Beyma tpl-150 + Lambda TD12M's

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After many months of design work, building and testing they are finally in place. The concept for these studio monitors began last year as an exercise to see what could be done to improve upon our current monitoring situation at www.phatplanetstudios.com At the time, we were running Quested mid fields.

See here: http://www.quested.com/vs3208.html

They were never resolving enough for critical work and ran out of steam very quickly at high levels. We needed something quite a bit more dynamic.

I was pretty much settled on Lambda TD12M's right from the outset, but the tweeter was a tough choice. We needed high sensitivity to mate up with dual TDs, ability to crossover low enough and be able to handle whatever abuse a recording engineer or intern might create. We tried the Fountek NeoPro 5 without sucess. Down anywhere below 2Khz is bad news for that guy. We tried a Beyma CP380 on a waveguide. This was better, but we were still not pleased. Finally, I up'ed the budget and went the TPL-150, also from Beyma. Now that was the ticket! Handles below 2 Khz with ease, high sensitivity of 99dB spl and is very robust mechanically.

What we ended up with is a 2.5 way design. The inner woofer in each pair is crossed over at appox. 250Hz while the outer one works up to around 1.8Khz. The box is sealed so accordingly, the response drops off below around 60Hz in room. This was the design goal, because coming up next is a dedicated pair of subs. We The signal is processed using a BSS Omnidrive 366 with a Crown K2 for the lows and a Bryston 4B for the highs.

The enclosure is an inner layer of 3/4" MDF covered on all sides by an outer layer of 18mm Plywood. Each monitor is 185lbs as finished. These babies are very inert even at levels upwards of 110 dB spl. For absorbtion inside, there is rigid fiberglass as well as Bonded Logic Ultratouch insulation which I highly recommend. http://www.bondedlogic.com/ultratouch.htm Works amazingly well and it's friendly to your lungs AND the environment.

Greg Begland - technician for Phat Planet Studios
 

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Sweet.

A mate in Melbourne has a dual TD15S, TD10M and TPL150 system that I want to hear a lot.

My next project on the drawing board, and realistically a year away will use an AV15, TD10S, TD6.5 and most likely the TPL150.

Current project uses TD15X in the mains and TD10M in the sides.
 
planet10 said:
Very nice... XO details?

dave


Like I mentioned, we are using a BSS Omnidrive. After weeks of experimentation, measuring and listening tests, the xover has been set at 1.8Khz, with 36dB/oct slopes. The newer BSS processors have these special NTM filters which take basic LR 24 and 48 filters and add a further notch. As I understand it, they share most of the attributes of the LR filters.

http://www.bssaudio.com/productpg.php?product_id=6

The difference btw LR 48 and NTM 36 was just astonding. The presentation of the soundstage got very much wider AND deeper with the NTM 36.

Greg
 
brucemck2 said:
Greg, is volume attenuation applied before or after the crossover?

Are you going digital in to the crossover or analog in?

Is the crossover silent, or does it have a fan?

Analogue into the crossover. We are just hooked up to the "main monitor" output of the API consoles master section.

I don't recall a fan on the BSS 366, but there is definately one on my BSS "green" 9088 and it is a little noisey. The one at the studio is away in a machine so noisey was not an issue(probably why I can't remember). I will have to do something about the one at home for me though....

Greg
 
JoshK said:
Very cool project! How is the off axis performance of that tweeter?

Thanks Josh! The tweeters verticle off axis is pretty narrow. We are using that to our advantage though...it avoids a lot of the typical "console bounce" that most people in studios get that causes so much comb filtering. We have them pretty well aimed to hit the mix position just right. If you are outside of that, too bad. ;)

Greg
 
Brett said:
Sweet.

A mate in Melbourne has a dual TD15S, TD10M and TPL150 system that I want to hear a lot.

My next project on the drawing board, and realistically a year away will use an AV15, TD10S, TD6.5 and most likely the TPL150.

Current project uses TD15X in the mains and TD10M in the sides.


Brett, sounds totally killer! Have any picts?

What kind of prices do you all pay over there for the TPL-150? I might be able to save you some $ on a pair. We got set-up as a dealer for Beyma.

I'm considering the TD6.5 for my own project as well, but I would like to find something with a little less rear shading for dipole use...I'm getting a pair of 7" DC Golds for testing just to see what they are like. Fortunately you can get them without the hideous grill attached! Pretty sexy looking without it, nice open basket and small diameter magnet. Probably sounds like crap fullrange, but could be pleasant when band limited to say btw 200 - 3Khz.

http://www.dcgoldaudio.com/

I'm also ordering a pair of the Nirvana Audio Super Cast 8's to try out. Anyone want to spring for the Alnico version? I like to be a little different and I'm curious about running a wide-range mid.

http://www.commonsenseaudio.com/


Greg
 
studiotech said:



Brett, sounds totally killer! Have any picts?

What kind of prices do you all pay over there for the TPL-150? I might be able to save you some $ on a pair. We got set-up as a dealer for Beyma.

I'm considering the TD6.5 for my own project as well, but I would like to find something with a little less rear shading for dipole use...I'm getting a pair of 7" DC Golds for testing just to see what they are like. Fortunately you can get them without the hideous grill attached! Pretty sexy looking without it, nice open basket and small diameter magnet. Probably sounds like crap fullrange, but could be pleasant when band limited to say btw 200 - 3Khz.

http://www.dcgoldaudio.com/

I'm also ordering a pair of the Nirvana Audio Super Cast 8's to try out. Anyone want to spring for the Alnico version? I like to be a little different and I'm curious about running a wide-range mid.

http://www.commonsenseaudio.com/


Greg
No pics yet, but very soon. madly trying to get them completed before I move.

No idea what was paid for the Beyma drivers.

I don't like or use OB's at all so the basket is not an issue, but the AE still looks like a better motor unit.
 
studiotech said:



..I'm getting a pair of 7" DC Golds for testing just to see what they are like. Fortunately you can get them without the hideous grill attached! Pretty sexy looking without it, nice open basket and small diameter magnet. Probably sounds like crap fullrange, but could be pleasant when band limited to say btw 200 - 3Khz.

http://www.dcgoldaudio.com/

Greg


The DCs are a quite nice sound wide-range driver. We tried the Be version, a bit bright w/out the grill, but HF beaming reduced w/the grill on.
 
studiotech said:
I'm considering the TD6.5 for my own project as well, but I would like to find something with a little less rear shading for dipole use...

Hi Greg,

Glad things are working well for you with the monitors. As far as the rear shading goes, I'm assuming you mean because of the larger diameter motor on the TD6.5. In reality it isn't much of an issue as this only affects the higher frequencies where there is much more directivity anyway. However, I do have in the works an alnico motor version which has only a 4" diameter alnico ring with 4" diameter top plate. We could easily mill out some of the extra aluminum on the frame to really open it up. Then we could measure the rear wave both ways to see what the effect is.

John
 
studiotech said:
Like I mentioned, we are using a BSS Omnidrive. After weeks of experimentation, measuring and listening tests, the xover has been set at 1.8Khz, with 36dB/oct slopes.(...)
The difference btw LR 48 and NTM 36 was just astonding. The presentation of the soundstage got very much wider AND deeper with the NTM 36.

Greg

No other equalization/filtering higher in the freq?
 
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