Got these up and running a few days ago and wanted to share. They are hereby dubbed "The Queen" as they resemble a chess piece to me (or a bowling pin but that doesn't sound nearly as cool, lol!).
Anyhow drivers are:
Vifa XT-25 ambience tweeters (both top and rear firing)
Silver Flute W14RC25 midwoofers
Hiquphon OW/4 tweeters
Dayton HF 10" and 12" subwoofer drivers
Sort of melded ideas I have had in my head for a long time and used ideas borrowed from speakers like Green Mountain, Vandersteen, Dynaudio, Dunlavy and my own older designs.
It's a modular system, which makes it easy to work with and DIY on (and ship!). I have a friend who did the cabinets to my design. Piano gloss finish is very nice in person but in my dimly lit basement with such directional halogen lighting I just cannot get good pics at all (sorry).
The MTTM portion of the design is 1st order series; smidge of BSC on the Silver Flutes; drivers VC's aligned to the best of my ability. No guarantee the step response is "perfect" but its a "step" in the right direction, wukka wukka!
Had to borrow a great idea from Dynaudio who also does MTTM for their flagship models (also 1st order). The 2 tweeters like to cancel each other out on the top end so what "we" did was roll the top tweeter OW4 off above 8kHz with a notch and viola--problem solved. The top and rear firing "ambiance" tweeters are adjustable and defeatable and obviously need to be defeated if time/phase coherence is of importance. HOWEVER--like Vandersteen does on their flagship time/phase coherent speakers---I added the ambiance tweeters for "fun". I must admit I sort of like them on just a smidgen of loudness---opens things up for whatever reason in my room and detracts nothing. They are crossed 1st order at a highish 7kHz and up.
Bass bins are sealed and active. I re-used these from another older project. Rythmik plate amps---1 for each sub driver. Each driver is sealed in its own optimized space within the large bass cabinet. On the bass bins only I use a 24 bit Behringer for a smidge of room correction. Very flat to 20Hz in my room.
Anyhow, something "different" I would say. Sound is spectacular and the best I've ever had here. They throw a huge and deep soundstage and have some real cajones---dynamics in spades! I really like the Silver Flute drivers too. I used Scanspeaks (15M) in my last design and those are quite clear and accurate but they just don't have the warmth in the lower mids (subjective taste) of the "wool" Flutes. Different sound, both are great, but for the $$ the cheap Flute is a bang for the buck killer driver--- no doubt. And obviously the OW/4's are world-class. XT-25's are nice and get the job done for what they are doing. They have their own dedicated amp tap on back making life easy for the xover design.
Anyhow drivers are:
Vifa XT-25 ambience tweeters (both top and rear firing)
Silver Flute W14RC25 midwoofers
Hiquphon OW/4 tweeters
Dayton HF 10" and 12" subwoofer drivers
Sort of melded ideas I have had in my head for a long time and used ideas borrowed from speakers like Green Mountain, Vandersteen, Dynaudio, Dunlavy and my own older designs.
It's a modular system, which makes it easy to work with and DIY on (and ship!). I have a friend who did the cabinets to my design. Piano gloss finish is very nice in person but in my dimly lit basement with such directional halogen lighting I just cannot get good pics at all (sorry).
The MTTM portion of the design is 1st order series; smidge of BSC on the Silver Flutes; drivers VC's aligned to the best of my ability. No guarantee the step response is "perfect" but its a "step" in the right direction, wukka wukka!
Had to borrow a great idea from Dynaudio who also does MTTM for their flagship models (also 1st order). The 2 tweeters like to cancel each other out on the top end so what "we" did was roll the top tweeter OW4 off above 8kHz with a notch and viola--problem solved. The top and rear firing "ambiance" tweeters are adjustable and defeatable and obviously need to be defeated if time/phase coherence is of importance. HOWEVER--like Vandersteen does on their flagship time/phase coherent speakers---I added the ambiance tweeters for "fun". I must admit I sort of like them on just a smidgen of loudness---opens things up for whatever reason in my room and detracts nothing. They are crossed 1st order at a highish 7kHz and up.
Bass bins are sealed and active. I re-used these from another older project. Rythmik plate amps---1 for each sub driver. Each driver is sealed in its own optimized space within the large bass cabinet. On the bass bins only I use a 24 bit Behringer for a smidge of room correction. Very flat to 20Hz in my room.
Anyhow, something "different" I would say. Sound is spectacular and the best I've ever had here. They throw a huge and deep soundstage and have some real cajones---dynamics in spades! I really like the Silver Flute drivers too. I used Scanspeaks (15M) in my last design and those are quite clear and accurate but they just don't have the warmth in the lower mids (subjective taste) of the "wool" Flutes. Different sound, both are great, but for the $$ the cheap Flute is a bang for the buck killer driver--- no doubt. And obviously the OW/4's are world-class. XT-25's are nice and get the job done for what they are doing. They have their own dedicated amp tap on back making life easy for the xover design.
studiotech--Thanks and yes, 2 tape machines actually. Otari BII console hooked up to an external Bottlehead Seduction head amp and an Otari BIII (current). Big R2R fan!
David G--Thanks. I've always been a big fan of your projects as well!
Wolf--Good memory. Still have the Vaders too! In a different system now. They have a different bass bin now, which looks identical to the above but with a single 15" Dayton HF in it and a Keiga 500 watt plate amp. A/B with the new speakers revealed the new ones are better so they moved into the main rig.
chloro--Experimenting was huge with this project so I spent a lot of time doing what you asked. Disconnecting the "head" and other components of the speaker as it were. Had all the adjustments set up all at my listening position to make on the fly assessments. I could flip the "head" on and off and also the "ambiance tweeters" on and off independently with a flip of a switch. Also had my last design, The Vaders, sitting right next to the new design so I could flip back and forth between them with the new one in various configurations (head on/off or somewhere in between with dedicated preamp---ambiance tweeters on/off or somewhere in between with L-pad and also polarity switching on them, etc. Finally got it to the point of NO comparison, even though the old design (Vader) was using much better Scanspeak midranges as opposed to the Silver Flutes in the new design. It took some adjusting and a few different crossover revisions in the new design to get it to sound the way I wanted.
Bottom line is as you might expect, there is a "bigger" sound now. More open. I designed these to be a warmer speaker, more relaxed, more forgiving, bigger more dynamic sound. The Vader speaker is transparent and hyper-detailed as hell and I wanted to go in a slightly different direction now. They are and were awesome speakers but perhaps a little TOO revealing for bad recordings. Tastes change too.
And for 1st order xover fans----
There was one VERY interesting thing I discovered with the new MTTM design as opposed to my traditional TMW designs w/regards to using 1st order. Maybe Dynaudio knows what they are doing with the MTTM 1st order layout--heh-he. As we all know 1st order filters create some lobing effects and you really need to get your "ears" in the right place and height when using them or the tonal balance will not sound quite right and things won't quite open up and "gel". The further back you sit the more mitigated this phenomenon is but its still sometimes there. WELL---the MTTM layout helps to INCREASE the sweetspot and is not as sensitive to lobing. Its still there, but it's less critical then the traditional TMW setup. At least in my experience. Someone smarter then I can explain why this might be but anyhow, I think it is a nice "side-benefit" of the new MTTM 1st order design.
David G--Thanks. I've always been a big fan of your projects as well!
Wolf--Good memory. Still have the Vaders too! In a different system now. They have a different bass bin now, which looks identical to the above but with a single 15" Dayton HF in it and a Keiga 500 watt plate amp. A/B with the new speakers revealed the new ones are better so they moved into the main rig.
chloro--Experimenting was huge with this project so I spent a lot of time doing what you asked. Disconnecting the "head" and other components of the speaker as it were. Had all the adjustments set up all at my listening position to make on the fly assessments. I could flip the "head" on and off and also the "ambiance tweeters" on and off independently with a flip of a switch. Also had my last design, The Vaders, sitting right next to the new design so I could flip back and forth between them with the new one in various configurations (head on/off or somewhere in between with dedicated preamp---ambiance tweeters on/off or somewhere in between with L-pad and also polarity switching on them, etc. Finally got it to the point of NO comparison, even though the old design (Vader) was using much better Scanspeak midranges as opposed to the Silver Flutes in the new design. It took some adjusting and a few different crossover revisions in the new design to get it to sound the way I wanted.
Bottom line is as you might expect, there is a "bigger" sound now. More open. I designed these to be a warmer speaker, more relaxed, more forgiving, bigger more dynamic sound. The Vader speaker is transparent and hyper-detailed as hell and I wanted to go in a slightly different direction now. They are and were awesome speakers but perhaps a little TOO revealing for bad recordings. Tastes change too.
And for 1st order xover fans----
There was one VERY interesting thing I discovered with the new MTTM design as opposed to my traditional TMW designs w/regards to using 1st order. Maybe Dynaudio knows what they are doing with the MTTM 1st order layout--heh-he. As we all know 1st order filters create some lobing effects and you really need to get your "ears" in the right place and height when using them or the tonal balance will not sound quite right and things won't quite open up and "gel". The further back you sit the more mitigated this phenomenon is but its still sometimes there. WELL---the MTTM layout helps to INCREASE the sweetspot and is not as sensitive to lobing. Its still there, but it's less critical then the traditional TMW setup. At least in my experience. Someone smarter then I can explain why this might be but anyhow, I think it is a nice "side-benefit" of the new MTTM 1st order design.
Yessir! I do! Have not made a single change to them since I posted this initially 4 years ago. I did buy 4 new Morel 6.5" woofers to swap out the Silver Flutes for but they have been sitting in the closet for over a year---just too busy to get around to all the headaches that will be involved in the swap!
Some day....
Some day....
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