| inrank |
ok, i want to build an efficient, cheap full range speaker....
whats the best out of
Beyma 8AG/N (seen this in a horn on this website)
Visaton BG 20 (cheap B200?)
Monacor SP-200MX
Ciare CH 250 (10" though)
Omnes Audio L8 (low Xmax)
i would like to prefably make an OB speaker as it is easier to make and cheaper, dont need low bass (anything below 80Hz is a bonus)
would i need a tweeter with any of these?
only experience before this is using the CSS FR125S, need somthing with a bigger sound and wont get flustered at higher volume levels... |
|
|
| Scottmoose |
| Monacor SP-200X would be my first choice if you can't stretch to the B200. The Qt is 0.52 so it's in the right ballpark for open baffle, and it has a decently low 50Hz Fs and good excursion. Plus, it's cheap (about £30UK each, which isn't going to break the bank) and very well made for the money. It only goes up to about 12KHz really, so you might need to bring a tweeter in. That's easy enough though, and there's plenty of options, which again, aren't too costly. Plough through the Dark Star thread Dan Mason began on the Red Wine Audio section of www.Audiocircle.com for innumerable ideas that you could shamelessly plunder for baffle dimensions etc -that's what the DIY community is about after all. |
|
|
| inrank |
so is it really worth paying 3-4 times as much for the B200?
my current speakers are KEF XQ1's and i dont really want anything less than them in preformance and clarity wise....
and i cant have a baffle bigger than 1 1/2 ft (460mm) by 3 1/2 ft (1100mm) but then my room is only about 10ft by 15ft.
aslong as i can get a fullranger that 'rocks' (mabye thinking of going into tubes, as the efficiency is key in the speakers) |
|
|
| Scottmoose |
Is the B200 worth about 3 times the price of the Monacors? Yes. It's a truly astonishing driver.
The Monacors will be fairly close to your XQ1s (pretty good speakers BTW) though they'll need a tweeter as the KEFs have a very good HF (bit strong for my taste, but there you go, taste's a funny thing). The B200s are unlikely to need a tweeter, and I suspect you'd never bother about upgrading again. They are high end drivers. This might interest you: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/.../roadtour5.html
The baffle size you mention is a bit small to get the full benefits IMO, as bass is going to go AWOL. There's the JE labs thing that goes near the floor, but I can't say I'm a fan of it. Plenty are of course, but using boundaries to reinforce the bass seems to me to be throwing away one of the principle benefits of dipole radiation.
However, if you've got the room, you might want to think about hinged side pieces that you can swing out when listening, and fold back when the speakers are not in use, like the Omega Dark Star variation in the above link. |
|
|
| inrank |
yeah, that folding design looks quite good, i do have a sub, although i dont use it atm, which could be used.
how loud would the b200, and the others i mentioned (without too much distortion) go with say a 10w tube amp, or a 70w primare a20?
would it be the case of 'loud enough'? |
|
|
| dmason |
Far louder than is medically advisable.
10wpc tube on the B200 is killer. 300B SET, 6L6 SEP, sound out of this world with the B200. EL84 sounds thin. |
|
|
| inrank |
| if so, where could i get/make a SET amp thats relatively cheap? (£100-£200) or are there any other alternatives for the price? |
|
|
| Scottmoose |
For your projected budget, I'd actually say SET probably = bad idea.
Some form of T-amp, suitably tweaked to death would be the best bet I reckon. Unless you're happy building things from scratch, in which case one of the innumerable gainclone variations, or best still, one of Nelson Pass's Zen amps would blow your mind. |
|
|
| dmason |
The Charlize T amp is well known to work unbelievably well with the B200 on an open baffle.
Go to the OB Thread on www.decware.com on the Forum for Speakerbuilders, and find many very happy senior-level tweak-o-philes extolling the virtues of their Charlize/B200 set ups.
www.diyparadise.com and it doesn't need tweaking, not at all. Add a SLA battery, and be happy. Charlize has great bass, non strident highs, and is just plain synergistic with the B200. This combination provides ridiculously great sound for a pittance.
Build a baffle with wings, similar to the one discussed on Audio Circle, pix courtesy of Vinnie. The narrow front baffle with swept wings of unequal width works by far best, concluded by a very great deal of experimentation. Use good plywood, and go the extra mile of "veneering" the front and back of the baffle with cork. Now you have an outstanding sound system that will easily kill very expensive, multi-drivers-in-a-box monkey coffin type commercial speakers, and ruin your ability for any future enjoyment of those types of alignments, due to boxless sound, and unequalled coherency offered by wideband drivers of exceptional quality.
You can wring the utmost out of the B200 by ordering the driver with the wooden phase plugs from Planet 10, right here on DIY Audio. The accounts of improvement in overall presentation seem to make this effort pretty much mandatory. IMO. |
|
|
| Scottmoose |
| If you follow Dan's advice, you will be a happy camper. No-one knows the B200 on open baffle better; if you hadn't already noticed, you're talking to the man who started the Dark Star thread, and is directly responsible for the Omega OBs (which I hear should be emerging soon, right Dan?), to say nothing of the link between Red Wine Audio and Omega Loudspeakers that has proved so rewarding for all concerned. |
|
|
| inrank |
thanks for all the advice,
here is a pic of my room, (i get a bigger room for next year at uni though)
is there anywhere in the UK where i can get the B200 other than ImpactAudio and also any of the amps mentioned? |
|
|
| inrank |
| yes, had a look, that price does include VAT @ 17.5% (said at the bottom) |
|
|
| inrank |
i like the ethos of the company - "We do not have two different prices, one for customers who haggle and one for those who don´t." :D
pair for £150 inc VAT but Exc DEL (around 10 Euro's i think) thats £40 cheaper than anywhere else. |
|
|
| Godzilla |
I have some cheapo crapboxes in my office this last month that use what seem to be very cheap parts. A friend I work with wanted to improve them. I broke out the back of the cabinet to do an upgrade but decided to listen to the ‘open baffle’ box and it sounded so much cleaner, more open and no boxy boomy bass. I told him to just break off the backs and leave the rest alone. We A/B’d them and he agreed. He may buy a powered sub but nearly all the bass is still there… just much cleaner.
Soundesign is the manufacturer.. looks something like the link below but just a woofer and a piezo tweeter. Once completing my BIBs I will certainly delve into open baffle designs.
Peace.
Godzilla
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...cial_s%26sa%3DN |
|
|
| inrank |
even though the B200 only goes up to 18Hz @10dB, would i need a tweeter?
i do like a sparke at the top end, seen the Fostex FT17H supertweeter for £35 a peice!
or would it just be best to get some B200's and experiment first, judging from my pic, will they work in OB in a room this small? |
|
|
| dmason |
If this is any indication, no one using B200 has ever felt the need for tweeters. Convert and repent!
If you are moving to a dorm, with open baffle speakers being so different, chix will dig you, guaranteed. They'll know instinctively that you are into the good stuff! The B200 on open baffle is a guaranteed lay. Reason enuff right there!!
The Charlize comes from www.diyparadise.com Yeo will get one into your hands in five business days. |
|
|
| inrank |
thanks,
its not a dorm though, its a house i am sharing with 3 other people :)
well if its 'size matters', when shall i start ;)
difficult question, but what kind of bass would i be looking at if i made some OB's like the Omega ones? |
|
|
| dmason |
If size matters, build the same as Omega. These are "big enuff" to fill the bill. Bass rolls off slowly, but these exhibit quite useful bass to ~45Hz, and if you roll in that little Tannoy sub just to the point where you are picking up some foundation, any more and it will draw your attention "downward," you should be fine. Flapping wings is tuning to the room, and sub placement is of course critical, so you have at least the first term's worth of tweaking with cold beer, to get things right as rain.
What most people find is that the sonic that IS there is soooo fine, they don't care as much about bass foundation.
Four seasoned audiophools listened to the Omega size baffles in a 12 X 15 room and all felt that they easily passed the "Flecktones" bass test, using Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, (Bela Fleck & The Flecktones) three commented they had never in thirty five years heard Jon Anderson's unique voice presented as well as when they spun some Yes; the anecdotes from that session are many.
The speakers were powered by a T amp and all the tube-o-philes loved the combination. Charlize could be seen as the undergrad offering of a very fine lo-watt T amp. |
|
|
| inrank |
sounds great, just one little niggle, a bit nieve of me, but will 1-2Watts and a FR in OB give me a big and powerfull sound (sort of the sound that makes you 'feel the power') or shall i look else where?
i am not planning on using them for party's just most of the previous speakers i have had (Tannoy DC1000,Tannoy Sensys DC1's, Rega R3's and the KEF XQ1's) still sound small and i feel that they would get a but flustered at higher volumes... |
|
|
| dmason |
2 watts o tube will push the Visatons along okay, as long as you high pass the driver @ 100Hz to relieve the amp's output transformers of bass duty. However, now, there is zero information below 100Hz, hence, no bass, which means you now have to concern yourself with dipole bass implementation and active crossovers, real-time analysis, active EQ, and high current solid state amplification. Beyond that the B200 wants some juice, no doubt. These are not shrinking violets, and can easily sink 100 watts or more...
OR, get Charlize and have your way with her..... |
|
|
| inrank |
so how powerfull is the Charlize?
is there anyway of adding seperate bass drivers onto the OB without having to use a sub amp?
because with my sub, i can never seem to get the right output properly... |
|
|
| Scottmoose |
I'd call it ~10w at reasonable distortion levels. However, most of the time, you'll never really be using more than 2-3w, as Dan points out: the rest is just headroom, for dynamic swings. http://www.diyparadise.com/charlize.html
Also, though only THD is published on the link, most of these T-amp variations tend toward the fairly innocuous 2nd harmonic distortion rather than the more damaging 3rd harmonic, so a bit of extra grunt is there, should you need it.
Re your other question, yes, but low power amps are probably out unless you go with active crossovers, and even then, I suspect they'd struggle. |
|
|
| el`Ol |
A B200-like driver with more sensitivity and lower Qts (0.34 according test report) would the Ciare HX201. I have them running down to 60Hz in TQWTs. For my taste they would need treble reduction, llike Visaton do for the B200. I am using an omnidirectional setup instead.
A cheap solution would be the Ciare CH250. Hobby Hifi have reached a fairly good linearization with two (or three) notch filters. |
|
|
|
