Best DIY Speaker for Rock

[Jimmy154]

Also interesting, because in my experience the aforementioned bass "effect", can be totally erradicated by the use of a good stiff/krell type power amp PSU. Which *would* mean the effect is not a function of the speaker at all.

The effect is a function of the human ear, I think Sreten might have said this. I think it's harder to hear bass and treble at lower SPL's.

How can you listen to dance or Chemical Brothers with no big woofers/subs? U gotz to have da bump, no?

 

[Benny the 2.]

A little hint:

Surf to http://www.soundlabsgroup.com.au/visatonweb/, category Home- Hifi- Kits, 3- Way Speakers and have a look on the "Concorde MKII" or the "Experience V20".

The "Eperience" can be understood as a "Light"- version of the "Concorde". But the sound quality is nearby the same.

I had the chance to hear both of them on last years "board BBQ" at their HQ...
Afterwards, we (the board members) invented a "MK II"- version of the "Experience". Changes were made in bass- and tweet- section...

They really sound very nice, powerful, and first of all, they are cheap...

Note: I can send an email with the new XO to you, if you want it...

Greetings, B.

 

[johninCR]

Rock is meant to play loud, so you want something efficient with reasonable power handling. Something like Chemical Bros needs plenty of bass. Adire's Hurricane would fit the bill nicely and if a 6 cu ft cab is too big, you could always put the maelstrom in a sealed alignment and go much much smaller and give up some low end extension.

 

[Variac]

And the Hurricane looks "just right"

 

[BAM]

I wonder how well the Hurricane would work if you had a side firing Maelstrom. VMPS speakers have always been praised for being good for rock music, and they are available as a kit.

 

[johninCR]

I wonder how well the Hurricane would work if you had a side firing Maelstrom. VMPS speakers have always been praised for being good for rock music, and they are available as a kit.

It's crossed over high enough that you would definitely want it front firing.

 

[paulspencer]

There's an interesting article on choice of driver materials for different types of music:

Here

The gist is that polycones and similar are more forgiving with poor quality recordings, where cones with more resolution will be less forgiving. I suspect that this may also be a consideration with tweeters.

It seems to me if you really want to appreciate rock music, then you want it fairly loud yet clean. I'd look at an MTM design using polycones or paper cones or similar with some larger woofers or subwoofer drivers built in. If you go with woofers then say a pair of 10" woofers biamped and crossed over at say 200 Hz. Or you might go with a single 12" sub side firing crossed at say 100 Hz, this would give you a slimmer cabinet. This would be suited to a medium sized room.

In a larger room you may want to scale things up ...

 

[Jimmy154]

The gist is that polycones and similar are more forgiving with poor quality recordings, where cones with more resolution will be less forgiving. I suspect that this may also be a consideration with tweeters.

I agree. If you listen to mp3z or cd's burned from mp3z it is the most obvious. Ever since I been using Eton woofers (don't care much for tweeters, maybe I haven't heard any good ones, I don't know) a lot of my mp3z sound aweful, esspecially the 128 kbps recordings. Which are usually very poor on any speakers.

 

[Timn8ter]

After listening to the old System 7s again it makes me wonder if the combination of compression horns and large paper woofers is the ticket for rock music. Sounds pretty good when the volume goes up.

 

[Ap]

Couple of points, the bass effect is related to how we hear, at bass frequencies our hearing is linear at midrange it is logartihimic, check the web for the Flecher Munson curves.
Most amplifiers dont start to really 'drive' until a certain gain level is reached (most amps you can trun up & the sound just 'opens up' at a certain point ). Krells, being class A sound 'open' from low volume as the amplfier is always driving at full gain.

As far as rock speakers go, you need to move air.
You dont need extension down to 30hz I think 50hz is fine.
I would look at using some of the smaller PA drivers, Ive always thought a copy of the JBL K2 would be a great thing (I'm not a horn fan, so maybe use a hgih output dome)
my 2 cents, MTM 2way with a pair of PAudio SN-10MB & a morel MDT 33 - would rock the house!

 

[tamosius]

I didn't see any one suggesting to build Eton 11.2 kit... is it any good? I'm looking for speakers to build, and I listen rock too (mostly), while sometimes, depending on my mood, I might want to liste soft blues or even stoft jazz (I can tolerate Diana Krall ) My wife is into rock as well, into punks as well.. but sometimes she listens country so.. at first I was thinking about Thor TL, after reading so many good reviews... then came to some thread, that was saying that it's most for jazz, and voice type of music, than I started thinking about Eton 11.2. My budget is about 1,2$ before cabinets.

I don't want to invent things myslef, as I don't have knowledge nor experience with crossovers and any calculations suppose to be done to build speakers... but, I do want to build main speakers myself. And I want to do this just 1 time, because if it's going to be successful project, I will want to build center channel, surround, and subwoofer....

So, maybe as you understood already, main speakers would be used in home theatre as well, and usage would be 40% for theather, 60% for music.

My room right now I live is about medium size.

So, do you think an idea of building Thor TL that would be used in Theatre sounds a bit crazy? What about Eton11.2 that is available from Madisound.com?

I kind of got idea that not too many people built Eton 11.2 speakers, and that's what scares me from building them...

Thow your ideas, and I appreciate in advance...

P.S. sorry for my English, it's my 3rd language....

 

[paulspencer]

Your english is very good considering it's # 3

I'd say the Thors would excel at well recorded music, like classical and jazz. I'd expect them to be a little unforgiving with pop and rock music. This is a characteristic of high resolution metal cone drivers in particular, and I would cosider paper or poly cones to be more forgiving for rock and pop music.

The TL is a good way to go for jazz, especially acoustic double bass, which can be delicious with a good TL.

 

[Brett]

I'm amused by the comments here that 6.5" based speakers can be good rock and rollers. Perhaps, if you live in a phone booth.

Agisthos, if you haven't already heard some of these, then you should before you decide on anything else. Doesn't mean that you'll like them, or that you should buy them or clone some, but it will give you a reference.
- JBL 43xx or 44xx etc
- Tannoy 15's in a good box, ie not a factory one except maybe 15DMTII or Westminsters
- Classic Altecs or Urei's
- Good horns
- Linn Isobariks

All of these speakers do a lot wrong in classic 'Audiophile' terms, but they preserve the essence of R&R whereas almost every single audiophile approved speaker I've ever heard sounds like casrati.


Tomorrow is the anniversary of the passing of the definite rock and roller, Keith Moon. I'm going to drive my car into a pool to celebrate.

 

[phase_accurate]

- JBL 43xx or 44xx etc

I have a box with the same tweeter as used in a 4430 but having only a 12" woofer (a JBL 2206) in a EQed reflex tuning.
This speaker is FUN to listen to. It is less accurate than my Manger based one ,but it is not harsh at all (on any kind of music)and can be driven at insanely loud levels in my living room without sounding stressed.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the passing of the definite rock and roller, Keith Moon. I'm going to drive my car into a pool to celebrate.

Quite an extreme way of celebrating !
This September seems to be a month of "musical anniversaries":
18th of September is the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix' death.
Tomorrow is also the 40th birthday of Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu (maybe not something that rock folks would normally celebrate).


Regards

Charles

 

[Brett]

I have a box with the same tweeter as used in a 4430 but having only a 12" woofer (a JBL 2206) in a EQed reflex tuning.
This speaker is FUN to listen to. It is less accurate than my Manger based one ,but it is not harsh at all (on any kind of music)and can be driven at insanely loud levels in my living room without sounding stressed.

You hit on the magic word:FUN. There is no accuracy in R&R music as it's recorded in very unnatural ways and processed to hell to get it to sound like it does. Natural and accurate have no place in rock.

Quite an extreme way of celebrating !
This September seems to be a month of "musical anniversaries":
18th of September is the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix' death.
Tomorrow is also the 40th birthday of Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu (maybe not something that rock folks would normally celebrate).

Who fans will get the reference.

 

[paulspencer]

You hit on the magic word:FUN. There is no accuracy in R&R music as it's recorded in very unnatural ways and processed to hell to get it to sound like it does. Natural and accurate have no place in rock.

A counter argument could be that what is desirable on the production end might not be desirable on the reproduction end. Is it desirable to have speakers similar to those used in a rock concert, which further colour the original ... or is it better to add as little as possible to the original?

I tend to think the latter in general ... however I think in this case there are overriding concerns like effortless dynamics, sheer output, absence of fatigue and drivers which are a bit forgiving of imperfect recordings.

I think hifi speakers can do a decent job of rock with 6.5" drivers if used for midrange with some biamped woofers and/or subs and plenty of power in a medium sized room. It's not often I have the luxury of pushing mine close to their limits.

 

[pjpoes]

I have always been a fan of well done line arrays for rock and roll. They have a good ability to give a propper sense of scale, and place the stage correctly as well. Congested rock and roll sounds horid.

I will have to disagree partly on this claim that rock has no accuracy and that innaccurate classic large speakers work best. I have a few pairs of classic large speakers ranging from the 50's to the 70's, of which none really blow me away. They all produce loose sounding bass, muddied overly warm midrange, and poorly extended highs. Enough so that they effect the quality of even these "horrid" quality rock recordings. I really think that a 6.5", even a 5 1/4" driver can rock just fine, and usualyl with greater delicacy and defenition that these classic speakers. This of course is not always true, but design really is an important factor. I have a set of towers in my room using those Adire 7" midbass drivers, the ones with the XBL2 motor structure. 4 per tower with a Dayton planar tweeter, and they rock just fine. I think the tweeter was a poor choice for rock, but they aren't bad. This was not a kit, but kits based on these midbass drivers exist.

Check out Rawacoustics.com. I haven't tried there stuff yet, but I like the designs, and they use some speakers I am a fan of. Might work well for you.

 

[Scottmoose]

I'm amused by the comments here that 6.5" based speakers can be good rock and rollers. Perhaps, if you live in a phone booth.

Nonsense. Not all of us live in a barn. In fact, if you live in the UK, or Europe in general, where rooms tend to be smaller than in North America, a large driver is not always necessarily such a good thing -uncontrollable bass is the usual result, unless you take a great deal of care. Agreed about your choices being good rockers though.

Might I suggest a version of Lynn Olson's high-sensitivity Ariel Transmission-Line? See www.nutshellhifi.com for more. Choose an earlier version if you find the latest type too complex to build (simple it is not) -the early ones were quite easy to construct -all the plans for all versions are available on the above-mentioned site. The Ariel won't do very low bass, but, progressive rock excepted (and then only when Rick Wakeman is in full-flow on a church organ), rock doesn't really go much below 40Hz anyway. What you want is a speaker with the speed of a Linn Kan, but capable of decent SPLs down to about 40Hz (zilch under 120hz for the Linn), which is exactly what the Ariel provides. You could always add a pair of sealed or open-baffle subs at a later date (Siegfried Linkwitz' designs are excellent). The Ariel is also quite cheap to build, which is always a nice bonus, and it can go very loud on little power without distorting, or loosing out on any of the tonal colour it has in spadefulls.
Best
Scott

 

[Brett]

I will have to disagree partly on this claim that rock has no accuracy and that innaccurate classic large speakers work best. I have a few pairs of classic large speakers ranging from the 50's to the 70's, of which none really blow me away. They all produce loose sounding bass, muddied overly warm midrange, and poorly extended highs. Enough so that they effect the quality of even these "horrid" quality rock recordings.

Show me where I said the speakers I listed were "best". I merely included them for a reference point to try to get away from the classic anal retentive LS3/5a accuracy uber alles type mentality that has pervaded audiophilia for decades and in doing so reduces the scale and dynamics of the performance to an afterthought, so long as you can hear the cellist farting in the first movent.
For example, I mentioned the Tannoy 15's: superb drivers, but (with a few exceptions) poor in the factory enclosures. In an aftermarket cab they are amazing and coherent and their sins are of omission and relatively minor. If you'd heard my fullrange horn system, you would likely never go back to direct radiators. they were as accurate as anything I'd ever heard, plus they had dynamics that nothing, ever has come close to.

I really think that a 6.5", even a 5 1/4" driver can rock just fine, and usualyl with greater delicacy and defenition that these classic speakers. This of course is not always true, but design really is an important factor. I have a set of towers in my room using those Adire 7" midbass drivers, the ones with the XBL2 motor structure. 4 per tower with a Dayton planar tweeter, and they rock just fine.

Hmmm. Using 4 per side, you will have efficiency and volume displacement similar to a good larger driver, with technology that was invented for use in high output drivers used in PA. This is nowhere near the same as one polycone 6.5" of average design in a 20-30 litre box as constitutes most of the speakers sold. Hence we are closer in principle than may seem obvious at first glance. High efficiency, low distortion, large dynamic range, lots of volume displacement (whether 15" + 6" + tweet or array etc). Subs generally aren't required for most R&R as it's the 40/60 - 120Hz range that's important and all the subs I've ever heard lack in this range compared to a good Pro driver.

Something like the Olsher design published on ETM a while back would be interesting to try for rock too if you have suitable amplification.

 

[paulspencer]

The Ariel is not by any means high sensitivity! It is based on the Vifa P13 midbass which has a sensitivity ~88 db 1w1m. I'm not quite sure what makes you suggest is as a rock speaker!