Ultimate Open Baffle Gallery

[Overkill Audio]

Manger open baffle

Hi Human,

Yes the Manger is 100% dipole over its whole bandwidth ( above 500Hz in this case) and yes according to everyone else including Daniela and Joseph Manger it should be sealed....
Try it in a box, any box, I did. Also in enclosures including teardrop shaped cast from solid cost no object etc etc and guess what....

Try it for yourself, trust your ears and then let all the " experts " ( or people who sell audio for a living ) explain why you are wrong and you actually need to spend $20,000 or more on their boxes, oily caps, foily ( sorry but I'm on a roll!) caps and solid unobtainium resistors...

The best thing about not selling audio gear for a living is you can tell the truth!

All the best

Derek.

 

[human.bin]

it would be nice to know how the the nxt DML and BMR solutions compare to the manger thing. Cotswold Sound Systems which i think is based in UK has an interesting 4.5" BMR which is obtainable for sampling purpose

 

[head1962]

Hi Randy!!
these look really, REALLY nice!!!
did you have a chance to listen to them?
How did you cut out the panels?
with a waterjet?
is it MDF?
did you design them?

thanks!
gerrit

 

[Nelson Bass]

My clone of the Emerald Physics CS2:

 

[VT67]

Beautiful build man.

Regards

 

[trusound]

Here are the photos.

so you have came to the same revelation... lol.. boxes and baffles are useless

man I want try build a crazy set for mangers for years now.....

 

[trusound]

Thanks Gerrit!!!!

I haven't listened to these.. but I have tested them on a mic stand and there isn't anything like them... I'll trade low end extension any day for what they do dipole... horns IMO are not the solution...

It's mdf and all hand cut on my router table and all 100% designed by me...

Hi Randy!!
these look really, REALLY nice!!!
did you have a chance to listen to them?
How did you cut out the panels?
with a waterjet?
is it MDF?
did you design them?

thanks!
gerrit

 

[VT67]

@Nelson Bass

Which drivers did you use?

Regards

 

[felixx]

@Nelson Bass

Which drivers did you use?

Regards

....and also very important ....what crossover you use?
Very atractive design.

 

[Overkill Audio]

NXT ( Shinhint ) 4.5 inch BMR driver

Hi Human bin,

The NXT patended ( made under licence by Shinhint in China ) Bending Mode Radiators ( BMR ) are really good little drivers.
I will post pics ( Telstar again thanks for your shrinking service! ) of the 2 versions, one pure flat "cone " or with the rubber surround internal ie same side of the cone as the spider.
I have made a two driver per cabinet and and a 4 driver per cabinet using these drivers. They can go down to around 70Hz in a very small ( 3 litres per driver) sealed box. I cross them over at 100Hz to subs in a 5.2 home cinema set up and they sound great.
They dont come close to the Manger in a high end speaker ( listen to the £6,000 Naim speaker using an 8 inch version of the driver...) but they are fantastic value compared to a small bass mid plus tweeter set up.

Cheers

Derek.

 

[gainphile]

My clone of the Emerald Physics CS2:

WOW !!

Are you replacing the Selenium drivers?

How hard is it to do the EQ ?

 

[Overkill Audio]

Baffles and boxes

so you have came to the same revelation... lol.. boxes and baffles are useless

Hi Trusound,

Yes and no....!
Above 500Hz yes indeed forget baffles and boxes for domestic high end audio.
A naked Manger suspended from a thread... simply beautiful to listen to and to look at.

Below approx 500Hz we have a choice between huge cost i.e. multiple 21 inch drivers, plus multiple 8 inch drivers (plus a multiple 5 inch drivers plus a pair of AMT's above approx, 500 Hz ) huge physical size ( zero WAF needs dedicated room ) and performance. i.e. The ultimate sub 500Hz set ups is Stig Erik’s, it will go lower and louder with low distortion and will sound great.
But its big and expensive. Compare that to my small VPL open baffle ( pictured above ) design which uses one Manger plus two 15 inch drivers per side and is only 850mm tall!
How the sonics would compare is the $64,000 question, maybe one day I will load a pair of my speakers into the back of my car ( easy to move speakers make life easy ) and go visit the Stig for some beer and music time...!

Suffice to say my latest system out-performs my commercial Ovation, Encore and Finale speakers in every way.

The one area where sealed box stills rules by some margin, is in the home cinema arena. A sealed 80 litre box with the attached "Predator " driver in it will convert more electrical energy into low frequency ( sub 20 Hz ) kinetic energy than a room full of baffle - less 21 inch drivers.
Watch this space....!

 

[Overkill Audio]

photo attached

This phot is just a CAD drawing of the chassis.

 

[Nelson Bass]

....and also very important ....what crossover you use?
Very atractive design.

Thanks.
2xEminence Alpha 15a
1xBMS 4552Nd

I use software based crossover (Foobar mediaplayer plugin named: xover) and ASIO4ALL to handle two USBDACs connected to a apple mac mini running windows xp when playing music.

This way I could avoid the A/D conversion process and use my NONOS TDA1543 based USBDACs.

I also got the coaxial drivers so I can upgrade the CS2 clone to be a CS2.3 clone. But I've no time at the moment so I may sell these clones and use some other speakers in the house.

 

[Nelson Bass]

WOW !!

Are you replacing the Selenium drivers?

How hard is it to do the EQ ?

Yes, I use the BMS 4552Nd driver instead of the Selenium.

The equalizer within Foobar has only 18 band covering 55Hz to 20 KHz but I find it adequate. I'm not able to measure this setup as Foobar is needed as source with the crossover so I tuned the equalizing by my ears.
I only EQ the lowest bass a few dBs as I already have plenty of bass even that there are 1,75 meter behind the speaker to the wall.

This speaker system is quite impressive compared to nearly any other speaker I've heard. And I've heard a lot (e.g. B&W 800, Infinity IRS Beta, Hørning Hybrid Eufrodite).

But I don't find the Alpha 15a very good playing up to nearly 1KHz so I bought the Eminence Beta-12CX 12" Coaxial Driver as used in the upgraded CS2.3.

But I've not replaced the waveguide with the 12CX driver yet as I've to build a passive LP crossover for the coax and a passive HP for the compression driver. One of these days...

 

[Overkill Audio]

BMR pics

Hi Human bin,

Here are a few pics of the little BMR drivers.
If you or any one else is interested I can post details, graphs, and listening impressions a I have spent a lot of time working with them.

Cheers

Derek.

 

[human.bin]

Overkill, a thread in the about the BMR would be very interesting! not sure what section it should belong, let us know if you start one

 

[skorpion]

Thought I should publish some pictures of my OB which definitively outperforms the CS look-a-likes. I know because I have been down that road with the Alphas and B&C DE250. These are Alpha15s, 6ND430 and Neo3 (non PDR) without backcup all in dipole mode thus. The baffles looks bad but sound very good in all respects and with all kinds of music. Picture and frequency graph measured in my livingroom tells the rest now:

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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

/Erling

 

[gainphile]

Tang Band W8-1808 Open Baffle

Tang Band Open Baffles - Audio & Video Equipment Forums

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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

 

[gainphile]

JohnK's "latest" dipole speakers?

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/157665-question-geddes-john-k-3.html

Looks very interesting. Not sure if this is the Nao Note. Footprint looks like the ESLs. A departure from his philosophy of narrow baffles.

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By the way Earl, here is a look at my latest OB system. Can be driven with a single amp. Has and F3 of between 25 and 30 Hz (depending on how the bass eq is set). Nominal sensitivity 90dB and max SPL for single speaker is better than 100 dB at 30 Hz.

100db at 30hz.. I can live with that

EDIT:

More info!

http://techtalk.parts-express.com/showthread.php?t=215092

http://www.musicanddesign.com/pubimages/NaO_DW_back.JPG

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

More interesting is John's observations:

The only real problem was, as I discuss on my web sight, is that the wider baffle lowers the dipole peak and since the mid is still pretty omni directional above the peak there is a little dip in the response around 900 Hz. That could be corrected by offset mounting, but I insist on symmetric driver placement. But the wide baffle also placed the peak lower so that with the hybrid approach I can take advantage of that and cut the power to the mids and woofers way back (see active eq response dip centered at 180 Hz). This really frees up the system dynamics. Imaging is very good. Excellent depth as expected with an OB system. The image is also very stable. I don't (and never have) found any correlation to baffle width and image, given that there is room to set the system up correctly. Sound stage bigger than a narrow baffle system though. What I like about these speakers is that they have the sound of a big planar system, like the Dayton-Wrights or Martin-Logan Monoliths, but none of the beaming. The sound is very uniform as one moves around the room, sits or stands. And the sound good with Chopin or ZZ Top.