Hmmm...
I thought you said that Hornresp was far too theoretical to be taken seriously. In fact I thought you said it over and over at least half a dozen times. Are you now saying that Hornresp seems to be accurate if you use it properly and do an accurate simulation? Who knew?
A few hours of this did not help much with loosening the suspensions....
Now I am playing RAM records Drum&Bass Annual 2011 as loud as I dare. I feel quite dizzy and nauseous after an hour. It excites the air mass in the room in some strange way. It is very tactile and physical.
Cheers,
Johannes
Last edited:
Yes, this is the right reason for choosing ROAR18.
I have no illusions that outdoors we could have good response lower 30-40 Hz, so i prefer good sensitivity and effectiveness instead huge displacement.
My amps are something like QSC RMX4050 and one bridged are good enough for our country parties and intimidation of the neighbors.
The last reason - ROAR18 perfectly fits in the baggage compartment of the my country S-Max, suppose i could provide massage sessions for three rear passengers if needed or take a part in SPL competitions.
Although one can reverse case placing mouth to the back and get self-propelled bass-gun.
I use high-Q drivers with Qts=1,2 in the sealed box as half of Vas, so rolloff are very steep and in HornResp it looks like this:
Наш человек, обращайся если что!
:beer:
Yes, that's exact the goal of using high-caliber drivers like 15"-18" and higher.
Sorry, i suppose you want to use it for personal listening in a living conditions.
Yea, something similar.
But for my ears "overkill" doesn't have the power of russian obscene lexics and doesn't fully reflect the performance of ROAR18.
Unfortunately DBX doesn't provide calibration data for RTA-M. I can perform some recordings with it or with iPhone if it could help you.
First of all i can say, that all tracks are divided for good and bad for ROAR reproduction. ROAR itself performs very good, but i suppose some mastering techniques are optimized for bass-reflex and have some kind of incompatibility with TH or TPQWR.
Secondly, some tracks are good indoors with 10-12" sealed, bass-reflex or band-pass subs and bad for outdoors with TH/TPQWR.
It is not a domesticated and house-friendly loudspeaker. I would not want a pair of ROAR18 in my living room, as I guess they would be many times worse overkill than this comparably small ROAR12.
Crossed over 24 dB/octave @ 120 Hz to my cheap quarterwave pipes with some car audio coax drivers, it sounds very nice within reasonable powerlevels. Anything over 10 watts or so starts to rattle everything quite violently.
Last edited:
Yesterday I visited a friend of my teenage son. I helped him build a pair of large offset driver quarterwave pipes for a pair of Beyma 15K200.
Beyma 15K200 in quarterwave pipes - YouTube
They are insanely loud and powerful in his small 8 m2 room.
With approximately 100 watts to each speaker the bass is so intense that the skin starts to itch and "tingle". If you don't wear hearing protection you experience a painful clipping noise in your ears. His neighbor complained even though he was running a noisy lawnmower 30 meters from his house. These speakers easily drowned out the sound of the lawnmower at that distance from second floor inside his house.
Cheers,
Johannes
Thanks for the build feedback BesPav, much appreciated, it's good to know that our intentions regarding ease of build, a clear design priority, same as for the THAM series, is well received.
Thanks Djim, this was the intention, in the design process we came back to this several times, trying to keep it as simple as possible.
More on the ease of build priority :
The ease of build was a clear priority when designing the ROAR series, all the way down to the panel interfaces, making sure tolerance stack up's does not leave you with a gap or the need to tailor make panels half way through the build.
The reason for this approach is largely thanks to the feedback received from THAM series, where the ease of build is one of the most frequent praises, designing for simplicity means that the design may be more easily approached by beginners without needing much more then everyday hand tools and something straight make the outlines.
We looked at expanding and/or constricting segment variations of the basic folding during the development process several times, and we came pretty close to going for a expanding L45 segment at one time, but in the end we opted for the most DIY friendly alternative of pure perpendicular cuts with a minimum of parts and nice and even dimensions, judging the trade offs as justified concerning the build complexity / performance gain ratio.
Another DIY consideration is the relatively low compression and symmetrical tapping, while still have a decent load on the driver by use of a front resonator, this means that the design given it's relatively high sensitivity is still kind off forgiving regarding driver parameters as long as you reside in the upper BL range, leaving the potential DIY'er a greater number of drivers to choose from.
The developing trend regarding drivers seems to go in the direction of higher BL lower Q, high power handling and ever increasing Xmax, this also plays in well in the ROAR series, and was a clear consideration, if the design is to have a long life, the design has to take into account what kind of drivers might be available in the future.
This is a rough pick of some of the topics we looked at and what ended up shaping the ROAR series.
I have been looking at different horns for some time now. I plan to build between 4-8 of them. The Cubo was close to be my choice, until I was shown the Tham18. The plan was then to build 6 Tham18 with Fane 18XS. (Still might be the plan), but now somebody brought me to this thread. I really like the design, but after playing around in Hornresp I found a perhaps flatter driver (according to sims).
The RCF LF18G401 (Black) vs Beyma 18PW1400Fe (Grey)
Do you reckon that this helps real life measurements as well, or do you reckon the Beyma is flat enough already?
Another thing. Since this cab is so big, I wondered what this part of the cab did.
https://image.ibb.co/dqbgMk/Udklip1.png
After removing it in HornResp. It seemed to 2hz, but considering that it makes the cab 10% smaller, It think it's a fine trade off.
The RCF LF18G401 (Black) vs Beyma 18PW1400Fe (Grey)
Do you reckon that this helps real life measurements as well, or do you reckon the Beyma is flat enough already?
Another thing. Since this cab is so big, I wondered what this part of the cab did.
https://image.ibb.co/dqbgMk/Udklip1.png
After removing it in HornResp. It seemed to 2hz, but considering that it makes the cab 10% smaller, It think it's a fine trade off.
This is truly depend on your mids, tops and amplifiers.
Buildind powerful subs we then wants better mids, picking better mids we wants better tops, taking them both we wants better amps and so on...
It's holds a front resonator panels in the center of the case.
A low(ish) Bl and comparably higher Qes and Qts will produce a "better" looking flat spl-curve. The real life sound will be somewhat muddy and "thick" - more resonant and with a much less pronounced midbass kick/punch/knock.
A high Bl low Qes and Qts driver like the B&C 18DS115 will simulate much more wild and peaky, and yes - if you listen to sustained bass-tones which glide up and down in frequency you will hear the peaks and valleys in the response. Remember that it takes more then a 10 dB difference in the bass and midbass for a perceived doubling of the sound pressure level.
Room acoustics will make a much greater difference then the few dBs you see in the simulations, - and DSP EQ is dirt cheap these days.
If I had the money I would go with the B&C 18DS115. The sharp and insanely hard knock and punch they can create in the midbass is "worth" many dBs of pre-EQ peaks to me.
If you listen to my short 10 second clip of really loud music in one of my post above - can you hear any 2 - 3 dB peaks or dips? I hear 20 percent clean music directly from the speakers and another 80 percent of everything else in the room (and in the house) rattling and buzzing violently.
This forum-sickness of obsessive focus on few tenths of a dB back and forth is like obsessing over a small fly sitting on the nosecone of the Apollo V rocket at liftoff.
The real differences comes from room-acoustics, radiation angle, keeping the comparatively soft and delicate speaker-cone intact and in shape, preventing flexing walls in the box or horn, having an sane and professional DJ or sound-technician and using reasonable sized and good amps.
Cheers,
Johannes
A high Bl low Qes and Qts driver like the B&C 18DS115 will simulate much more wild and peaky, and yes - if you listen to sustained bass-tones which glide up and down in frequency you will hear the peaks and valleys in the response. Remember that it takes more then a 10 dB difference in the bass and midbass for a perceived doubling of the sound pressure level.
Room acoustics will make a much greater difference then the few dBs you see in the simulations, - and DSP EQ is dirt cheap these days.
If I had the money I would go with the B&C 18DS115. The sharp and insanely hard knock and punch they can create in the midbass is "worth" many dBs of pre-EQ peaks to me.
If you listen to my short 10 second clip of really loud music in one of my post above - can you hear any 2 - 3 dB peaks or dips? I hear 20 percent clean music directly from the speakers and another 80 percent of everything else in the room (and in the house) rattling and buzzing violently.
This forum-sickness of obsessive focus on few tenths of a dB back and forth is like obsessing over a small fly sitting on the nosecone of the Apollo V rocket at liftoff.
The real differences comes from room-acoustics, radiation angle, keeping the comparatively soft and delicate speaker-cone intact and in shape, preventing flexing walls in the box or horn, having an sane and professional DJ or sound-technician and using reasonable sized and good amps.
Cheers,
Johannes
A THAM, a ROAR, a CUBO and many others will do a great job. they all have a great potential. The ROAR series is developed in response to the current direction of loudspeaker driver development seen in the IPAL series, the 18 and 21 DS115 and a few other speakers. When pushing a Faital Pro 10HP1020 in a THAM10 to its limits we could hear some turbulence and noise from the bends in the THAM10.
Clearly we had to branch of in another direction with these new long stroke high power density drivers, and in the same way many bass reflex boxes uses a slit port to minimize port turbulence we choose to split the path in the tapped pipe into two quite high aspect slit paths. We tried to keep the tapped pipe section as low compression as possible, and to mass-load this tapped pipe with a front resonator. The front-resonator will present more acoustic loading of the tapped pipe and thereby keep the air speed as low as possible in order to keep turbulence to a minimum.
The large front resonator increases the efficiency a lot, and especially so in the midbass.
A ROAR12 with a B&C12TBX100 has the same downward extension as the THAM15 with a 15TBX100, but will play as loud in the lower part of the passband and 6 dBs more in the midbass from the cheaper 12 inch driver in an exactly equal sized box (total volume - not exact outer dimensions).
The ROAR series thrives with high Bl and high power drivers.
Cheers,
Johannes
Clearly we had to branch of in another direction with these new long stroke high power density drivers, and in the same way many bass reflex boxes uses a slit port to minimize port turbulence we choose to split the path in the tapped pipe into two quite high aspect slit paths. We tried to keep the tapped pipe section as low compression as possible, and to mass-load this tapped pipe with a front resonator. The front-resonator will present more acoustic loading of the tapped pipe and thereby keep the air speed as low as possible in order to keep turbulence to a minimum.
The large front resonator increases the efficiency a lot, and especially so in the midbass.
A ROAR12 with a B&C12TBX100 has the same downward extension as the THAM15 with a 15TBX100, but will play as loud in the lower part of the passband and 6 dBs more in the midbass from the cheaper 12 inch driver in an exactly equal sized box (total volume - not exact outer dimensions).
The ROAR series thrives with high Bl and high power drivers.
Cheers,
Johannes
And high-powered amps.
Today i have pile in my ROAR18 2,2 kWt bridged up to clipping indicator blinking and around 400 peoples at a medium open square 70 x 40 meters was satisfied.
And a more direct answer to you Grymer:
You can use either one. They both seem like nice drivers. The simulated spl-response is only a small part of the decision. I would choose based on price and simulated max spl.
Some RCF drivers have a flange not easily suitable for front mounting, otherwise they make really nice drivers.
I don't have any personal experience of the Fane Colossus driver, but it seems really nice.
Nice! Thanks for writing about your experience of the ROAR18.Cheers,
Johannes
And high-powered amps.
Today i have pile in my ROAR18 2,2 kWt bridged up to clipping indicator blinking and around 400 peoples at a medium open square 70 x 40 meters was satisfied.
How many subs?
The difficulty is different people come to this forum for different reasons, and you can't be all things to all people.
A lot of people want a DIY sub that's relatively easy to build and with good support from the developers and other users, and then there are always some people who are either developers themselves or otherwise very enthusiastic about gaining further understanding about fine details and optimisation, always pushing for the next improvement and tuning possibilities in their next design, maybe they have their own designs in development which are objectively 'better' on some dimensions which they consider to be more important, at the expense of others which they consider less important (and isn't that what good box design is all about?)
The trouble is the framing of the argument is wrong, like a black and white, right and wrong argument, rather than accepting different people have different priorities and it's possible for two totally contradictory positions to be correct at the same time.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and most people using your puddings seem to like the taste, so who's to say they're objectively wrong?
I used to have the same issue with Billfitzmaurice when he, his designs and his acolytes were much more prolific on the various sound forums. Sometimes it was just abundantly clear the design wasn't optimal for the applications people were using them for (as Grymer recently discovered with his attempts to use a pair of T48's for an outdoor 12v system, which led him to consider your designs), but at the same time he made enormous amounts of people very satisfied and switched hundreds more onto the joy of designing and building, so how can that possibly be wrong?
No high powered professional DIY design will ever be strictly optimal in all dimensions, as right from the start you've made the design compromise that it needs to be a solid, reliable, and relatively easy build, easy to simulate, flexible with as many drivers as possible, etc.
Of course it's possible to do it better, but if you can do it better and meet all those requirements and you're willing to share that design for free (or can at least point to someone else doing that), then maybe there's a solid point to be made
Last edited:
How many subs?
One.
During tuning session i choosed to give ROAR a chance to be a standalone alpha-male.
Second was connected but unpowered as a hot replace for any malfunction.
You can't really go wrong with either of these designs.
The THAM18 has gotten good reviews, even though they a tuned quite high. I am very partial in this matter since I am half of the development-team behind the THAM and ROAR series.
The ROAR18 is quite large but you might not need as many of them.
Since they are split path symmetrical, they become quite heavy to move around (there is more internal walls adding weight).
The THAM18 is tuned a little higher then most 18 inch tapped horns. It is a tradeoff we made to increase the efficiency, max spl and midbass punch.
I would definitely call the THAM18 a much more proven design, but based on my experience of my ROAR12 and BesPavs ROAR18 I would call the ROAR a much more "modern" and capable design - and especially so if you want to use modern high power density drivers like the B&C 18DS115 or a Precision Devices PD1851-2.
Cheers,
Johannes
The difficulty is different people come to this forum for different reasons, and you can't be all things to all people.
A lot of people want a DIY sub that's relatively easy to build and with good support from the developers and other users, and then there are always some people who are either developers themselves or otherwise very enthusiastic about gaining further understanding about fine details and optimisation, always pushing for the next improvement and tuning possibilities in their next design, maybe they have their own designs in development which are objectively 'better' on some dimensions which they consider to be more important, at the expense of others which they consider less important (and isn't that what good box design is all about?)
The trouble is the framing of the argument is wrong, like a black and white, right and wrong argument, rather than accepting different people have different priorities and it's possible for two totally contradictory positions to be correct at the same time.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and most people using your puddings seem to like the taste, so who's to say they're objectively wrong?
I used to have the same issue with Billfitzmaurice when he, his designs and his acolytes were much more prolific on the various sound forums. Sometimes it was just abundantly clear the design wasn't optimal for the applications people were using them for (as Grymer recently discovered with his attempts to use a pair of T48's for an outdoor 12v system, which led him to consider your designs), but at the same time he made enormous amounts of people very satisfied and switched hundreds more onto the joy of designing and building, so how can that possibly be wrong?
No high powered professional DIY design will ever be strictly optimal in all dimensions, as right from the start you've made the design compromise that it needs to be a solid, reliable, and relatively easy build, easy to simulate, flexible with as many drivers as possible, etc.
Of course it's possible to do it better, but if you can do it better and meet all those requirements and you're willing to share that design for free (or can at least point to someone else doing that), then maybe there's a solid point to be made
Very well said!
I hope to see some measurements posted.
Not bad for one ROAR18 (and one 18" driver) although i don't know the type of venue it was is still sounds impressive, I hope your expectations on the ROAR18 were met, thank you for sharing your impressions.
I agree with Zwiller, very well said indeed, not only the above quote but the whole piece.
I want to highlight the word compromise in the quote above, to me it means a balancing of properties towards a set goal, and there are no "no compromise" designs out there, no matter what any marketing department or designer would have you believe.
Our intention has always been to make it easy for anyone to build our designs, not only the well connected, skilled, or equipped, both the THAM and the ROAR series strive towards that goal, and in that we have to balance the properties and attributes accordingly.
Hi guys, I am in the background reading, haven't had time to start my build but I am very happy that someone did and the results are good. Not knowing much about speaker designs , I always thought this a good design. George Kampera of KV2 said they use bandpass enclosures, he admits that they don't have a smooth response curve but they are good for high energy.
ROAR12 playing DUB - YouTube
This really doesn't say much more then it can play bass. This is my ROAR12 with a B&C 12PS100. No EQ. 24 dB/octave @ 120 Hz and a highpass filter 48 dB/octave @ 20 Hz.
The room really plays havoc with the sound quality.
The song is Abendingo - Dub by the Abyssinians.
This really doesn't say much more then it can play bass. This is my ROAR12 with a B&C 12PS100. No EQ. 24 dB/octave @ 120 Hz and a highpass filter 48 dB/octave @ 20 Hz.
The room really plays havoc with the sound quality.
The song is Abendingo - Dub by the Abyssinians.