Open source speaker project?

[planet10]

...something more class A and tubes friendly.

As important as efficiency is a flattish impedance curve.

dave

 

[dabenza]

I would say 90db or above sensitivity. 87 is not a sensitive speaker. Meine Meinung.

 

[Andersonix]

Aatto: Everything you want is in one of the Alóns, just pick your sealed bass woofer and cabinet width.
I remember the larger Alóns (model 1?) had one sealed 12 inch, and it was around 92dB sensitivity iirc. and a friendly 8 ohm load. I heard their open clean sound often in my friend's dedicated room with Mark Levinson upstream.

We could use the Zaph ZA5.2 drivers and xo as the foundation for the top 2-way portion (although these will be more like 87dB/W), but in an Alón or Nola type OB sitting on top of a sealed box woofer below, sized to the builder's tastes, so 1 or 2 eights or even a twelve.

Zaph|Audio - ZA5 Speaker Designs with ZA14W08 woofer and Vifa DQ25SC16-04 tweeter
Zaph|Audio ZA5.2 TM 2-Way, Pair
Besides, how is the ZA5 not the ultimate indecisive beginner's project? Cheap, unpretentious, and scalable, sealed or vented...
What needs improving on here, or what would you want different, Aatto?
We'll even rip off the name and call it 'ZAatto-5.'

 

[andy19191]

That is such neat idea, and ideas like this will make this project(s) unique and it is IMHO what we need to make a unique design ( not necessary this one since it may not suits a lot of people ), the problem is something like that is way beyond my limited knowledge so it is good to see unique ideas here as long as we have people willing to lead and prototyping it. the good part is we are not in a hurry to jump into anything.

This looks like asking for more chat about speakers? That is fine. It is your thread to guide.

If this is to be a thread chatting about group projects in general can I suggest a few people that have asked for and posted partial specs for a 3 way speaker start separate threads for a specific type of speaker with a decent amount of the spec in the OP so that people can fairly swiftly develop the details. Some will no doubt fade away but hopefully a few will attract enthusiasm and grow.

If we are to remain a group and maintain goodwill can I suggest initiating a discussion about the speakers in this thread and only starting a separate thread when several people have expressed enthusiasm. Some speakers I can recall being mentioned:

1) 1" tweeter, 4-5" midrange, 2 x 8" tower, waveguide on tweeter probably, $1k budget, suitable for a first or second build.
2) 1" tweeter, 5-6.5" midrange, 12" speaker monitor, waveguide on tweeter.
3) Basszilla-inspired speaker using a wideband driver.
4) 2 way plus bass extender.
5) Speaker with a narrow bandwidth achieved using multiple drivers and DSP.

and apologies for those I have missed. Please add suggestions to the list.

What is worth working on?

 

[Aatto]

Aatto: Everything you want is in one of the Alóns, just pick your sealed bass woofer and cabinet width.
I remember the larger Alóns (model 1?) had one sealed 12 inch, and it was around 92dB sensitivity iirc. and a friendly 8 ohm load. I heard their open clean sound often in my friend's dedicated room with Mark Levinson upstream.

We could use the Zaph ZA5.2 drivers and xo as the foundation for the top 2-way portion (although these will be more like 87dB/W), but in an Alón or Nola type OB sitting on top of a sealed box woofer below, sized to the builder's tastes, so 1 or 2 eights or even a twelve.

Zaph|Audio - ZA5 Speaker Designs with ZA14W08 woofer and Vifa DQ25SC16-04 tweeter
Zaph|Audio ZA5.2 TM 2-Way, Pair
Besides, how is the ZA5 not the ultimate indecisive beginner's project? Cheap, unpretentious, and scalable, sealed or vented...
What needs improving on here, or what would you want different, Aatto?
We'll even rip off the name and call it 'ZAatto-5.'

I appreciate the link it is certainly a very interesting design to look into, the goal here was not what I want but rather to come up with idea to that more people in this community are interested to we have potential builders and with the help of experienced guys we turn it to something great more on this in my next reply.

 

[LineSource]

Parts Express has an excellent buyout waveguide.
===========
The BMF1 speaker custom-built by Tweek Geeks has received high praise in public shows. The use of two-sealed, near-floor, side-side, counter-force, DSP-controlled woofers provides a BIG-BANG in a medium size cabinet. The Tweek Geeks website has several construction pictures,

HIGH-watts to two 24Hz equalized 12" woofers allows a modest total 5cuft cabinet that fits many homes.

$13 B-52 PHRN-1014 1" Horn 10" x 14" Bolt-On waveguide
Model: PHRN-1014|Part # 299-2303
$63 Peerless 1.75" DFM-2544R00-08 compression driver
$188 Eminence KappaLite 3012HO Midrange:
TWO $146 Dayton RSS315HF-4 12" woofer (two in series = 6.2 ohms)
==========
$560 for drivers

 

[Aatto]

This looks like asking for more chat about speakers? That is fine. It is your thread to guide.

If this is to be a thread chatting about group projects in general can I suggest a few people that have asked for and posted partial specs for a 3 way speaker start separate threads for a specific type of speaker with a decent amount of the spec in the OP so that people can fairly swiftly develop the details. Some will no doubt fade away but hopefully a few will attract enthusiasm and grow.

If we are to remain a group and maintain goodwill can I suggest initiating a discussion about the speakers in this thread and only starting a separate thread when several people have expressed enthusiasm. Some speakers I can recall being mentioned:

1) 1" tweeter, 4-5" midrange, 2 x 8" tower, waveguide on tweeter probably, $1k budget, suitable for a first or second build.
2) 1" tweeter, 5-6.5" midrange, 12" speaker monitor, waveguide on tweeter.
3) Basszilla-inspired speaker using a wideband driver.
4) 2 way plus bass extender.
5) Speaker with a narrow bandwidth achieved using multiple drivers and DSP.

and apologies for those I have missed. Please add suggestions to the list.

What is worth working on?

It is nice that people are actually care to help and this is what makes this community great
having separate threads is actually a good idea and it helps to come up with different designs and each individual can follow their interest rather than conflict with another and I would definitely be happy to see that and will participate as I can if any

so let me go a few steps back (I know I don't like it either but feels like it needs to be said) my goal to start this thread was to have a very well documented project(s) for people to build hopefully something special to invite people to try and build it, anything could go, from original to clones, as we progressed because of many ideas in different directions and all of them were good we did not manag to achieve a goal yet, so if this thread sparks any ideas I would happy to see it come to life and I would be happier to see it well documented, as the matter of fact we can have an index later on of finished proven projects and that would help a lot of people to easily find a design they are interested in, I do not own anything here

as for this thread it is a very busy time for me work wise and I m also working on some other different projects at the same time (I just finished an accuphase clone and working on USSA-5 right now and next in line is AKSA Lender preamp !) but I squeeze anytime I have and have some Ideas that I will let you know, hopefully very soon.

In the mean time, the ns-5000 idea that Lojzek brought up is very neat, I like to see a clone, although a 15K-20K piece of art is very hard to beat and I have no idea to start with since but maybe some people have and are interested enough to start working on it

 

[KaffiMann]

The real diamond in the NS-5000, is the incredible attention to detail. All the membranes are made of a new material called Zylon.

The mid and tweet have sealed multi resonant pipe chambers: YouTube
The box has no fill, but uses resonant dense cardboard pipes with fill inside them instead: YouTube

It is a speaker that looks relatively ordinary, but is quite the revolution when you take a closer look.

 

[Lojzek]

In the mean time, the ns-5000 idea that Lojzek brought up is very neat, I like to see a clone, although a 15K-20K piece of art is very hard to beat and I have no idea to start with since but maybe some people have and are interested enough to start working on it

Hi, I guess we don't need to be that optimistic that a copy/clone loudspeaker yet to be designed will beat the original one because we neither have the exact parts nor the machinery to perform all the exact details but we have a fair shot to get close enough for presumably a lot less funds. That is already a worthy goal.


Next, I would like to suggest a course of action in order to increase the chance of pulling your idea off. We should make a selection of already built commercial loudspeakers that reflect the desirable technical solutions mentioned thus far and as suggested by Andy in post #304 or probably extend this list a bit more. We can discuss particular products in this thread and once we found it complete, start a new thread and list these in some kind of an order and make a poll so people can vote for their personal favorite. The technical specs should not be discussed in particular for the existing products have already these figured out. Additionally, we may be able to perform mods to the impedance, making it more tube amp friendly, as already agreed upon to be desireable.

 

[PKAudio]

3-way suggestions

Just to throw in some ideas.... If I were to built high end 3way, and not "just another 3way", I would try to solve typical issues:
- diffractions, this can be eliminated with large roundovers. CNC will be needed, and I do not see it as showstopper
- midrange/tweeter directivity mismatch => use of WG for tweeter
- sensitivity ~90dB/1m/2.83V => dual woofers
- overall cabinet dimensions should reasonable, to be able to construct and handle it, ~80l is optimum
- reasonable total cost, no too expensive drivers like RAAL, Bliesma, AT

How to do it:
- dual woofers: 2x Vifa NE225W-08, sensitivity 90-91dB/2.83V/1m, cabinet volume ~70l
- 6-7" midrange, Satori, Vifa NE, Revelators,....
- WG148R or ......

Cabinet could be similar to Thiels. There is also in the link, I cannot attach the image from this PC.
en-BBB :: Pkaudio

 

[Luke]

If you follow the thread, Aatto has set a budget of $1500 max, RAAL, may be pushing it. I don't think many members have access to CNC machine.

 

[KaffiMann]

I think the idea is to get someone offer a package of cnc'd cabinet parts, and possibly drivers + xo components, provided there is enough interest.

 

[Aatto]

... reasonable total cost, no too expensive drivers like RAAL, Bliesma, AT

If you follow the thread, Aatto has set a budget of $1500 max, RAAL, may be pushing it. I don't think many members have access to CNC machine.

I think Pida meant Not too expensive drivers like RAAL .... but I might be wrong

 

[Aatto]

Hi, I guess we don't need to be that optimistic that a copy/clone loudspeaker yet to be designed will beat the original one because we neither have the exact parts nor the machinery to perform all the exact details but we have a fair shot to get close enough for presumably a lot less funds. That is already a worthy goal.


Next, I would like to suggest a course of action in order to increase the chance of pulling your idea off. We should make a selection of already built commercial loudspeakers that reflect the desirable technical solutions mentioned thus far and as suggested by Andy in post #304 or probably extend this list a bit more. We can discuss particular products in this thread and once we found it complete, start a new thread and list these in some kind of an order and make a poll so people can vote for their personal favorite. The technical specs should not be discussed in particular for the existing products have already these figured out. Additionally, we may be able to perform mods to the impedance, making it more tube amp friendly, as already agreed upon to be desireable.

That is good idea, I will try to go through a few last pages to find suggested builds, and will add it to Andy's list if it is not there, Lets start a list and everybody can add their title to the list and if it needs more info they can post it in a reply and we can add the description post# to each one (to keep the list clean). sounds good ?

for example :

1- 3 Way - 2x 8" woofers - 6-7" midrange - tweeter. ~90db. by Pida Post#310.

is this what you meant ?

 

[Lojzek]

Yes, it is. At one point in this thread, when we agree on the drive units brand name and model, we will be able to put the parts cost estimate and at a final stage (a new thread and new poll with each design proposal having its own post number) embelish it with some photographs.

 

[Lojzek]

What do you say to building these gems?

We could scale down the speakers to meet our criteria more closely, to decrease the expense and enclosure volume.

 

[tsmith1315]

If this is to be a thread chatting about group projects in general can I suggest a few people that have asked for and posted partial specs for a 3 way speaker start separate threads for a specific type of speaker with a decent amount of the spec in the OP so that people can fairly swiftly develop the details. Some will no doubt fade away but hopefully a few will attract enthusiasm and grow.

If we are to remain a group and maintain goodwill can I suggest initiating a discussion about the speakers in this thread and only starting a separate thread when several people have expressed enthusiasm.

That makes good sense to encourage development and to follow different proposals more easily. I would suggest any separate threads be named appropriately and a link added to the original post when they are created.

Perhaps in the interest of documentation it wouldn't hurt to add a link in the original post to the point in this thread where 3-way was decided as the design choice as well. These threads can be tough to read in hindsight.

 

[Aatto]

We could scale down the speakers to meet our criteria more closely, to decrease the expense and enclosure volume.

Can you please provide more specs on this so I can add it to the list, Thank you

That makes good sense to encourage development and to follow different proposals more easily. I would suggest any separate threads be named appropriately and a link added to the original post when they are created.

Perhaps in the interest of documentation it wouldn't hurt to add a link in the original post to the point in this thread where 3-way was decided as the design choice as well. These threads can be tough to read in hindsight.

Or having a separate sticky index for any finished projects here (not just from this thread) I know there are thousands of designs here but it is not easy to browse through the threads and worse browsing through hundreds of pages.

 

[mbrennwa]

I'd suggest a Wiki page here on diyAudio (yes, I am repeating myself). That's much cleaner. A Wiki page allows everyone to change/add information, which helps organising this as a group effort.

From what I've read in the thread so far and considering target "customers" (newbie builders who want to get into DIY with a high-quality speaker), ease of build (simple box that does scare away newbies), cost ($500 or a little higher per box), three way design (see poll), amp friendliness (ACA, smallish tube amps, etc.), and examples of existing speakers my vote goes for:

"Monkey coffin" / "monitor" format (similar to Yamaha NS 5000 etc.)
single 10" woofer*, cone midrange, 1" dome tweeter
flatish 8 Ohm impedance curve
efficiency > 92 dB/2.83V/1m

(* two smaller high-quality 8" woofers per box will be more expensive, leaving less money for the remaining drivers, x-over parts, and enclosure)

 

[Lojzek]

Can you please provide more specs on this so I can add it to the list, Thank you

Here goes, subject to alterations in our favour.