Mcm 55-1870

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I was surprised how much I like the K1. For my ears it's a very good deal.

The cabinets are tall (55") and skinny (5.5") to fit window mullions. So that one dimension wasn't that much longer than the others, the cabinet was divided into two chambers in a asymmetric pattern, two woofers in each. Both chambers are ported. The K1 is in one of them. They are mounted to the mullions in what looks like an inverted manner with the bulk of the cabinet up near the ceiling and the drivers near the bottom at ear level. So in this "inverted" manner they are a MMMTM. All drivers are closely stacked near the "bottom" as the chambers were asymmetric. (did I say that already?) ;)
 
Thanks for the response. You confirm what I've heard about the K1. I was considering A WWTWW design, but now I will ponder your setup. I can get the tweeter up higher like that. I'll just use a one large box construction however, for simplicity. A similar cross will be used. I think it will be a good bang for the buck HT system.
 
I would call it more of a 4 1/2" midbass driver. It's a little bit smaller than the 5" Dayton Aluminum. Sounds about the same. Works great in my 2 1/2 way TMM...
MCMSeasLabyrinthBox.jpg
 
They really look good. Nice work. I ordered 10 K1s from Madisound and some Peerless 5 inch buyouts. I'll get the
55-1870s that I need before they go off sale. I have a few ideas I'm kicking around. Are they in sealed enclosures? How much power can they take? What size room are they in? Thanks for responding.

George
 

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This is from my earlier post

Cal Weldon said:
The cabinets are tall (55") and skinny (5.5") to fit window mullions. So that one dimension wasn't that much longer than the others, the cabinet was divided into two chambers in a asymmetric pattern, two woofers in each. Both chambers are ported. The K1 is in one of them. They are mounted to the mullions in what looks like an inverted manner with the bulk of the cabinet up near the ceiling and the drivers near the bottom at ear level. So in this "inverted" manner they are a MMMTM. All drivers are closely stacked near the "bottom" as the chambers were asymmetric. (did I say that already?) ;)

Power is not a problem. I simply can't listen to them as loud as they can go. I would guess it's about 25 watts. (I am very conservative, the actual is probably 100 watts) I have listened to greater than 100 dB (estimate) listening to Supertramp and they were just fine. My neice said she heard things in the song she had not heard before.

The room is 250 sq ft.

Thanks for "straightening" me out with the pic.
 
That's a big room. I'll be in a 180 sq. ft. room. I should be fine. The reason I asked if they were sealed ( I forgot that you stated they were ported), is the I've read that .35 c.f. each, is the optimum enclosure size. Yours appear to be less than 1 c.f. total. Also, here's a better photo, less compressed.
 

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sreten said:


Hi,

Anything Zaph likes I go along with, no sensible reason not to.

http://www.zaphaudio.com/5.5test/

;)/sreten.


How about personal taste? There is no speaker that exists that is even close to perfect, there is always a set of compromises, so, for any discriminating speaker connoisseur :p, personal preference and tastes have a role.

You seemed to be knowledgeable about the subject and one of the most involved persons on this forum and it seemed like a good idea to get some other subjective opinions about the driver. So far, the comments I'd read from people who had put together speakers using that TB driver have liked it well, but not given that much in the way of detailed descriptions about the sound quality.

I generally dislike metal cone speakers and metal dome tweeters, and, from experience, I know that good measurements don't always correlate to good sound. I haven't had the chance to hear any of Zaph's speakers to know how well the quality of the sound correlates with his measurements.

I've only heard a couple speaker designs which utilized any metal cone/dome drivers that I could listen to for more than a short while before getting "listening fatigue".

I had a cheap pair of two way paper cone / paper tweeter bookshelf speakers that were pleasurable to listen to for hours on end paired with the old Dyna tube amp I was given when I was a kid. I bet it didn't "measure" very well compared to a lot of speakers available today, but most of those speakers just aren't soothing to hear, they make you feel tired and just aren't enjoyable to listen to for long...

I don't want (and don't have) a lot of money to spend on speakers for the foreseeable future, and I know that $15 drivers can sometimes be made into speakers that sound better than $1,000 speakers you'll find at an audio/electronics store.

Those MCM drivers are cheap enough that the idea of trying some more metal cone driver designs is appealing...
 
critofur said:



How about personal taste?
...........

I generally dislike metal cone speakers and metal dome tweeters
...........
I've only heard a couple speaker designs which utilized any metal cone/dome drivers that I could listen to for more than a short while before getting "listening fatigue"
...........
I don't want (and don't have) a lot of money to spend on speakers for the foreseeable future, and I know that $15 drivers can sometimes be made into speakers that sound better than $1,000
..........
Those MCM drivers are cheap enough that the idea of trying
some more metal cone driver designs is appealing.
..........


Hi,

how you've talked yourself into that final conclusion is beyond me .....

I can find no independent test information, you intend to measure them ?

:)/sreten.
 
sreten said:



Hi,

how you've talked yourself into that final conclusion is beyond me .....

I can find no independent test information, you intend to measure them ?

:)/sreten.

In the end, only one measurement matters: human ears.

What final conclusion? It's the opinion of over 100 people. I'm not talking about the MCM drivers when I mentioned the $15 driver being made to speakers that beat $1,000 speakers, I'm talking about a paper cone driver that's been mostly overlooked because it's very ordinary, plain, and cheap, nothing exciting about it. But some people, even long time veterans in the professional recording industry have been stunned by the speaker that it was used in as the main driver.

I never said that I thought it was all that good in my own personal opinion, decent, I guess.

Zaph likes that MCM driver, it's cheap, and "intuitively" I "feel" like it might make a decent speaker, though I have no past experience of making a metal driver sound good myself. There is one speaker which uses metal cones which I like a lot: the Madrigal Revel Salon Ultima - sounded very good for some of the CDs I listened to on it including most of Rumors by Fleetwod Mac.

Based on my experience with the Ultimas, I was thinking metal cones CAN sound good, but most of the time they don't.

When you say "do you intend to measure them"? which speakers are you refering to?

I've been listening to the Tang Bands on a baffle and one with an enclosure, I don't have much hope, at the moment, of getting them to sound great with just a 1st order crossover :(

I'd like to build some fine speakers with no crossover other than a cap on the tweeter, but that is an ellusive goal for me so far.

edit: I want to make a speaker that could fool you into thinking there was a cello actually being played there in the room in front of you, so you couldn't actually guess which you were hearing in an A/B test. 95% of speakers seem to be so lacking in terms of the FEEL of the music, when someone plays a cello near you in a room you can feel it on your skin, in your toes, in your hair, it's like you can even feel the midrange, not just the low tones. Is it mostly that the dynamic range of most speakers is pathetic in comparison? I want to feel the music without making my ears hurt, my ears don't hurt after listening to live classical music, but almost all the speakers today seem to make my ears hurt, so much in fact, that I haven't enjoyed listening to speakers for music more than a total of a few dozen hours over the past decade, whereas I used to average more than an hour a day of music listening for he first 25 years of my life.
 
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