i need some openions....please give me feed back...speaker design...

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well as you guys probly know i build my first diy sub and now i am hard core into speaker building.....
i am going to be moving in a few years and i am going to have a studio grade room dedicated to home theater and music!

i am going to drive my speakers with 5 Crown Audio CE2000 power amps! these babies put out 400w RMS @ 8ohms X2!

i was selecting drivers for building my speakers and i was wondering if this setup would be ok for my main's?
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crossover: DAYTON 3-WAY PRO CROSSOVER 500/1,600 Hz
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tweeters: 2x 75w RMS - titanium mid/tweeter compression driver with what ever horn lense i want....
Frequency responce: 1,000hz-20,000hz
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mids: 2x 50w RMS - Pioneer FB12EU14-51F 5 1/4" poly cone midrange driver
Frequency responce: 500hz-6000hz
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woofers: 2x VIFA P17WJ-00 6 1/2" poly woofer....
Frequency responce: 37hz-5000hz
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all drivers are 8 ohm
will 400w rms be enought to power the speakers proporly?

please tell me what you think.....

thanks
 
400w will be more then enough for any speaker system, don't worry about that. 500Hz seems like a pretty low crossover point for your mids. I'd go with a mid that can go lower, and then choose a bigger woofer that can go lower. Unless cost is the limiting factor, but you could probably get very good results in a 2-way configuration if you're going to crossover at 1600Hz.

But when I think of it 1600Hz seems pretty low to crossover your tweeter, a higher crossover frequency would be better.
 
i dont know much about crossovers and i was wondering what you would sugest?

what should they crossover at?

where can i get pro sound crossovers for high power aplucations?

my main are going to be 3-way and thats that but i am open to crossover help as well as driver selection feed back.....

thanks
 
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I REALY NEED IT.......:mad:
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
Crossovers are the critical part of a multi-way speaker. It's performance is dependant on the driver, the box you put them in and the room you put the box in. An off-the-shelf XO as you suggested has only a slightly greater then ZERO chance of working well. What you should be doing is out scoring the net for proven designs that you can clone or use as a starting point.

dave

And i won't go into what i think of Crown amps...
 
Those horn tweeters you're talking about are low-fi and designed for extremely high spls. You would use tweeters like that in a nightclub, not in your studio room. Spend some money and get some good quality hifi tweeters. Efficiency is not an issue, you have 400 watts! If you want to be able to play them loud without risk of damage, cross them over at a higher frequency.
Now for your mids and lows. It seems silly to me to have a 5 inch and a 6 inch woofer in the same speaker system. Do a two-way with a 6.5" woofer and a 1" tweeter. You will have subs for 80 Hz and below, 6.5" (the vifa is a excellent choice) doing 80 to 2.5kHz, and a 1" tweeter doing 2.5kHz and above. A 6.5 inch with a -3 dB point of 80 Hz should satisfy your needs for high spl w/out distortion. A two-way crossover is much easier to design than a 3 way, which you will be doing with our help. Don't buy a ready made xover, it's so easy to make one. Think about which drivers you are going to choose, and we will go from there.
-andy
 
well i would like to know where i can get some good pre-maid high power handling crossovers......

and what is wrong with CROWN?
they have good reviews a good warentee and are THX certified....
what else could i want?

and a question.... shouldn't the power-rating watts RMS match the speakers watts rms raighting? what does rms mean?
and will the speakers preform well with 400W even though their watts RMS rating is more?

please comment....
thanks,
 
Disabled Account
Joined 2001
I too, can not recommend premade passive crossovers. They WILL NOT provide good slopes, as they are designed for ideal response only into a resistive, constant aplitude load in mind. This is not reall life, and the actual results wil be sub par. However, if you MUST get them, buy at www.partsexpress.com

Since you are so amp happy, you can get much much better results using a prebuilt active crossover. I won't even reference diy sites for them, as you seem to be set on purchiasing premade units. I would recommend something such as a behringer 3400, rane, ashly, etc as an affordable crossover with good quality. You should use drivers that have little to no resonance problems, and flat frequency response for at least one octave after fc(frequency cutoff), in order to get somewhat predictable results. Of course, even with this....ideally you should fine tune q, notch resonances, etc. in sensitive ranges(approx. 300 hz and up). So use drivers with smooth rolloff characteristics. The vifa you recommend is certainly qualified.

FYI, THX certification is merely window dressing. Has no real relevance, however it does mean you are paying extra for a useless badge.

You don't have to match the speaker's power rating, that is only in cases where you NEED to be able to extract the full SPL capablilities of a driver, and many times the rated power of a speaker is actually optimistic, as they will usually exceed excursion first.

-Chris
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
slicemaster101 said:
and what is wrong with CROWN?

Big amp built for pro use to produce large quantities of power as efficiently as possible with low measured distortion cheaply -- they have little care about how they actually sound.

Today at the regular HiFi circle coffee klatch we were just discussing how it seems that, in general, the quality of an amp is inversely proportional to how much power it outputs. There are some very nice big amps, i don't think the crown counts in this number.

You would be better to build a system that has synergy. I think of all the money spent on those amps & think much better could be had -- maybe not bigger, but better -- if you are looking for the magic you are on a path that will not lead you there.

dave
 
well i have read the manual for the crown ce2000 and it have prity good specs.....
the amp features all the standard stuff.....
it is actualy better then the amps in the reciver i was thinking of getting......

thanks,

note:
i know nothing about crossovers and thats why i was going to go with a prebuild unit.....
when you guy talk crossover talk i know not what you are saying.... could you try to discribe it in lamemen terns....
 
what ya think selected new drivers and crossover

I GOT LIST OF ALL COMPONENTS FROM PARTSEXPRESS CATOLOG.... CHECK THEM OUT....THEY SHOULD BE ON WEBSITE

CROSSOVER: EMINENCE PXB3-5K0 CROSSES OVER AT 500HZ AND 5000HZ HANDLES 400W POWER
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tweeter: PYLE PRO PDBT38 2" HEAVY DUTY TITANIUM SUPER TWEETER... 125W RMS FREQUENCY RESPONCE: 2,000-25,000HZ
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MIDRANGE: PEERLESS 850467, 6 1/2" MIDBASS WITH PHASE PLUG
150W RMS FREQUENCY RESPONCE: 46.8-6,500HZ
____________________________________________________
WOOFER: PEERLESS 850136, 8" WOOFER
150W RMS FREQUENCY RESPONCE: 29-4,000HZ
____________________________________________________

ALL DRIVER ARE 8 OHMS

THE SPEAKERS WILL CONSIST OF 2 TWEETERS, 2 MIDRANGES, AND 2 WOOFERS.

WILL I BE ABLE TO DRIVE THESE SPEAKERS WELL AND LOUD WITH 400W TO EACH SPEAKER?

THANKS,
SLICE

NOTE: WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK OF THESE DRIVERS?
ARE PEERLESS AND PYLE PRO GOOD?

I HAVE HEARD GOOD THINGS ABOUT BOTH...
AND WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THESE CROSSOVERS?
 
Slice,
Do not pay any attention to rms power ratings. Or any power ratings, for that matter.
I will repeat:
Do not pay any attention to rms power ratings. Or any power ratings, for that matter.
I used to do the VERY same thing when I was first getting into speakers. The only time you should consider power ratings is in a subwoofer. Power ratings in Midbasses and tweeters are meaningless. At full, ear melting power, typical tweeters might be recieving 2 watts of power. And you want a tweeter with a voice coil that can handle 120! That is the kind of tweeter that sounds like CRAP, but can play really really loud. Get a home-fi tweeter, like a vifa D25AG-35. These will play louder than you want them to, and they sound awesome!
Your still fixed on a three way. These are much more complicated than a two way, and you simply do NOT need three speakers. 6.5" midbass, 1" tweeter. Your sub covers the low lows. The peerless 6.5 looks good.
Give us more specifications as to what you want your system to do. I understand it as this: big subs, fronts, rears, and a center. All of this is in a studio type room.
Obviously you want it to play loud, much louder than you need it too(head room). A system that can handle anything you'll give it times 3. Now tell us more about what you want it to do, and not what you want to put in it.
-andy
 
well i would like to have three way speakers because that is what i have currently and i like them much better then any 2-way i have heard.....
the room is going to be big with studio grade dampining on the walls and celing. i would like all my speakers to be large and basickly the same speakers inside then....just different enclosure layout.
the room space will not be a problem because it will be 18ft wide and 20-25ft. long.....
i have to go now but i will tell you more later this evning.....i have to go to a party...

what you think about the crossover?

thanks for clueing me in on power rating......
i can not express how much you have helped by that little bit of advice....

thanks,

Slice:p
 
i am actualy going to have 12 huge speakers in this room....
i have actualy build subs befor but not mains, centers, ext.
the system is a thx 7.1 system and will consist of:
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right front---400w
left front---400w
center 1---400w
center 2---400w
surrond right 1---200w
surrond right 2---200w
surrond left 1---200w
surrond left 2---200w
rear right---400w
rear left---400w
sub 1---400w
sub 2---400w
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all of the speakers have their own chanle except for the surrounds....
i am outputing the surround right channle to two speakers and the same with the left surround channels....
____________________________________________________
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
With a sub already in the system, i'm with bostarob in recommending that you avoid a 3-way -- too much complexity, too much crossover. A 2 1/2 way with 4 of the 170mm Vifas (or Seas or Peerless) would be a good compromise -- build a design in the concept of the Krix Euphonix -- they call it a 3-way but it is really 2.5 way. I am sure there are lots of examples of well-thought out MTMs with this variety of 6s, and then one would just need to add an appropriate inductor for rolling off the two bottom woofers at the bafflestep.

There are some impedance issues -- probably best to use 4 ohm drivers and wire for an 8 ohm MTM section and a 4 ohm minimum impedance when the 2nd set of woofers kick in.

dave
 
as i have said i am not a fan to t-way systems

i have heard many 2-way systems and i have heard many 3-way systems.
i have never relly been inprossed with 2-way designs....
that is why i would like to stick to a 3-way design....
i am sure you have designed some good 2-way designs but my personal prefrence for speaker design is 3-way......

thanks,

i took your advice and chose another tweeter.....
i decided to go with the Daton 1" sheilded dome tweeted....
it is an 8 ohm driver with a frequency responce of 3,000hz-20,000hz.....
what do you think?
i would have gone with the vifa you suggested but it is a 6ohm driver.....do they have a 8ohm version?

what is your opion on dayton loudspeaker co.?

thanks,
Slice
 
Slice:

What exactly do you wish to accomplish with this listening room?

A. Really Great Sound Quality
B. Really Big Speakers
C. Ear-Bleeding Volume

What you're planning on doing with all these power amplifiers, I can see doing with three: One amp drives the left and right front, one drives the left and right back, and one drives the center channel and the bass-bin. For the bass-bin, you should build a box with 4 Adire Shivas.
 
Why are you going to have 2 speakers in the center and surround positions? I think 7.1 has dipole surround speakers, but I'm not sure (somebody fill me in here).

Ok, the low frequencies will be covered by your 2 extremely large (drooling) subwoofers. These will play 80 Hz and below.

Now we need something to play from 80 Hz and up for the center, front and rear channels.
Let's start simple.
-The cheapest and simplest way to do this is to use a 4" full range driver for each channel. It would work. If we put it in the right kind of box, it wouldn't even need a crossover. Sounds like something Bose would do.(and then slap a fancy name on it and charge an arm and a leg.)
-this method would be lacking in high frequencies, and headroom. At high volume, the 4" might not be enough.


To solve these problems, we can
-slap a tweeter in for the highs
-increase woofer cone area
-2 4" drivers
-a bigger midbass (5 or 6 inches)
-maybe even 2 5 or 6 inchers
What I would do:
-a well damped (Qts of .3 to .4) 6.5 or 7inch midbass (a vifa, focal, or audax) in a sealed box accompanied by a tweeter (I like vifa's tweeters a lot). This would require a crossover, a high pass for the tweeter and a low pass for the woofer.
I like these woofers: 296-073,296-076,296-024,297-305,297-324,297-520,297-683
Box about 1/2 of a cubic foot.
I like these tweeters: 264-512 (I've got a couple of these and I love em!), 264-555 (simply awesome), most vifa tweeters, the tweeter you choose is not so critical, just go for low Fs and SPL about the same as the woofer( generally a little higher). A low tweeter Fs will let us cross it over at around 2000 Hz. What do you Think?
-andy
 
Oops I hadn't read the second page of posts until now...
Dave is right, if you have 2 way satelites, you really do have a 3 way system(ok 2.5, but I'm calling it 3). Subs are 1, midbass is 2, tweeter is 3. 3 way! Sort of... The full frequency spectrum is covered with good dispersion, and high quality sound. NOTHING IS MISSING! NO NEED FOR MORE DIRVERS Also, the more crossovers you have, the crappier your sound is likely to be. That is why I am trying to point you in the direction of simplicity. OK, I'm sorry i tend to be a little stubborn (OK very stubborn)(especially if i think im right, haha) If you really like 3 way satelite speakers, by all means go for it. Look at the Hi-Vi mid+tweet in one case thing.(partsxpress has it)
I was concerned at first with the tweeter being 6 ohm too, but it matters not. It doesn't need to have an 8 ohm version because it doesn't matter. It could even be 4 ohm. You will put attenuation resistors on it anyway. Partsexpress's house brand, Dayton, has good looking products. Especially their titanic subs and binding posts. I do not have a first hand opinion on anything other than the binding posts. (good and cheap!)
-andy
 
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