resist. I need something that'll fill in the bottom end of an OB, and can cross at 400 to my midrange. So far I've been considering a pair of Dayton RS270s per side. But these look... well, perfect
Humph... back to the drawing board, now I'll need to model my OB with this driver.
Saurav said:Wow, that's a 15" driver?
I've been resisting the idea of going with a 15" driver because I'm sure it'll look pretty big in my room and my wife won't be too thrilled about it... but this is making it harder to resist. I need something that'll fill in the bottom end of an OB, and can cross at 400 to my midrange. So far I've been considering a pair of Dayton RS270s per side. But these look... well, perfect
Humph... back to the drawing board, now I'll need to model my OB with this driver.
Main difference on this and all the Lambda TD drivers I designed is the voice coil inductance is 0.4mH or less. This is perhaps the most important "spec" to find for a bass driver that you want to cover higher frequencies. T/S parameters are small signal, this is one of a very few drivers that can hold that small signal inductance spec to with a few % with maximum rated excursion. The byproduct of getting it to meet this spec was that the power handling went through the roof and power compression went into the basement.
I designed this driver for myself. I wanted a EV15 with the excursion capability of the NHT1259 (the popular sub at that time) I was successful in the engineering and failed in the delivery. Thankfully they are still being produced and are getting a real second chance.
tinitus said:
The IB15's are typically stocked for same day shipment. Lately we have been getting slammed, but I believe we have about 10 on the shelf right now. There are a few reason these drivers are lower cost. First, they are almost always sold in groups of 4, 8, etc, so they were built with quantity discount in mind. Individually they are $129, $100 in 4+ quantity. The second reason is that they use a smaller motor. We actually had way too much BL in the Lambda motors to get the Q where we wanted it for infinite baffle use. I designed an IB specific motor that was smaller in diameter but yet still had the full copper sleeve on the pole. Finally, we sell them direct. There really isn't enough profit margin on them to go through dealers, but selling in quantity direct to the end user, we can provide them at a very good price.
tinitus said:OK, sounds good
btw...does that mean that "specials custom version" is a possibility
We can do custom options within reason. Differing impedances could be options at a small additional cost. There isn't a whole lot to really customize on these. We can do different color painted frames and things like that on any drivers if requested. And in OEM quantities we can make nearly anything.
John
panomaniac said:Well.....
It does have a nice low Fs and almost ideal Qts for OB. But I hope you plan to throw a lot of power at it. 86dB/Watt? Not my 1st choice for OB.
With the Open Baffle losses, you're going to need tons of power.
Looks pretty, tho.
There are a couple things to look at regarding this. First, the original design was for infinite baffle use. They were designed to make the most efficient use of Xmax at the lowest octaves. The low Fs and Q of .7 make this work. While the 86dB/1w doesn't look huge, take it in the infinite baffle context. Modeled in an infinite baffle alignment they are -3dB at 16Hz. So you get 83dB with 1W at 16Hz. Between 16Hz and 100hz you have only that 3dB rise and really no need to EQ the system other than to correct for the room itself. You can also push the drivers to their 18.5mm excursion with less than 100W at the lowest frequencies.
Now take into account some other driver more efficient. Lets say an EV DL15X for example with specified 1W1M efficiency of 101dB. Due to the Q of the driver, at 16Hz with 1W input you have 79.3dB, so you need more than double the power to get the same output. Also at 100hz you are at over 96dB. A difference of nearly 17dB between 16Hz and 100Hz that requires some serious EQ to correct for.
Now this is of course for IB use. For dipole or open baffle use, they can still work well, but it depends on the efficiency you need and how low you want to go. If you're looking to extend extremely low, they have benefits as you are EQing only to correct for the Dipole rolloff, but not to flatten the response of the drivers themselves due to the Q of the driver. This means less EQ and less power requirements. No matter how you look at it, with OB or dipoles you need to move a LOT of air at these low frequencies. The less power you need to push the driver to a given level, the better you are. At less than 100W per driver to move 18mm at 16Hz, and low cost per driver, you can do 4-8 per side to get the output levels up where you need without spending a fortune on amps.
The Dipole15 is intended more for dipole/OB use and is around 90dB 1W. It will get you more output per watt than the IB15. It has the dipole underhung motor with tiny inductance, literally on line with some tweeters. Extremely low distortion and linear over the 12mm Xmax range.
The main difference between them is the moving mass. The IB15 has 220grams Mms. Some people will argue that how high it can play is determined by the Mms, and that a driver with 220grams can't play very high in frequency. In reality it is much more controlled by the inductance. I have people using them up to around 500hz or so who are very happy with the results. That is about the highest I would take them though and preferably not past 250Hz if budget is not a major issue. Above that point the Dipole15 will really excel. Not necessarily because they sound "slow" due to high mass, but due to the dustcap. The dustcap and more importantly the area under the dustcap will cause a resonance issue. You can pull off 500Hz fairly well though with higher order crossover slopes. The simple way to correct this was what Nick did when designing the Lambda TD motor. Just get rid of the dustcap and the volume of air under it. The phase plug solves this issue as well as giving the benefit of being a heat sink. For this reason I recommend the Dipole15 over the IB15 for most aplications upwards of 250Hz.
John
Saurav said:
This was one of the main things that I learned from Nick, starting nearly 10 yrs ago. We now put the full copper sleeve on the pole of nearly every driver we do. It's what really sets the IB15 apart from other 15" infinite baffle offerings out there. Not only is the Q ideal for infinite baffle applications, but they are bass efficient as I talked about above, and most importantly they are very low distortion as well.
John
Hi John
Excellent points, all. And very well explained.
I just wanted to point out to those with little OB experience that you lose a LOT of efficiency in the bass end of an OB. So you have to either boost the bass, or attenuate the mid-range - or both.
The AE IB15 looks fantastic for what it was designed to do, IB. That huge X-max and low Fs should be killer. Low inductance is cool, too.
But for OB use I would still not go there. Nor would I use the EV DL15X for OB. Much too low a Qts. The bass drops like a stone. And you're right that it's important to look at that and figure out how much EQ you're going to need.
Starting with a pro driver at about 96dB/W you'll need 10X less power to drive it than an 86dB/W driver. As long as the drivers track the bass response together. Not all do. May not be a problem for some folks, but it's good to know.
Attached below is a graph that shows the calculated FR* of 4 different** 15" drivers on a King size baffle (Martin J. King, that is). You can see why the Alpha 15 is so popular for OB use. That high QTS extends the bass response, so less EQ or maybe none, is needed. (under-damped drivers are not to everyone's taste, however). The highly damped EV 15 drops like a stone in bass, very typical of low Qts drivers. Again, not my 1st choice for OB. Just as you pointed out, it's important to look at the efficiency in the low end, to compare drivers. The overall sensitivity rating doesn't tell the whole story.
On a reasonable size baffle, none of these drivers will have energy left at 16Hz. So no need to worry about that low C pedal tone.
But we can see from the graphs that starting with an efficient driver of mid-Q gives you a lot of room to trade away mid-range in the EQ in the effort to get the bass up.
It's all about trade-offs. The Ae IB15 is certainly a great driver for IB. But for OB there may be better choices.
BTW, which is your "Dipole15"? I don't see it on your site.
(link to pdfs does not work)
Thanks, John, for helping to explain the ins and outs of your drivers!
*The X-baffle sim is not perfect, of course - but it does come close to what I measure in my OB experiments.
**could not find Re and Qes for the IB15, so had to extrapolate them. Got Qes= 0.78 and Re= 6R
Excellent points, all. And very well explained.
I just wanted to point out to those with little OB experience that you lose a LOT of efficiency in the bass end of an OB. So you have to either boost the bass, or attenuate the mid-range - or both.
The AE IB15 looks fantastic for what it was designed to do, IB. That huge X-max and low Fs should be killer. Low inductance is cool, too.
But for OB use I would still not go there. Nor would I use the EV DL15X for OB. Much too low a Qts. The bass drops like a stone. And you're right that it's important to look at that and figure out how much EQ you're going to need.
Starting with a pro driver at about 96dB/W you'll need 10X less power to drive it than an 86dB/W driver. As long as the drivers track the bass response together. Not all do. May not be a problem for some folks, but it's good to know.
Attached below is a graph that shows the calculated FR* of 4 different** 15" drivers on a King size baffle (Martin J. King, that is). You can see why the Alpha 15 is so popular for OB use. That high QTS extends the bass response, so less EQ or maybe none, is needed. (under-damped drivers are not to everyone's taste, however). The highly damped EV 15 drops like a stone in bass, very typical of low Qts drivers. Again, not my 1st choice for OB. Just as you pointed out, it's important to look at the efficiency in the low end, to compare drivers. The overall sensitivity rating doesn't tell the whole story.
On a reasonable size baffle, none of these drivers will have energy left at 16Hz. So no need to worry about that low C pedal tone.
But we can see from the graphs that starting with an efficient driver of mid-Q gives you a lot of room to trade away mid-range in the EQ in the effort to get the bass up.
It's all about trade-offs. The Ae IB15 is certainly a great driver for IB. But for OB there may be better choices.
BTW, which is your "Dipole15"? I don't see it on your site.
(link to pdfs does not work)
Thanks, John, for helping to explain the ins and outs of your drivers!
*The X-baffle sim is not perfect, of course - but it does come close to what I measure in my OB experiments.
**could not find Re and Qes for the IB15, so had to extrapolate them. Got Qes= 0.78 and Re= 6R
panomaniac said:
I dont get it...using a semi pro driver with lowXmax, and Eq/attenuate it down to 88-90db at the most...and you claim a 10X need of power fore a 86db driver thats way more linear below 100hz
yeah I know how its done, just dont see your point...or why you are so percistent about that
Sure seems like we have some learning to do
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