Oh dear. See where this hobby can lead?
You start small, but soon you need a stronger and stronger dose. The classic downward spiral. 2,3,4 way not exciting enough for you, now.We need to get you into a 12 step problem to cure your 7 way habit.
I have to agree with what seems like mostly everyone else on here: the more complicated it gets, the harder it is to get it to sound right. You would never be able to do this (economically) with passive crossovers, which leaves you with active crossovers and fourteen amps. Even by that point, the cost issue is far out the window. Add to that how long it will take you to find the speakers that work in the required octave (ie drivers that sound fantastic in one octave and are cheap) and it's not looking too good. The rack of amps and (depending on how you achieve this) crossovers and it's going to be a beast of a thing. Finally, coming back to the first point, 3- and 4-ways are hard enough to get to sound beautiful (technically fine, but musically very difficult) so a 7-way is going to be murder.
All of that said, I like the idea behind it. Very much thinking outside the box.
All of that said, I like the idea behind it. Very much thinking outside the box.
"Arcus TL 1000" was a 5 way built in the mid 80's
Arcus TL 1000 MK II | Hifi-Wiki.de
I once listened to it, and it was not the worst speaker
in the shop. As far as i remember it sounded rather
well tempered and homogenous.
I believe they used 1. order filters, but i am not sure
about that.
But i guess tuning of such a concept is rather time
consuming.
Arcus TL 1000 MK II | Hifi-Wiki.de
I once listened to it, and it was not the worst speaker
in the shop. As far as i remember it sounded rather
well tempered and homogenous.
I believe they used 1. order filters, but i am not sure
about that.
But i guess tuning of such a concept is rather time
consuming.
A famous french company had a speaker like that
they were known for making their own special high quality drivers
cant remember the name
ahh, Cabasse it was
Back of the envelope I'm coming up with two rack units and around $1000 for a decent crossover and amp bank implementation (exclusive of PC cost). Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem like much of a beast. Couple of 0.5RU audio interfaces and a 1RU bank of chipamps or compact power amps such as op amp based ones---with high efficiency drivers and seven channels per side a couple watts per channel would be plenty of power and LME49740s+LME49600s probably sufficient. In the latter case the size of the amp would be dominated by the connectors and not the board space for the four 14-SOICs or 14 TO-263s. Or the trafo or reservior caps. If you really wanted to make the amp board compact five LM4781s would do.
However, I'm curious of the phase response of a bandpass enclosure but am not spotting anything on a quick look. It would be interesting to explore whether much is actually needed in the way of a crossover or if the enclosure responses would suffice.
How would you manage phase in such a configuration? At least from the manual the DCX seems unsuited for more than three way due to the structure of its functional blocks and restriction to warped phase.
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I assume that OP Twisted would use an active crossover , a 3 way . Whether digital or analogue (it depends also by the favorite source ,if vinyl I doubt any would use a DCX...),there will be some passive components to split and equalize the response between the drivers.
As I said , I would study a mold containing the 4 upper ways ,as it goes together with the study of the Xo .But ,aren't front horns same as direct radiation ? No ! Thx
The challenge is to keep it compact . The lower octave box might be anywhere,not necessarily the one below,and the midrange (choose one of the three mids )could be a curved horn...
As I said , I would study a mold containing the 4 upper ways ,as it goes together with the study of the Xo .But ,aren't front horns same as direct radiation ? No ! Thx
The challenge is to keep it compact . The lower octave box might be anywhere,not necessarily the one below,and the midrange (choose one of the three mids
)could be a curved horn...
You've lost me there.
Can you explain a bit more? My experience with the DCX has shown that any channel can be anything you want. Have you found otherwise?
I can see a potential problem with the idea of using bandpass cabinets for lower midrange. Playing around on winISD, a bandpass cabinet tuned to 200Hz gives a huge peak (+14dB) at the tuning frequency, rolling off steeply at each side. This wouldn't sound good at all. Perhaps using small sealed boxes to give gain in the right place would be better?
being cheap and playing with WinISD online I get a $6.00 CV over at Apex Jr. to~ fit the upper BP module - in real life where wavelengths are small, they're try to slip though the vent- a choke and Zobel might work
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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Would be interesting to see this working. Especially if miniaturized. I like your idea consisting of using 4th order bandpass enclosures for the 125 Hz and 250 Hz units, with some acoustic gain provided by the enclosure. Do you know the drivers you are going to use for the 125 Hz and 250 Hz units ? Are you planning to use a passive crossover approach ? Expect suprprises when using passive crossovers. You need to simulate them, along with the enclosures. LTspiceIV can help you doing this. Coils for crossovers at 125 Hz and 125 Hz are heavy and expensive : can you cope with this ? Or will you only high-pass filter the 125 Hz and 250 Hz sections using a capacitor in series ? Keep an eye on the impedance : if you only high-pass the 125 Hz and 250 Hz sections (for avoiding coils), they will eat current even outside their bandwith. And thus, the overall efficiency will be poor. You may try a series filtering arrangement instead of the usual parallel filtering scheme. Or, you may use an active filtering scheme, but that's not cheap : you need then N separate power amps, plus low-level active filters to be carefully designed (and simulated). For the subs, what kind of enclosure are you going to use ? Ready-made subs including an amplifier ? For the subs, if you don't use ready-made subs including an amplifier, you may prefear a custom-made 8th order bandpass for maximal efficiency. Keeping the same philosophy at all stages. I see that you may want to use high efficiency horn loaded speakers for the 500 Hz, 1K, 2K, 4K, 8K units. You need to determine if the directivity pattern of such drivers are compatible with your expectations. And, even if they are, you need to determine if the crossovers (phasing) are going to ruin the directivity pattern (using simulation). I don't think you'll end up with something satisfactory, but I guarantee that if you pay attention to all the points I raised, you'll quickly become an expert in loudspeaker design.
I don't have a DCX, but according to the manual it implements what Linkwitz refers to as the wrong topology for proper management of phase. My experience is in good agreement with Linkwitz's remark that phase interactions between channels aren't too much of an issue with three ways but become problematic with four way and up.
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