The Unvailing of the ???? at the CES

roddyama · 10th January 2003, 02:44 AM

Well, It is a speaker system called the "Rushmore". It has these features:
4-way, Quad-ampped
50" tall
18" wide
28" deep
250lbs
4 - channel Mother-of-all-Plate-amps running up the entire rear of the speaker
The 15" woofer is powered by a 40Watt AX type channel
The 11"mid-bass, the ~6" mid-range, and Raven ribbon tweeter are all powered by their own 20Watt Alephs.

You can have apair of these lovelys for $40,000 USD.

More to follow later.
Rodd Yamashita

GRollins · 10th January 2003, 02:48 AM

Good job, Rodd.
Now let me warm up my trusty pocket calculator and get busy reverse-engineering these critters...

Grey

GRollins · 10th January 2003, 02:51 AM

Oh, and one more thing...
Which presidents are carved into Mt. Rushmore, and what denomination currency does each face appear on?
Gonna take a lot of presidents to pay for a pair of those.

Grey

AudioFreak · 10th January 2003, 02:53 AM

Hey Grey, looks like Nelson took to the idea of your Mini-A

roddyama · 10th January 2003, 02:54 AM

When I walk into the Pass Labs listening room, Kent was demonstrating the bass output capabilities of the Rushmore. The speaker system is said to be capable of 120db from 22Hz to 40kHz. I had to check to make sure I wasn't in the Cerwin Vega room. Needless to say, the Rushmore was completely up to the task of satisfying this hard of hearing patron. Kent quickly apologized for the volume levels.

Mr. Pass will come into Vegas tonight so Kent's picture will have to do for now. I will begin to download the other pics and provide a link starting later tonight, but I would expect my friend to get them up until tomorrow.

Rodd Yamashita

GRollins · 10th January 2003, 05:56 AM

Okay, I've been thinking on this and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the 15" is crossed over below 100Hz, yet above 60Hz, effectively functioning as a subwoofer. Given the cabinet size, and the fact that the Pass crew have been playing with efficient drivers, I am led also to conclude that there is some form of frequency tailoring going on, even if it's only a little "Q-bump" on the low end such as the XVR1 is capable of. However, I think it probable that there's more than a bump. We might need to go the other direction and use a low pass rolloff to pull the top down a bit, relative to the bottom.
The 11" will fill up to, let's say...300Hz absolute tops. Almost certainly less. 250Hz? That's a really obnoxious part of the spectrum to have to fill. I'm actually more interested in the identity of the 11" driver than I am the 15". Deep bass can be had. You can play games with the signal and get away with it. A good mid-bass is much harder to find because you can't manipulate the signal so freely.
Without more information about the drivers being used, I think I'd better stop there for the moment.
Cabinet design looks interesting. Shall we say wood laminate? Extruded aluminum would be nice, but the shape is going to require a custom extrusion if we go that route. Wood laminate (think plywood) would be cheaper and fairly easy to do, even as DIY. Make a mold and glue successive layers together until you reach the desired thickness. Let's go for an inch. After all, 3/4" is so mundane, so ordinary.
Electronics I dare not comment upon, except to speculate that it will take unbalanced inputs in addition to balanced.
Let me sleep on it. Perhaps Morpheus will whisper in my ear as I slumber.

Grey

halojoy · 10th January 2003, 06:01 AM

GRollins, this is exactly what I had figured out.
Now that you said it - halojoy needs not to

Thanks, Grey.

Variac · 10th January 2003, 06:04 AM

WOW! I thought realistically all we could expect would be a new amp model. Well I guess that is true to some extent!

I guess I should have suspected this, they are ALWAYS testing and talking about speaker drivers.

Those wavy cabinet walls ain't flexin'

The $40k doesn't seem as extreme as other high priced speakers-a bunch of Pass amps, their crossover, nice cabinet, high efficiency drivers. I can only assume they sound great-that's a given for a Pass project. Geez- they get to play around with this stuff as a job. It's really tough to have this rubbed in!!

grataku · 10th January 2003, 06:16 AM

I guess Nelson has no more excuses for holding back on the active Xover project.

Nelson's got the dream job!

macka · 10th January 2003, 07:50 AM

Hmm,

Now thats innovation,

What a cool idea, at last an active box with great internals, and a gifted creative designer who is not afraid to look well outside the square to execute the concept and the theory. Well done.

Its hard to say hows its technically configured and you can be sure its very (Pass) smart.

The box appears sealed, we know Mr Pass prefers this, even a T/L / sealed design variant internally.

With the right parameters the f3 of 22 hz is quite realistic for a monster of this size, one would have to assume the drivers have been carefully engineered with specific ideal T/S numbers for their intended narrow bands of operation. The cones all look very well damped from the photo.

If we assume a mean driver sensitivity of say 96 db broad band or more, the action of a 4 way active monolith like is a bit like a super charger, the whole things got massive accoustic power gains.

This is because the crest factor of the total voltage from the amps when carved up arross strategic aspects of the frequency range, effectively ramps up the additive accoustic output sum of all the drivers, so she drags off at the lights with the cleanest pair of sneakers around town.

The rest is sheer experiementation and having a super nice active crossover and amps which in this case is a given!

Very nice indeed.

Ian

10th January 2003, 06:01 AM	#7
halojoy On Hiatus Join Date: Nov 2002	Exactly! GRollins, this is exactly what I had figured out. Now that you said it - halojoy needs not to Thanks, Grey.

10th January 2003, 06:04 AM	#8
Variac diyAudio Editor Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: San Francisco, USA	WOW! I thought realistically all we could expect would be a new amp model. Well I guess that is true to some extent! I guess I should have suspected this, they are ALWAYS testing and talking about speaker drivers. Those wavy cabinet walls ain't flexin' The $40k doesn't seem as extreme as other high priced speakers-a bunch of Pass amps, their crossover, nice cabinet, high efficiency drivers. I can only assume they sound great-that's a given for a Pass project. Geez- they get to play around with this stuff as a job. It's really tough to have this rubbed in!! __________________ 2013 Burning Amp Festival announced: Sunday, October 6th in S.F. We need Volunteers & sign-up's for what you're bringing!

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10th January 2003, 02:48 AM	#2
GRollins diyAudio Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Columbia, SC	Good job, Rodd. Now let me warm up my trusty pocket calculator and get busy reverse-engineering these critters... Grey

10th January 2003, 02:51 AM	#3
GRollins diyAudio Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Columbia, SC	Oh, and one more thing... Which presidents are carved into Mt. Rushmore, and what denomination currency does each face appear on? Gonna take a lot of presidents to pay for a pair of those. Grey

10th January 2003, 02:53 AM	#4
AudioFreak Warp Engineer On Holiday Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Queensland, Australia	Hey Grey, looks like Nelson took to the idea of your Mini-A

10th January 2003, 05:56 AM	#6
GRollins diyAudio Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Columbia, SC	Okay, I've been thinking on this and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the 15" is crossed over below 100Hz, yet above 60Hz, effectively functioning as a subwoofer. Given the cabinet size, and the fact that the Pass crew have been playing with efficient drivers, I am led also to conclude that there is some form of frequency tailoring going on, even if it's only a little "Q-bump" on the low end such as the XVR1 is capable of. However, I think it probable that there's more than a bump. We might need to go the other direction and use a low pass rolloff to pull the top down a bit, relative to the bottom. The 11" will fill up to, let's say...300Hz absolute tops. Almost certainly less. 250Hz? That's a really obnoxious part of the spectrum to have to fill. I'm actually more interested in the identity of the 11" driver than I am the 15". Deep bass can be had. You can play games with the signal and get away with it. A good mid-bass is much harder to find because you can't manipulate the signal so freely. Without more information about the drivers being used, I think I'd better stop there for the moment. Cabinet design looks interesting. Shall we say wood laminate? Extruded aluminum would be nice, but the shape is going to require a custom extrusion if we go that route. Wood laminate (think plywood) would be cheaper and fairly easy to do, even as DIY. Make a mold and glue successive layers together until you reach the desired thickness. Let's go for an inch. After all, 3/4" is so mundane, so ordinary. Electronics I dare not comment upon, except to speculate that it will take unbalanced inputs in addition to balanced. Let me sleep on it. Perhaps Morpheus will whisper in my ear as I slumber. Grey

10th January 2003, 06:16 AM	#9
grataku diyAudio Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: -	I guess Nelson has no more excuses for holding back on the active Xover project. Nelson's got the dream job!

10th January 2003, 07:50 AM	#10
macka diyAudio Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Australia	Hmm, Now thats innovation, What a cool idea, at last an active box with great internals, and a gifted creative designer who is not afraid to look well outside the square to execute the concept and the theory. Well done. Its hard to say hows its technically configured and you can be sure its very (Pass) smart. The box appears sealed, we know Mr Pass prefers this, even a T/L / sealed design variant internally. With the right parameters the f3 of 22 hz is quite realistic for a monster of this size, one would have to assume the drivers have been carefully engineered with specific ideal T/S numbers for their intended narrow bands of operation. The cones all look very well damped from the photo. If we assume a mean driver sensitivity of say 96 db broad band or more, the action of a 4 way active monolith like is a bit like a super charger, the whole things got massive accoustic power gains. This is because the crest factor of the total voltage from the amps when carved up arross strategic aspects of the frequency range, effectively ramps up the additive accoustic output sum of all the drivers, so she drags off at the lights with the cleanest pair of sneakers around town. The rest is sheer experiementation and having a super nice active crossover and amps which in this case is a given! Very nice indeed. Ian