Why aren't we building bookshelf Synergy monitors?

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If you want directionality to any sort of frequency, you're going to need decent sized horns. At bookshelf-like sizes, there are better solutions, IMO.

Plus, it'd make more sense to use a small-ish fullrange and a couple of 6.5's if you can make it work.
 
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Patrick Bateman has been building tiny synergies to stuff in his car dashboard for years. Recently I have shrunk the Trynergy to 8.5in X 13in mouth and it supports horn gain down to 350Hz. If we are ok with 500Hz as lowest horn directed gain size will be smaller.

It's a great question because I believe they would work great as desktop studio monitors if smaller.

More scaling down to be had in 2016. The problem is if you want point source bass from teeny synergy it adds bulk for woofers. Would be easier to do hybrid and mount horn above an 8in woofer direct radiator.

Here is how small I got my Trynergy. Still not quite desktop yet but getting there.
519916d1450425655-presenting-trynergy-full-range-tractrix-synergy-utrynergy-woofers-installed.png


The Trynergy could be a dome tweeter at apex and four small full ranges for mids. Then 8in woofer for bass below 500Hz. Sensitivty of bass is limiting factor. With pro woofer after baffle step still maybe 90dB.
 
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Patrick Bateman has been building tiny synergies to stuff in his car dashboard for years. Recently I have shrunk the Trynergy to 8.5in X 13in mouth and it supports horn gain down to 350Hz. If we are ok with 500Hz as lowest horn directed gain size will be smaller.

It's a great question because I believe they would work great as desktop studio monitors if smaller.

More scaling down to be had in 2016. The problem is if you want point source bass from teeny synergy it adds bulk for woofers. Would be easier to do hybrid and mount horn above an 8in woofer direct radiator.

Here is how small I got my Trynergy. Still not quite desktop yet but getting there.
519916d1450425655-presenting-trynergy-full-range-tractrix-synergy-utrynergy-woofers-installed.png


The Trynergy could be a dome tweeter at apex and four small full ranges for mids. Then 8in woofer for bass below 500Hz. Sensitivty of bass is limiting factor. With pro woofer after baffle step still maybe 90dB.

Yep.

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The first thing that I attempted after renting a pair of SH50s was a horn where the boundaries of the room extend the mouth of the horn. The reason that this was so appealing was because renting a "real" pair of SH50s revealed that the Danley units aren't too picky about room location. IE, the room didn't seem to contribute a lot to the sound. So if that's true, it might be possible to push them all the way into the corners of the room, and shrink the footprint significantly.

IMG_20151229_112826.jpg

Here's one of the JBL PT waveguides that I chopped up to see how tight I could fit it into the corner of my dash

IMG_20151231_121502.jpg

And here's some waveguides I 3D printed last week to fit in that same spot. I still need to chop 'em up to fit, but you can see that it's possible to make quite a tight fit. 3D printing helps, because you can do things like 'push' the woofers through the walls for a tighter fit.
 
I think we (not necessarily me, I'm a noob) but we need to make synergies easy for people to understand and build. Bookshelf, 3 way, fullrange, OB, they are all super easy to get step by step designs anywhere online. Synergies are lagging behind in that regard. After more people build them more variations will follow.
 
I think we (not necessarily me, I'm a noob) but we need to make synergies easy for people to understand and build. Bookshelf, 3 way, fullrange, OB, they are all super easy to get step by step designs anywhere online. Synergies are lagging behind in that regard. After more people build them more variations will follow.

That's one of the funny things about the design that a lot of people don't appreciate. If you look around the forums you don't see a lot of people with failed Synergy horns. Most people who've tried them have had success with them.

On the surface, the design is maddeningly complex. But it's also (fairly) forgiving.
 
I think we (not necessarily me, I'm a noob) but we need to make synergies easy for people to understand and build. Bookshelf, 3 way, fullrange, OB, they are all super easy to get step by step designs anywhere online. Synergies are lagging behind in that regard. After more people build them more variations will follow.
I disagree. I think there is quite a lot of info out there if you look. Most of it is covered in the patents as well.
 

GM

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Yeah, while the 'devil's in the details' to get the most efficient, etc., alignment; if you have a clue about horn design, then Unity/Synergies are no harder to design than 6th order BPs and with the advent of relatively inexpensive digital EQ/XO/TD and measurement systems, just about any combo of drivers can be made to work 'well enough' together as I proved to myself back in '98? after Tom had given me a 'teaser' description of a new horn design by cobbling together a very crude [Unity] concept using a square terminus piezo horn and a couple of RS 40-1197 4" 'FR' drivers.

GM
 
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The real issue is making those compression (frenum?) inserts inside the midranges or have we gotten past this?

Not an issue. A sharp lip on band pass injection port is called a frustrum if that is what you are taking about. Adding a volume filler plug in the cone space between the horn wall and frustrum and cone also increases upper extension on mid. The bigger problem is not being able to get any closer to the throat with the injection holes due to physical constraints. That sets the upper cancellation notch on the mids.
 
Not an issue. A sharp lip on band pass injection port is called a frustrum if that is what you are taking about. Adding a volume filler plug in the cone space between the horn wall and frustrum and cone also increases upper extension on mid. The bigger problem is not being able to get any closer to the throat with the injection holes due to physical constraints. That sets the upper cancellation notch on the mids.

What's the smallest mid driver you've used or heard of attempted yet? Do you think the little Aura 1" fullrangers would work for a smaller Synergy? Can the mids be loaded on the verical surfaces as well as the sides? Four of those little Aura's would be required for sufficient power handling and efficiency.
 
What's the smallest mid driver you've used or heard of attempted yet? Do you think the little Aura 1" fullrangers would work for a smaller Synergy? Can the mids be loaded on the verical surfaces as well as the sides? Four of those little Aura's would be required for sufficient power handling and efficiency.

Check out the "suitable midrange for unity horn" thread for info on this.

In a nutshell, the upper limit on your midrange driver is set by the FS and the QES (mostly.) If you try and use a lot of the ultra-small drivers, you run into a problem : the QES is too high.

So there's a 'sweet spot' where the FS is HIGH enough and the QES is LOW enough, and that's where your candidates are. The tricky part is actually finding a driver with a low QES. There are tons of prosound drivers with a low QES but the cones are too large.

Danley remarked about this in regards to the molded Synergy horns, basically noting that the design was impossible until BMS came along with a driver which was a good fit. And the old labsubs used a driver which was specifically designed for the sub.

The TangBand W2-854 is one of the drivers that works, and both XRK and I have used it for Synergy / Unity projects.
 
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I used the W2-852SH actually but similar. It doesn't get much smaller than that for a 89dB (spec says 86 but I measured 89) low Qes driver. For the Trynergy, in the end, I preferred the slightly bigger and less sensitive SB65WBAC25-4 for less distortion and the sound was more detailed to my ears.
 
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I used the W2-852SH actually but similar. It doesn't get much smaller than that for a 89dB low Qes driver. For the Trynergy, in the end, I preferred the slightly bigger and less sensitive SB65WBAC25-4 for less distortion and the sound was more detailed to my ears.

Ah, you're killin' me :)

I went through a similar process. I started out with the AuraSound Whisper, back in 2006. It sounded good, but wouldn't play high enough, due to the high QES. Also, I didn't know what I was doing. That thread I referenced in the last post was begun by someone from a car audio forum who was following my project.

Once I started to get a clue, I switched to the W2-854SH. That worked about as good as anything, but I trashed that project because I'm ADHD

I went on to use the Peerless 830970, which is one of my favs. It works better than the Whisper, but sounds cleaner than the TangBand, which can get a little 'grungey.'

And then I stumbled upon the SB Acoustics. Seems like a no-brainer; it's a lot like the 830970 but IIRC there's a couple of things it does better. (It's more extended iirc.)

But I haven't had a chance to try them at all. Bought them last summer and they're sitting on a shelf.
 
Check out the "suitable midrange for unity horn" thread for info on this.

In a nutshell, the upper limit on your midrange driver is set by the FS and the QES (mostly.) If you try and use a lot of the ultra-small drivers, you run into a problem : the QES is too high.

So there's a 'sweet spot' where the FS is HIGH enough and the QES is LOW enough, and that's where your candidates are. The tricky part is actually finding a driver with a low QES. There are tons of prosound drivers with a low QES but the cones are too large.

Can you explain why it needs low QES and high Fs?
 
Can you explain why it needs low QES and high Fs?

Read the first page of the 'suitable midrange for unity horn' thread :)

Basically the higher the FS and the lower the QES, the higher the midranges will play. And getting the midranges to play up to 1000hz, or even 1500hz, is really really difficult.

That's why Danley had to create the 'layered combiner' for the Jericho horns, and how creating that device allowed him to raise the SPL on the Synergy horns from 127dB in the SH50 to a whopping 148dB in the Jericho horn.

The limiting factor in a Synergy horn is the tweeter; it's all about getting those midranges to help out the tweeter.
 
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Ah, you're killin' me :)

I went through a similar process. I started out with the AuraSound Whisper, back in 2006. It sounded good, but wouldn't play high enough, due to the high QES. Also, I didn't know what I was doing. That thread I referenced in the last post was begun by someone from a car audio forum who was following my project.

Once I started to get a clue, I switched to the W2-854SH. That worked about as good as anything, but I trashed that project because I'm ADHD

I went on to use the Peerless 830970, which is one of my favs. It works better than the Whisper, but sounds cleaner than the TangBand, which can get a little 'grungey.'

And then I stumbled upon the SB Acoustics. Seems like a no-brainer; it's a lot like the 830970 but IIRC there's a couple of things it does better. (It's more extended iirc.)

But I haven't had a chance to try them at all. Bought them last summer and they're sitting on a shelf.

Those SB65WB's are special. Beautiful motor basket venting. 2.5mm xmax in a 2.5in driver. It's basically an aluminum dome tweeter with a 120Hz fs and deep xmax. There is no ringing either.

Low sensitivity in the 82dB range is downfall.

I got my 852SH's as a surprise gift from JLH. That was very kind of him :)

I hear those sealed back Misco's can be good too?
 
I think one of the main reasons there are no "kits" for these is because of patents.

That said, I would really like to see something more in line with a home version of the J2.

I see something with 12" long throw woofers and then maybe coaxes running the paralines at the throat. That said, it may be better to get some cheap 5 or 4" drivers and a few DNA 360s

The driver count per cab would be costly but the sensitivity would be so high a little tube amp could probably drive them to ear bleeding levels.

I think with a tall cab from fitting the 4 12" woofers in one cab it would be aimed to have 10 or 20 degree vertical and 90 degree horizontal dispersion.

And because of my obsession with vintage audio the the horn would be JBL blue with a good veneer as an homage to the JBL 43XX designs.
 
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