NaO Note II RS

Here is a picture with the NaO II RS set up. The drivers for the Note II RS are scattered in front of the equipment cabinet. I took them apart so I could finally paint the cabinets. The NaO II RS stands 53" tall. The Note II RS is 46" tall, but otherwise the speaker profiles are identical. The room is 16" wide, 20" deep and 7' 4" ceiling. All carpeted. Sheet rock 2x4 stud walls but the back wall stands against the concrete basement foundation. RT60 is between 300 and 400 msec from 200 Hz up. I do not like overly live rooms. There is a pole in the middle, as you can see. It does not effect the sound as it is not in the path of the direct sound and any reflections from it are directed away from the listener. There is also a 4' 6" x 8' open space off to the left rear and a stairway up. This picture was taken from the listening position. Please excuse the distortion.

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The only treatment is the curtains behind the speakers and wall to wall carpet.

Back in the 80's I had a room where the wall behind the speakers was covered about 80 in Sonex. I had various ELS speakers at the time: Acoustat Model III, Quad 63, Martin Logan Monoliths. Those systems had incredible depth but lacked life. But it was the trend back then.
 
I finished John's speakers two weeks ago.
Total no-brainer. I've been buying gear since
Henry Kloss's latest greatest, way back when.
I've been through many open baffle systems, after that.
This is a fabulous and intelligently flexible audio system.
And so inexpensive, with no downsides as far as I'm
concerned, it's just crazy. :)
Thanks John.
 
Reviving this thread... John, did you ever try FIR filter xovers? This is an option for some miniDSP products (including the OpenDRC-DA8 which I just got last week).

Tried it with the Bodzio Ultimate Equalizer. I can't say that it made any significant difference, good or bad. It sounded a little different but that's as far as I would go. I could not say one way was better that the other. Actually, after working on the UE I lost interest in linear phase systems. The UE was the first tool I had which allowed me to a system in normal or linear phase mode without having any other effects on the system, like polar response, etc.

Anyway, I don't think the Open DRC series is set up in a way that you could do this. There just aren't enough taps available. It might work if a preprocessing, phase correction filter could be place at the input, but AFAIK, the FIR filters are only applied separately to each output channel. And the number of taps is significantly more limited when using 96k sampling.
 
I finished John's speakers two weeks ago.
Total no-brainer. I've been buying gear since
Henry Kloss's latest greatest, way back when.
I've been through many open baffle systems, after that.
This is a fabulous and intelligently flexible audio system.
And so inexpensive, with no downsides as far as I'm
concerned, it's just crazy. :)
Thanks John.

You are more than welcome. I appreciate you posting your experience.
 
Good evening,
Can anyone confirm the level/gain settings for each speaker/frequency range? In my minidsp nanodigi they're all set to 0.
Thanks/O

Yes, they should all be set to zero with the possible exception of the woofer, which you should adjust to your taste. The other drive levels are adjusted in the PEQ setting and should remain fixed. Of course, that's the idea of using a dsp crossover. You can do as you like to make things as you want. You can always reload the original configuration.
 
I finished John's speakers two weeks ago.
Total no-brainer. I've been buying gear since
Henry Kloss's latest greatest, way back when.
I've been through many open baffle systems, after that.
This is a fabulous and intelligently flexible audio system.
And so inexpensive, with no downsides as far as I'm
concerned, it's just crazy. :)
Thanks John.

I'd agree with this. If I didn't have the Abbeys, along with a ton of other speakers, these speakers are the ones to own. Maybe if I see a used pair on the market, I will buy them just because. I'm also a Linkwitz fan and had the Orion, but I just can't afford the LX521.

Man, I'm just wondering what John can do with more exotic drivers, like Accuton. But then again I'm not sure if such drivers are suitable in an open baffle design nor will they deliver a more realistic sound, especially given the price.

I really don't think you can beat these speakers for the asking price. John is a godsend to the DIY audio community.
 
Nice reports!
The genius of dsp-4-way dipoles is in modularity. Each drive unit works in it's comfort zone electrically and acoustically. Dipole radiation pattern overrules nasty edge diffractions and pattern variations, sound is very coherent in all directions. A driver is not stressed and eg. cone resonances are out of passband. Modularity gives chances to try with different drivers and baffle construction, one must just remember the basic principles.

Minidsp and guidelines given by Kreskowsky, Linkwitz and less famous Finke and Reekie have given birth to many fantastic and unique diy speakers, and I expect even more to come!

NaO
Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design
Dipolplus - Alles über offene Schallwände
Refining a 4-way open-baffle speaker with the miniDSP 2×4
https://www.minidsp.com/applications/digital-crossovers/stereo-34way-xover
https://www.minidsp.com/forum/diy-hifi-projects
 
Reviving this thread... John, did you ever try FIR filter xovers? This is an option for some miniDSP products (including the OpenDRC-DA8 which I just got last week).


Hi Silent Mike,


The benefits of FIR filters to create “transient perfect” loudspeaker performance were already known back in 2000. Just one of the older sources is quoted below.

“ Generalized Fractional-Octave Smoothing of Audio and Acoustic Responses”, P. D.
Hatziantoniu and J. N. Mourjopoulos, AES Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, April 2000.

Quote from Introduction chapter:

“…An example is “Time smearing” imposed by the system on audio waveforms, an effect that is increasingly accepted as effecting the listener’s perception, even where no significant distortions are measured in the magnitude spectrum, as is the case with the recent high-sampling rate digital audio systems [12]. It is also becoming increasing evident that the auditory mechanism is sensitive to audio and acoustic signal event boundaries, as manifested by onset responses generated in many perceptual processes [13] – [16]. Clearly, such onsets will be degraded to a different extent by the time response of the audio, electroacoustic, or acoustic system. The preservation of the signal’s original transient components by any such system appears to be of extreme importance for the correct interpretation of the waveforms reaching the listener and his or her perception of timing, texture, timbre and spatial imaging. However, the time responses of audio, electroacoustic and acoustic systems often introduce extensive time smearing and disperse the energy and transients of the input signal to long time intervals through the process described mathematically by convolving integral. This can also be interpreted as an artefact of the system’s nonlinear phase response. Nevertheless, it appears that the initial portion of the system’s time response plays a very significant role in the resulting distortion from both a physical and a perceptual point of view….”


Best Regards,
Bohdan
 
Reviving this thread... John, did you ever try FIR filter xovers? This is an option for some miniDSP products (including the OpenDRC-DA8 which I just got last week).

I made LR4 phase linear filters for my Nao Note II RS .... essentially just making all the filters LR4 and adding inverse all pass filters at the crossover points.

Difference, yes .... but not nearly as much as any changes to the amplitude response bring.


... and I echo the thanks to John. :cool:
 
Nice reports!
The genius of dsp-4-way dipoles is in modularity. Each drive unit works in it's comfort zone electrically and acoustically. Dipole radiation pattern overrules nasty edge diffractions and pattern variations, sound is very coherent in all directions. A driver is not stressed and eg. cone resonances are out of passband. Modularity gives chances to try with different drivers and baffle construction, one must just remember the basic principles.

Minidsp and guidelines given by Kreskowsky, Linkwitz and less famous Finke and Reekie have given birth to many fantastic and unique diy speakers, and I expect even more to come!

NaO
Linkwitz Lab - Loudspeaker Design
Dipolplus - Alles über offene Schallwände
Refining a 4-way open-baffle speaker with the miniDSP 2×4
https://www.minidsp.com/applications/digital-crossovers/stereo-34way-xover
https://www.minidsp.com/forum/diy-hifi-projects

Absolutely. I now finally have a state of the art system, intelligently designed to allow ultimate flexibility, depending on the room, the age of the ears in question, and etc etc. John even supplied a 'BBC dip' variable. You gotta love it. :)
 
Hi

I have 4x of the "old" Peerless XLS 10" in 4 ohm version. Can these be used for the Nao Note II RS?

I will be using 2x2x4 MiniDSP and 2 x Rotel RB985 (5x100w).

Regards

What is the part number of the woofer? Most likely they can be used. I have configuration files for the 830452 XLS woofers. Also, with that amp you should use a separate channel for each woofer.
 
Thanks.

Yes, the model is P830452. You just split the signal from the "woofer-channel" from the MiniDsp and adjust the level -3db in Minidsp, or something like that..?

No need to adjust level other than to your taste. Use a Y connector from the minidsp woofer channel to connect to two amp channels then one amp channel to each woofer with one woofer connected with reversed polarity. This yields the same voltage sensitivity and having the woofers connected in parallel to a single channel but divides the current load between the two channels.

Just recognize that with 2 miniDSP 2x4 units you looses the ability to make adjustments in real time because you can only adjust one dsp unit at a time. Also, max voltage output is 0.9 V which may be insufficient to drive your amps to full power, not that you will need it.
 
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