The Uhity design has some interesting features. It seems like something that the more sophisticated DIY'ers would want to play with. But there is only a smattering of activity that I can find. Are any plans available, or do patent issues prevent this? Are appropriate drivers available? I'll ask on the Lambda site too.
Sheldon
Sheldon
Sheldon,
Check out the High Efficiency section of http://www.audioasylum.com/index.html - Tom posts here quite a lot and has explained a lot of the workings of this design without being overly specific. Enough to wet the appetite !
Cheers
Check out the High Efficiency section of http://www.audioasylum.com/index.html - Tom posts here quite a lot and has explained a lot of the workings of this design without being overly specific. Enough to wet the appetite !
Cheers
mefistofelez said:
I don't know if I'm "dead" serious, but it's something I am seriously considering. I'm looking to make a very high quality speaker. The routes I'm narrowing in on include a widerange on an open baffle, with OB woofers, a Unity type with OB woofers, or perhaps something like an Oris horn with OB woofers. All three systems should be capable of a very coherent presentation. From what I've been able to read the Unity looks like it might be able to also deliver the dynamics of a good high eff. horn, in a relatively modest sized package. I have a very nice PP tube amp that would work fine for the Unity or OB options. Not sure I want to go the flea-power route with the large Oris type horns.
I can do the woodwork and I'm willing to play with the crossovers, but I don't want to have the entire design up in the air. So, if the horn design and driver selection can be reasonably spec.'d, and someone can report great results with same, I'd be willing to take a shot at it.
You're personal e-mail is disabled for this site.
Sheldon
hancock said:
Beating the price is not necessarily the primary objective. There may have been design compromises made for this product which would make it less than ideal for home hi fi. I don't know that that is the case, but there seems to be little to go on in this design area. I do know that I would want something that looks different. It's not obvious that component parts are available for this unit. That's why I was trying to find some DIY'ers that have some knowledge of the Unity.
Sheldon
Mathematics behind Unity Horn
Could someone post the mathematics behind designing a Unity Horn? I would like to experiment with a 2-way horn that extends lower than today's 300 Hz designs.
Equations for horn geometry. options...is 60x60 best?
Equations for throat hole sizes and positions.
Equations for optimizing T/S parameters of speakers.
Circular vs. rectangular horn.
Crossover design considerations in horn environment.
etc...
Could someone post the mathematics behind designing a Unity Horn? I would like to experiment with a 2-way horn that extends lower than today's 300 Hz designs.
Equations for horn geometry. options...is 60x60 best?
Equations for throat hole sizes and positions.
Equations for optimizing T/S parameters of speakers.
Circular vs. rectangular horn.
Crossover design considerations in horn environment.
etc...
I have seen a great unity clone DIY project by John Sheerin:
unity horn clone
I have looked for unity horn stuff as I was interested in doing one myself at one time.
Browsing through the site at his other horn designs as well will give you an idea of the difficultly in getting a flat response.
unity horn clone
I have looked for unity horn stuff as I was interested in doing one myself at one time.
Browsing through the site at his other horn designs as well will give you an idea of the difficultly in getting a flat response.
Sheldon said:
Understand. The Unity is a somewhat complex acoustical system. I really don't want to sound condescending, but there aren't a whole lot of DIYers out there with a good enough understanding of electro-acoustics to really understand some of the finer points. Even John (who is now a pro by the way) doesn't have it fully sorted yet. It would also be wrong to let out all of Tom's secrets into the public domain--I would hazard that a majority of those in the industry don't have a good enough understanding of electroacoustics to work it out themselves either. I worked out some of it and Tom responded by offering me a job.
My honest advice is if you are really interested in the Unity (and you should be), then get something that already works (like the Yorkvilles) and then play around with them and see if you can make them even better. The Yorkvilles use good quality drivers and I only know of one way in which you can tailor a Unity for home rather than pro use where you can trade off some maximum output for a flatter response (can anyone guess how?).
John
here's a picture of my Unities: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17642
If you look carefully you can see the mod...
hancock said:
Condescension, I'm not worried about. I do fall into the category of those who don't know enough about electro acoustics to know probably many important points, much less the finer points. However, I do think I am capable of understanding such, given a good explanation. Now, I'm not about to go back 30 years into my math to relearn the material necessary to derive and manipulate the models that might be used here, at the theoretical level. But that shouldn't be necessary - if enough is known about the practical application of the models involved. Enough to give general guidelines and magnitudes of outcomes rendered by changing the key parameters that would be changed in the final tweaking of the speaker. This, of course, assumes a reasonably close approximation of a good starting point.
As I said earlier, no detailed description of a starting point seems to be readily available. Admittedly, I haven't read the patent and I will do so if I decide to proceed. However, I've written a nummer of patents myself (biochemistry - not electro acoustics) and read plenty, and rarely does a patent provide enough detail to get the optimum result unless it is a simple concept. The Unity is not a simple concept, and I would be shocked to find that significant practical knowledge has not been added since the patent was written. And, by the way, why would it be a problem for Tom to reveal his more recent "secrets", if the patent is solid, unless he plans to use those secrets in applications not covered by the patent?
As I said earlier, I'm confident that I can understand and work on such a design with guidance from those in the know. You seem to be saying that you know, but you are not telling. If I'm reading that right and if that characterizes the status regarding expertise in this design, then I remain interested, but only academically so.
Sheldon
Sheldon said:
Rereading my post, I think I was being too discouraging. The basic idea of the Unity is really simple, take a conical horn, choose a crossover point, drill some holes 1/4 wave (at the crossover frequency) down the horn, slap some midrange drivers over the holes and design a crossover that aligns the drivers acoustically (check out the AES Loudspeaker Anthologies for articles on time alignment).
Sheldon said:
I'm sure you are familiar with the saying, "what good is a patent without a few secrets to back it up?". I think that is especially true for a small company that can't afford legal recourse. Check out JBL's Vertec array and you tell me if that is infringing or not. I'm sure the guys at JBL are quite capable of working out the details of the Unity on their own, but there are a whole lot of other companies out there with a somewhat lower level of sophistication.
Sheldon said:
I wish I could be more forthecoming. The Unity in it's optimized form is really a piece of art--I firmly believe that I have the best sounding system in the world sitting in my living room--really. If anyone is going to give up any secrets, though, I think it should be Tom not me. I completely understand why Tom would not want to reveal all--he already does quite a lot for us DIYers. He has given enough information out that if you're really interested you can figure it out.
A much less painful route would be to just go out and get those Yorkvilles and try to backward engineer them--that's how I sorted it out (except I bought the Lambda kit, not the Yorkvilles). Yorkville are selling a complete Unity setup for what Nick was charging for just a mid/tweet kit.
Now let me ask you a question...I just recently started studying molecular biology: fascinating stuff, particlarly epigenetics, histone acetylation, etc.. I just ordered "Molecular Biology of the Cell" from Amazon. Is that a good place to start? Any other recommendations? I could really use a good overview of mitochondrial respiration.
best of luck, John
hancock said:
I did read the patent last night and it gives the basics but not, as I would have expected, the "finer points". I also understand the point about not revealing everything to your potential competitors. And you're right that it's up to Tom whether or not to reveal his secrets. However, you seem to be saying that you have developed information to advance the design (which is part of the whole point behind the patent process), yet you're not going to reveal what you've found. That's your right too, but you don't need Tom's permission to reveal what you have found independently. Why be coy about it?
As to your question: I'm not familiar with the specific book to which you refer, so I can't be much help there. My career was spent mostly dealing with analytical methods in the life sciences - electrophoretic separations, chromatography, etc., not so much the details of metabolism. For the best recommendations, I'd look up the web site of a local research university, find a faculty member (junior faculty might be more responsive) in the field you're interested in and e-mail for some recommendations. Or just go the the campus bookstore and browse.
Sheldon
Hello John,
you wrote:
"Check out JBL's Vertec array and you tell me if that is infringing or not. I'm sure the guys at JBL are quite capable of working out the details of the Unity on their own, but there are a whole lot of other companies out there with a somewhat lower level of sophistication."
Could you provide a link to a VerTec description that prompted your statement?
Thank you,
M
you wrote:
"Check out JBL's Vertec array and you tell me if that is infringing or not. I'm sure the guys at JBL are quite capable of working out the details of the Unity on their own, but there are a whole lot of other companies out there with a somewhat lower level of sophistication."
Could you provide a link to a VerTec description that prompted your statement?
Thank you,
M
mefistofelez said:
Try:
http://www.jblpro.com/General/photos/vertecpics.htm
They call it a "radiation boundary integrator"
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