Hey guys, hope you've all been keeping well and your DIY endeavours are fortuitous. 
Particularly warm greetings to all the old faces I see on here. I've been away from the hobby for a couple of years and yep that was largely because I started dating. Life got pretty complicated at that point, one thing led to another and then before I knew it I'd got no time for DIY. Great news is the honeymoon period is long over now and things are settling down nicely so I finally get to self indulge without too much hassle
I thought I'd do another build thread like the ones of old so lets get the ball rolling with me ranting about random details.
For this one I thought I'd start off nice and steady to get back into things so nothing overly ambitious. I do tend to get carried away when I start designing but this time whenever I looked at that £350 tweeter I got a slap round the back of the head and my wallet taken off me, ouch. Funny that isn't it, I used to take it for granted not to have to ask permission for anything yet now I have to get quotes and have them OKed by the powers by that be. Don't laugh, I'm a relative noob to being under the thumb but I'm fast learning not to ask and just hide the receipts down the back of the sofa!
So with that said what we have here is a very tidy compact stand mount using proven high quality components rather than the boutique exotica I've been suckere... erm... drawn to in the past.
Before getting down to the nitty gritty I can say these have been a long time coming. I originally drew up the plans in the middle of 2009, did all the design work and then shelved it. Fast forward to the end of last year and I ordered a load of small drivers from 4" upto 5.5" and began testing them. It was great fun to do that again, I'd missed it for sure. In case your interested I tried out Seas 4" and 5" Excel driver in both magnesium and nextel varieties and Scanspeak Revelator and Illuminator in 5". Interesting that despite the sometimes very different design specifics between these drivers they all performed very well and sounded not completely dissimilar. Once you get to this level of accuracy and performance its a lot harder to pick 'the one' as they're all suitable but eventually I choose Seas W12CY001. This is Seas magnesium 4" driver and does some seriously nice things with music for such a compact little thing. Midrange performance is absolutely spot on, rarely have I heard such a nice blend of detail and warmth. It was surreal how content I was with it, perfect almost. Mids aside you'd expect bass to be weaker from such a small driver and yes its not as extended as say the 5" Revelator which was probably the 'best' in this area but the output is very clean and defined in a ported box. With the test boxes placed about a 1ft from the rear wall they did good down to 40hz which is right about where most music starts to ignore the lower frequencies and despite the lack of ultimate depth the rest of what these drivers are capable of is fierce.
For all tests I used the small footprint Scanspeak Illuminator D30 which allows for a tight center to center spacing on the baffle. Again another great driver and the integration between the 4" and the 1" dome is seemless.
Its often said but good small bookshelves really do things like imaging and soundstage size with such ease, in fact these easily rival my own favourite and sizeable DIY design that I built a couple of years ago and I thought those were hard to beat in that area. I expect things to improve even more in the final cabinets as the prototypes were basic rectangular affairs with removable baffles for ease of auditioning. In comparison the final cabs will have a tiny baffle area created by the angular facets that also reduce diffraction and to top things off in the usual OTT style I plan to construct them with a 63mm thick composite laminated construction consisting of mdf, marine ply and hdf. Cabinet colouration be gone
Another interesting development in the past couple of years are the compact DSP boards from Hypex and DSP4You. These open up a whole new level of convenience and performance and as some around here might remember I'm a great proponent of DSP active systems. In my main system I use a DEQX to great effect and whilst these smaller devices aren't as powerful or flexible they are compact enough to allow integration into a cabinet and this is great news imo. You could even do some low frequency room EQ if needed, all that's needed is a PC and USB. I'll certainly be using DPS in this design and going active.
Wow ok that turned out to be quite a rant but I've been away for awhile so hopefully you'll forgive me
Enough talk, here's a rather pretty artsy fartsy render. And who said us northerners weren't posh? A trusty and sexy LGT is in the background for dramatic effect and scale.
And that's about it, thanks for looking and again greetings to familiar faces. I'll update with more details and pictures once I start construction over the coming weeks.
Ant
Particularly warm greetings to all the old faces I see on here. I've been away from the hobby for a couple of years and yep that was largely because I started dating. Life got pretty complicated at that point, one thing led to another and then before I knew it I'd got no time for DIY. Great news is the honeymoon period is long over now and things are settling down nicely so I finally get to self indulge without too much hassle
I thought I'd do another build thread like the ones of old so lets get the ball rolling with me ranting about random details.
For this one I thought I'd start off nice and steady to get back into things so nothing overly ambitious. I do tend to get carried away when I start designing but this time whenever I looked at that £350 tweeter I got a slap round the back of the head and my wallet taken off me, ouch. Funny that isn't it, I used to take it for granted not to have to ask permission for anything yet now I have to get quotes and have them OKed by the powers by that be. Don't laugh, I'm a relative noob to being under the thumb but I'm fast learning not to ask and just hide the receipts down the back of the sofa!
So with that said what we have here is a very tidy compact stand mount using proven high quality components rather than the boutique exotica I've been suckere... erm... drawn to in the past.
Before getting down to the nitty gritty I can say these have been a long time coming. I originally drew up the plans in the middle of 2009, did all the design work and then shelved it. Fast forward to the end of last year and I ordered a load of small drivers from 4" upto 5.5" and began testing them. It was great fun to do that again, I'd missed it for sure. In case your interested I tried out Seas 4" and 5" Excel driver in both magnesium and nextel varieties and Scanspeak Revelator and Illuminator in 5". Interesting that despite the sometimes very different design specifics between these drivers they all performed very well and sounded not completely dissimilar. Once you get to this level of accuracy and performance its a lot harder to pick 'the one' as they're all suitable but eventually I choose Seas W12CY001. This is Seas magnesium 4" driver and does some seriously nice things with music for such a compact little thing. Midrange performance is absolutely spot on, rarely have I heard such a nice blend of detail and warmth. It was surreal how content I was with it, perfect almost. Mids aside you'd expect bass to be weaker from such a small driver and yes its not as extended as say the 5" Revelator which was probably the 'best' in this area but the output is very clean and defined in a ported box. With the test boxes placed about a 1ft from the rear wall they did good down to 40hz which is right about where most music starts to ignore the lower frequencies and despite the lack of ultimate depth the rest of what these drivers are capable of is fierce.
For all tests I used the small footprint Scanspeak Illuminator D30 which allows for a tight center to center spacing on the baffle. Again another great driver and the integration between the 4" and the 1" dome is seemless.
Its often said but good small bookshelves really do things like imaging and soundstage size with such ease, in fact these easily rival my own favourite and sizeable DIY design that I built a couple of years ago and I thought those were hard to beat in that area. I expect things to improve even more in the final cabinets as the prototypes were basic rectangular affairs with removable baffles for ease of auditioning. In comparison the final cabs will have a tiny baffle area created by the angular facets that also reduce diffraction and to top things off in the usual OTT style I plan to construct them with a 63mm thick composite laminated construction consisting of mdf, marine ply and hdf. Cabinet colouration be gone
Another interesting development in the past couple of years are the compact DSP boards from Hypex and DSP4You. These open up a whole new level of convenience and performance and as some around here might remember I'm a great proponent of DSP active systems. In my main system I use a DEQX to great effect and whilst these smaller devices aren't as powerful or flexible they are compact enough to allow integration into a cabinet and this is great news imo. You could even do some low frequency room EQ if needed, all that's needed is a PC and USB. I'll certainly be using DPS in this design and going active.
Wow ok that turned out to be quite a rant but I've been away for awhile so hopefully you'll forgive me
Enough talk, here's a rather pretty artsy fartsy render. And who said us northerners weren't posh?
A trusty and sexy LGT is in the background for dramatic effect and scale.An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
And that's about it, thanks for looking and again greetings to familiar faces. I'll update with more details and pictures once I start construction over the coming weeks.
Ant
I suppose your wife have no idea about what is coming....saw dust every where
Hello Shin - great to see you back - and congrats about finding a partner to share life's joys with.
Unlike tinitus - I expect that YOU have no idea about what is coming - unless you were very careful in your auditioning process.
We refer to our better halfs as SWMBO for a reason. Well - actually several reasons.
Welcome back Shin!.........There are more faces to see here...........some gone.
I guess you passed the "audition".....found yourself a woman with similar likes.& etc. My successful "audition" I was un-aware, when I brought her over to my place for the first time, I played Van Halen (One) on vinyl thru my DIY loudspeakers. For a rocker girl raised on Ozzy, AC/DC, & the rest of em' , I was the perfect guy.
_______________________________________________Rick..........
I guess you passed the "audition".....found yourself a woman with similar likes.& etc. My successful "audition" I was un-aware, when I brought her over to my place for the first time, I played Van Halen (One) on vinyl thru my DIY loudspeakers. For a rocker girl raised on Ozzy, AC/DC, & the rest of em' , I was the perfect guy.
_______________________________________________Rick..........
Thanks guys and yes Scott your partly right about that. Even if I wanted to I doubt I'll get the chance to toy with elaborate designs again any time soon. The reality is I couldn't be happier with how the LGT turned out and so whilst I still have plenty of passion for speaker design, another design in the same direction would end up large scale on all fronts and, back then, it did feel at times like I was chasing some fantasy rather than simply enjoying things for what they are. Perfect or even near perfect speakers don't exist yet so this design isn't meant to replace what's come before, they're simply an excuse to indulge and have a bit of fun again
New toy:
And some W12CY001 pics:
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.
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.
And some W12CY001 pics:
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.
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.
Well I don't know exactly.
What I can tell you is I'm planning on this to be a gateway for something that might lead to a commercial endeavour, nothing major league just very very small quantities of extremely high quality hand built speakers. Before you shoot me for even thinking to indulge in the sins of commercial let me say that I take a great deal of care and time in the design and build process so even over materials costs there's no getting around the fact that these are very labour intensive with many many hours going into even a small design such as this so I won't be getting rich any time soon. But that isn't my motivation for doing this, its to do something I love in my spare time and maybe make the odd bob or two here and there to support the addiction. Its a tentative dipping of the toe and see where things go.
Let me be clear though. This threads purpose isn't to market or sell anything its here to allow me to share and participate in the DIY community once again so, aside from this clarification, I'd prefer for the discussion to stay within that area otherwise I wouldn't really feel comfortable posting on here about such things.
Hey John, good to see you again.
All I can say on the baffles is tiny baffle area = big soundstage and defined imaging. Its what mini's do best.
Those W12CYs sure are nice lookin', from how small they are I've never actually seen the venting around the back of the spider before in any pictures, so it's nice to see that it's there.
I really wish that SEAS would develop a true midrange driver using a magnesium cone, that gives up it's bass extension for some extra sensitivity.
I would imagine that distortion plots for the W12 will be to come. It's interesting that there are measurements for the W15 from many different people, but not one (at least that I know of) person has measured the W12, so I'm looking forward to any measurements you might wish to post.
It also seems that, although the size has changed, the cabinets are not going to be your run of the mill square sided box, some things never change. It wouldn't quite be a 'Shin' speaker if it didn't have at least some construction details that would make most of us cry
I really wish that SEAS would develop a true midrange driver using a magnesium cone, that gives up it's bass extension for some extra sensitivity.
I would imagine that distortion plots for the W12 will be to come. It's interesting that there are measurements for the W15 from many different people, but not one (at least that I know of) person has measured the W12, so I'm looking forward to any measurements you might wish to post.
It also seems that, although the size has changed, the cabinets are not going to be your run of the mill square sided box, some things never change. It wouldn't quite be a 'Shin' speaker if it didn't have at least some construction details that would make most of us cry
Yep they're certainly small compared to the average 6.5" mid/woofer but are lacking nothing in terms of build and attention to detail from their bigger brothers. Seas quality has always impressed me.
I could have sworn about 4 years ago they did MCH15 driver as a pure mid. Was pretty good if I remember with ~90dB. All I see now in the MCH15 models are bass/mid drivers with the compact neodymium motor.
I'll be sure to take some more thorough measurements later. I do have some data but its a mess and was only used to compare like for like whilst playing around with driver choices for this project.
Still fine tuning the cabinet details, especially the internals but here's a couple more renders:
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.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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