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
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
Attachments
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
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
Attachments
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
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
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!!
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!!
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
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
The mids are 5", not 6". The lit give an 8kHz xover for the tweeter, but nothing on the xover points. The bass AX is 80Watts, not 40Watts. The front (baffle), top, and bottom are granite. The sides are made with piano building techniques (Layers of laminates vacuum formed).
I would expect the lit to be on the forum very soon.
Rodd Yamashita
I would expect the lit to be on the forum very soon.
Rodd Yamashita
Regarding that 15"...after resting on it, I'll say that a Q-bump on the low end could do the job without further EQ.
Interesting about the bottom amp being 80W. That means it can run off the same power supply as the 20W amps for the other drivers. Roughly 20V rails, assuming that the drivers are nominal 8 ohms. Now we're down to one power supply with a 300VA transformer. Nice and tidy.
8kHz for the tweeter doesn't bother me, but it's a bit of a stretch for a 5" in terms of dispersion.
Grey
Interesting about the bottom amp being 80W. That means it can run off the same power supply as the 20W amps for the other drivers. Roughly 20V rails, assuming that the drivers are nominal 8 ohms. Now we're down to one power supply with a 300VA transformer. Nice and tidy.
8kHz for the tweeter doesn't bother me, but it's a bit of a stretch for a 5" in terms of dispersion.
Grey
Peter,
The lit says:
"For best transient and phase response, the mid-bass and mid-range bandpass filters are single-pole types, while the bass driver sees a 2 pole low pass filter (?) at 22Hz and the ribbon tweeter is crossed with 2 poles at 8kHz."
Gray,
The plate amp is one single 4ft tall heat sink. Kent says that it gets too hot at the top and may have re-distribute the devices.
Russ,
I don't know if Kent want this out. He really didn't say it was a secret. All the cone drivers are PSL drivers. I will ask him about the 11" again today because I'm interested in that one myself.
File transfer over hotel phone lines are a real PITA, and not cheap. I will get some photos transfered, but the bulk will come when I get back home on Sunday.
Rodd Yamashita
The lit says:
"For best transient and phase response, the mid-bass and mid-range bandpass filters are single-pole types, while the bass driver sees a 2 pole low pass filter (?) at 22Hz and the ribbon tweeter is crossed with 2 poles at 8kHz."
Gray,
The plate amp is one single 4ft tall heat sink. Kent says that it gets too hot at the top and may have re-distribute the devices.
Russ,
I don't know if Kent want this out. He really didn't say it was a secret. All the cone drivers are PSL drivers. I will ask him about the 11" again today because I'm interested in that one myself.
File transfer over hotel phone lines are a real PITA, and not cheap. I will get some photos transfered, but the bulk will come when I get back home on Sunday.
Rodd Yamashita
They don't look like PHL
PHL drivers don't have round frames and don't come in 11" sizes. Could be a custom PHL for Pass Labs though.
PSL is Phillips Sound Labs and if Kent said PSL then that's probably what they are. Still probably custom versions of thier commercial driver.
I'll keep looking around. So far I can't find any pics of PSL drivers.
I'll post a link in a few minutes if I find one.
Russ
PHL drivers don't have round frames and don't come in 11" sizes. Could be a custom PHL for Pass Labs though.
PSL is Phillips Sound Labs and if Kent said PSL then that's probably what they are. Still probably custom versions of thier commercial driver.
I'll keep looking around. So far I can't find any pics of PSL drivers.
I'll post a link in a few minutes if I find one.
Russ
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.