I wanted to know about the woofer tester #2 from the org. people who made the woofer tester. The web site is woofertester.com. As anyone used this product?
I know it's $159.99 but, is it really worth it? I know that not all the specs. on a driver can be right. I was looking at this for acouple of reasons. I want the drivers I am using to have the right box for them to work at the highest level they can work. I also wanted the box to be right. So many boxes made for speakers are not right just guessing? Also for The right driver specs. numbers of the driver and aslo the new in the box testing to see if the box is right for your drivers. Now is there a program out there were I can get for free that can do the samething or not? I can also buy and make my own hook up test wires. I guess I am asking is there a home made kit I can buy and make for cheaper money? Also I am not looking at parts express or the one from mcm. Please let me know on any advise you can share of help me out with. Thanks jm
P.s. I will be using it for fostex and other fullrange drivers. jm
I know it's $159.99 but, is it really worth it? I know that not all the specs. on a driver can be right. I was looking at this for acouple of reasons. I want the drivers I am using to have the right box for them to work at the highest level they can work. I also wanted the box to be right. So many boxes made for speakers are not right just guessing? Also for The right driver specs. numbers of the driver and aslo the new in the box testing to see if the box is right for your drivers. Now is there a program out there were I can get for free that can do the samething or not? I can also buy and make my own hook up test wires. I guess I am asking is there a home made kit I can buy and make for cheaper money? Also I am not looking at parts express or the one from mcm. Please let me know on any advise you can share of help me out with. Thanks jm
P.s. I will be using it for fostex and other fullrange drivers. jm
Last edited:
There are other testers out there like the Parts-Express Dayton Audio DATS Dayton Audio Test System. Most of these measurements can be made with a volt meter and some resistors and clips and a lot of hard work. I got the Parts express one and it measure bass drivers, tweeters and coils and caps fast and so easy. 100 bucks well spent!
To complicate things T/S paramterers are somwhat drive level dependent in a complex manner that has to be determinated for each driver. Heating up the voice coil increase its resistance and then increase the Qes, the elasticity of the suspension might be more or less unlinear with different levels of cone motion. However, this is getting into details. The basic set of T/S will not change dramatically.
There is no "right" box in a religous sense of the word. It is more of a range of sizes with various trade offs. For a given Fostex driver a closed volume box is say
15 Liter
Good: small and very good protection against subsonic overload, very good transients
Bad: No bass at all below 100 Hz
Bass reflex 60 liter
Good: better bass down to 50 Hz
Bad: less good transients, no mechanical protection against subsonic overload
Bass horn 240 liter
Good. way more bass output at tap 50-200 Hz
Bad: less good transients, no mechanical protection against subsonic overload, trouble in upper bass lower midrange due to colorations from horn.
So different box types has very different "right" sizes. And even for a given box type such as a bass reflex, it can be tuned in many ways to fit a specific room placement or other things. It is quite common to not use the classical tunings but have a overdamped tuning were a gentle slope in the bass is offset by room gain.
So if you want to measure your specific drivers to build the "right" boxes you are aiming at elusive shadows.
To complicate things T/S paramterers are somwhat drive level dependent in a complex manner that has to be determinated for each driver. Heating up the voice coil increase its resistance and then increase the Qes, the elasticity of the suspension might be more or less unlinear with different levels of cone motion. However, this is getting into details. The basic set of T/S will not change dramatically.
There is no "right" box in a religous sense of the word. It is more of a range of sizes with various trade offs. For a given Fostex driver a closed volume box is say
15 Liter
Good: small and very good protection against subsonic overload, very good transients
Bad: No bass at all below 100 Hz
Bass reflex 60 liter
Good: better bass down to 50 Hz
Bad: less good transients, no mechanical protection against subsonic overload
Bass horn 240 liter
Good. way more bass output at tap 50-200 Hz
Bad: less good transients, no mechanical protection against subsonic overload, trouble in upper bass lower midrange due to colorations from horn.
So different box types has very different "right" sizes. And even for a given box type such as a bass reflex, it can be tuned in many ways to fit a specific room placement or other things. It is quite common to not use the classical tunings but have a overdamped tuning were a gentle slope in the bass is offset by room gain.
So if you want to measure your specific drivers to build the "right" boxes you are aiming at elusive shadows.
IMHO if you have a PC with a half decent sound card a dedicated hardware based device for measuring T/S parameters of drivers is expensive and obsolete.
There are many software packages, some which are free which include the ability to automatially measure a full set of T/S parameters ready to feed into a box simulator program.
Generally the only hardware needed is a sound card, a series resistor of around 33 to 68 ohms, some wires, and a couple of calibration resistors to calibrate it against an ohm meter.
One such example of software is ARTA, ( http://www.artalabs.hr/ ) whilst the full version is not free the free demo of LIMP (part of the ARTA suite of programs) will quickly and easily measure a drivers T/S parameters for you.
For the money spent buying the dedicated speaker tester you could register the full version of ARTA and have a very powerful measurement package that can measure everything else you could possibly need, including frequency response and room acoustics. (Even so the free demo does most of what most people would need, I made do with the free demo for a long time)
There are other free programs which will measure T/S parameters too. Personally I would go the software route rather than a dedicated hardware tester...
So could you give me more info on this program? So I would want to upgrade my sound card to what? With computers I am lost? I guess I could e-mail the guy to see what he thinks? The more the better right
Great product. PE has it for $99. Used it for years. Yes, you CAN do it with a sound card, but it makes it so easy. I have SoundEasy, Arta and even a generator and VTVM. I use the WT2 all the time. It is very accurate. More than we need actually. If you are going to measure something once, use free software. I have used mine hundreds of times.
My soapbox: I will tell you to do it with a signal generator ( PC based, free) , multimeter and calculator once. Really understanding what you are measuring helps in the long run. Read Jo De'Appolito's book on measuring loudspeakers.
My soapbox: I will tell you to do it with a signal generator ( PC based, free) , multimeter and calculator once. Really understanding what you are measuring helps in the long run. Read Jo De'Appolito's book on measuring loudspeakers.
Woofertester 2 is not the PE product. It is a different version from a different mfr and is much more consistent and reliable than PE's WT3. I don't know how "improved" DATS compared. I will agree that Woofer Tester 2 is reliable and consistent. It was worth the money to me. It also does more than merely measure T/S params.
I have the Smith & Larson WooferTester PRO, which is about a cheap as you can get for a professional measurement suite. For those who don't know, S&L does the WT2. The WT3 is an offshore knock-off. (Insert political tirade here.) Don't ask Keith Larson about this unless you are wearing a hard hat and ear muffs.
Yes, you can measure drivers with a PC and a multimeter. The problem arises that a multimeter that is going to be accurate for AC at anything but 60Hz can be as expensive as a decent entry level measurement suite. I cannot vouch for any of the freeware packages. They may very good. I don't know. However, I have heard that you often get what you pay for.
Bob
I fought and fought with REW and Limp to do impendance measurements. Sometimes it would be close, but never perfect. Other times the impendance curve would be the right shape, but over 100ohms off. Other times it was just noise. I dunno. I gave up. Was going to buy a WT2 or WT3, hoping to save up for the original WT2. Then a used WT3 came up for sale here and I bought it. It was like a breath of fresh air. It finally works. I can finally get reliable impendance measurements.
T/S params on the other hand... I still am careful with those.
T/S params on the other hand... I still am careful with those.
I'll probably be banned for this but...
While I'll give you guys from the Great White North a break, This is a classic case given the choice of USA, China and lowest price, price wins every time. Want to take a guess why there are virtually no consumer goods made in the good old USA. Stop complaining about manufacturers sending jobs offshore.
Bob
While I'll give you guys from the Great White North a break, This is a classic case given the choice of USA, China and lowest price, price wins every time. Want to take a guess why there are virtually no consumer goods made in the good old USA. Stop complaining about manufacturers sending jobs offshore.
Bob
Bob- I'd be pizzed for you if it didn't take a lot more than that to get anyone banned
to misquote and paraphrase Voltaire (care of Bill Bryson) " I may disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to be an azzole"
, which you're definitely notsome wise guy once stated "you can't handle the truth"
global economy - good for all players, just some more so than others?
Bob I agree with you 1 zillon percent.
I say support the country you live in no matter were it is but, if your country doesn't make the product I guess we are all in quick sand with nothing to hold on to and thats no matter were you live in the world.
Last edited:
Bob. I agree with you 100%, and your comment isn't offensive or ban worthy, but I don't know where it comes from? You posted, then I posted, then you posted that??? What gives. I wanted to buy a WT2, but a used WT3 came on here for $50. Hard for me to pass up.
I suppose you don't buy food grown in Mexico, or lumber milled in Canada. I buy local when I can, but there's a limit.
Personally to the OP, as a WT3 owner, it has saved me a lot of head ache, but $99 for a piece of plastic and some wire is pretty pricey. I know, I know, software doesn't write itself. But if you can figure out REW's impedance measurement (I couldn't, but frequency response was intuitive) then donate to REW.
I suppose you don't buy food grown in Mexico, or lumber milled in Canada. I buy local when I can, but there's a limit.
Personally to the OP, as a WT3 owner, it has saved me a lot of head ache, but $99 for a piece of plastic and some wire is pretty pricey. I know, I know, software doesn't write itself. But if you can figure out REW's impedance measurement (I couldn't, but frequency response was intuitive) then donate to REW.
In the particular case at hand, S&L built the original woofer tester into a small two-man business. They came up with an upgrade -- WT2. Sells for $160. PE sells the thing. PE sends a copy to China where it is reverse engineered and PE starts selling it to $99. The most disingenuous part of it they called it WT3. 3 has to be better than 2, right? And at 60% of the price to boot. To us Yankees, price is the only thing. Who cares that the WT2 is the entry level product to a line of upgrades.
That what pisses me off.
Bob
That what pisses me off.
Bob
It will be the end of us if we are not careful
You get what you pay for, is the saying, i believe.
Wal-Mart actually tried to sell "Made in USA" for a while. They weren't cost competitive and the customers voted with their wallets. Now you are hard pressed to find anything in Wal-Mart that is American.
BTW, go into ANY clothing store, regardless of price. Let me know if you find anything with a USA label.
Bob
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.