ABEC 3

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I'll be frank about it. The learning curve is STEEP. I thought I could apply my familiarity with Akabak and hit the ground running and no...It is much different. The scripting requirements are different and in some cases much more detailed and require a greater number of parameters and multiple scripts to be supplied. It is a MUCH deeper program but learning how to use it from square one is daunting. I didn't find it intuitive at all. The best advice I can give is to thoroughly study the help files and especially the example files given. Even having done that it takes a great deal of work for me to do a rudimentary simulation in it. I since loaded AK on an old laptop and use it when I need to look at something HR cannot do.

Maybe someone else who has a better grasp of it will reply.
 
We can only hope Josh

yeah, being mildly familiar with akabak (at least I know what a basic sim should be laid out like from a syntax standpoint), I struggle to even START anything in akabak, i'm exploring the examples and sifting through help files over the last few days.
 
We can only hope Josh

yeah, being mildly familiar with akabak (at least I know what a basic sim should be laid out like from a syntax standpoint), I struggle to even START anything in akabak, i'm exploring the examples and sifting through help files over the last few days.

I've never even seen the Akabak manual or looked at any of the examples. I used this instead - AkAbak for Dummies ;) - AVS Forum | Home Theater Discussions And Reviews - and as far as I'm concerned it's the definitive resource (assuming you just want to get going as fast as possible), in fact it's the only resource I've ever needed or used (at least so far). It only covers the basics but you will probably find (like I did) the basics are all you need.

It took about 2 hours (while also watching a movie at the same time) to get up and running with this link. After two hours I could read scripts that other people wrote and draw out the enclosure they were describing and I could also write my own scripts. This link makes a very steep learning curve almost braindead simple. Note that I'm not saying I was an expert in 2 hours, it does take practice to get good at what you are doing but I had a very firm grasp of the concepts and was able to (slowly and carefully) read and write scripts for any enclosure type at the 2 hour point.

This link doesn't cover stuff like diffraction (there's other really simple programs that can do that though), it doesn't cover much more complex topics like AcourRsistance, AcouMass and AcouCompliance (which you don't really need anyway, since advanced centerline folding method neatly takes care of all that), and it doesn't cover stuff like inspecting pressure, velocity or any of those graphs, but those features are all super easy to figure out on your own.

The biggest tip I have (besides reading the provided link) is starting ALL scripts with Hornresp exports. This will save LOADS of time. Start the sim in Hornresp, export the Akabak file, import into Akabak and continue to add to the sim (if necessary) or simply use the sim as is if all you need to do is something simple like inspect velocity with a high pass filter in place.
 
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yeah Just a guy, thats the link I used to learn too. unfortunatly, my 32 bit machine died about 3 months ago, I've been cruising in hornresp since then but if you saw in the Hornresp thread, I recently suffered a fatal corruption of my hornresp records.

rather than jump through hoops to get akabak running as I take a step back from hornresp for a little (I've already resimmed all the cabs I've drawn), i wanted to try and get my head around ABEC (considering I have the full version installed and activated and it at least opens lol).

I wish there was an ABEC for dummies post just like that akabak post.
 
I looked at ABEC briefly when the download was free (not sure if it still is or not) but I didn't even bother downloading it since there's nothing I've ever wanted to sim that can't be done with Hornresp, Akabak, MJK's worksheets, Jeff Bagby's PCD suite or a combination of these programs.

I would strongly suggest getting a cheap WinXP PC dedicated to speaker design. As I mentioned to you previously, running a VM (for Akabak) and Sketchup on my Win7 64 bit system was a no go. Not sure if it was the VM or Sketchup causing the issue but my laptop went from dead cold operation even with very intense CPU and memory requirement programs to burning my balls hot as soon as I installed the VM and Sketchup, and it returned to normal as soon as I uninstalled them. Like I said, I have no idea how or why but the easy fix was to put these programs (VM not required) on an old 32 bit WinXP NETBOOK with very little processing power and memory and they worked just fine on that.

You can get an old 32 bit PC very cheap, probably even free. I can't even give away old PCs, nobody wants them.

Sooner or later there will be an ABEC for dummies resource but it might take awhile. The Akabak for Dummies was written almost 20 years after Akabak came out.
 
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I would strongly suggest getting a cheap WinXP PC dedicated to speaker design. As I mentioned to you previously, running a VM (for Akabak) and Sketchup on my Win7 64 bit system was a no go. Not sure if it was the VM or Sketchup causing the issue but my laptop went from dead cold operation even with very intense CPU and memory requirement programs to burning my balls hot as soon as I installed the VM and Sketchup, and it returned to normal as soon as I uninstalled them. Like I said, I have no idea how or why but the easy fix was to put these programs (VM not required) on an old 32 bit WinXP NETBOOK with very little processing power and memory and they worked just fine on that.

Yeah, but that means you've got to manage two PCs instead of one. Not the best solution, particularly if you're looking for an overall mobile one (e.g. one that you can use for both design and measurement).

What did you use to host the VM? I use Hyper-V on my PC, and I've never run into that issue you mentioned, even with 4 VMs running at once, one of those being an XP VM running Akabak. What I DID run into was a hit on hard drive performance caused by one of the bigger VMs, which I easily resolved by adding an SSD and running the VMs off of that instead of the PC's main drive.

Thinking about it again... did you have enough RAM installed in that PC to host both your main OS and the VM? What you described could be caused by excessive paging caused by insufficient RAM.

Hmm... my Windows 10 tablet is 32-bit. Maybe I should try running Akabak off of that to see if it runs properly, or at all :)


B.
 
Hmm... my Windows 10 tablet is 32-bit. Maybe I should try running Akabak off of that to see if it runs properly, or at all :)

Well, at least it starts, though there is a trick to it. Basically the Akabak installer doesn't work, but if you download the "NoInstaller" zip files and extract everything from the zip into a folder (I created one in my OneDrive folder called "Akabak"), you can start the executable (it will be under "\zprogram") from there. On first trying to run it, Win10-32 will prompt you to install a featured called "NTVDM" that it needs, but that's it.

Note, I haven't tried running anything in Akabak yet. It may just crash and burn if I try to run any scripts, LOL. I will check that later. But it does mean now that my little 8" windows tablet is now running HornResp, Akabak, DATS, HolmImpulse, my Excel design spreadsheets and TrueRTA, and it's small enough to pack almost anywhere... :)
 
Yeah, but that means you've got to manage two PCs instead of one. Not the best solution, particularly if you're looking for an overall mobile one (e.g. one that you can use for both design and measurement).

I was planning to have a 32 bit PC for ALL speaker design purposes and for nothing else, not even internet. When I finally do end up getting a USB mic I'll use REW, ARTA (LIMP) and maybe a few other measurement packages in addition to Hornresp, MJK's worksheets, Akabak, Bagby's PCD suite, SPL tracer and anything else speaker related all on one laptop. This frees up my other laptop to stream Netflix or play music, and browse the internet or run other programs at the same time since I'm usually doing those things AND any speaker design related tasks all at once anyway.

What did you use to host the VM? I use Hyper-V on my PC, and I've never run into that issue you mentioned, even with 4 VMs running at once, one of those being an XP VM running Akabak. What I DID run into was a hit on hard drive performance caused by one of the bigger VMs, which I easily resolved by adding an SSD and running the VMs off of that instead of the PC's main drive.

I was using Oracle VM.

Thinking about it again... did you have enough RAM installed in that PC to host both your main OS and the VM? What you described could be caused by excessive paging caused by insufficient RAM.

Hmm... my Windows 10 tablet is 32-bit. Maybe I should try running Akabak off of that to see if it runs properly, or at all :)


B.

It was a new (at the time) I7 laptop with 8 gb ram. It's the cheapest I7 available, closer to an I5 in performance than most I7s but that's what it was. And it was a clean OS install too with all the nonsense turned off (msconfig) so it wasn't an issue with a bloated software situation.

As soon as I installed Oracle VM and Sketchup (at the same time) the issue started and didn't stop until I uninstalled them. I don't remember much about specific situations (whether it was all the time or with just VM running or with just Sketchup running) and I didn't investigate much since it was overall WAY easier to just grab an unused old Netbook out of the closet and use that instead.
 
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... my little 8" windows tablet is now running HornResp, Akabak, DATS, HolmImpulse, my Excel design spreadsheets and TrueRTA, and it's small enough to pack almost anywhere... :)

That is very cool and similar to what I am going to do (a dedicated speaker related laptop) but an 8 inch screen seems a bit small for some of these things. Even my 10.4 inch netbook screen is frustratingly small when using some programs. I'm planning on getting a regular size notebook for this stuff.

This is also maybe personal preference, but I prefer a full size keyboard. It doesn't need the number pad on the right side but I like full size real keys. i never did like touchscreens much for typing, or the smaller (not full size) netbook keypad.

For outside measurements the tablet would be kind of ideal, very portable and very long battery life but for anything else I think I would prefer at least a 14 inch laptop. But this is all just personal preference.
 
I was using Oracle VM.

It was a new (at the time) I7 laptop with 8 gb ram. It's the cheapest I7 available, closer to an I5 in performance than most I7s but that's what it was. And it was a clean OS install too with all the nonsense turned off (msconfig) so it wasn't an issue with a bloated software situation.

As soon as I installed Oracle VM and Sketchup (at the same time) the issue started and didn't stop until I uninstalled them.

Curious behavior. Oracle's VM product works a bit differently to Hyper-V, but it shouldn't cause that kind of behavior unless there was some sort of resource issue (in your case, I'd have started Task Manager and just look at what was happening with the RAM and drives as well as CPU in an attempt to suss out what was causing the problem). I have noticed though that VMs really, REALLY want a fast HDD to work best, and I resolved that problem on my home PC by putting them all on an SSD, separate to the drive holding the PC's OS. In the office I've got a laptop (really portable workstation) with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage space, 500GB of which is an SSD. It's currently running 4VMs that literally boot up in seconds. It's a testing platform that will eventually host about 6~12 VMs at full tilt. Hyper-V is provided free with the Professional and Enterprise versions of Windows, so that's what I'm using to host them.

No VMs on the tablet though. With 2GB of RAM and an Atom chip, that's probably not a good idea :)
 
There were no speed issues, the VM booted fast, Windows XP 32 bit booted fast within the VM and Akabak ran fast within the WinXP within the VM. The only issues was excessive heat, and when I say excessive I was really worried about the laptop actually starting to melt and it was impossible to have it on your lap for more than a couple of minutes before it really hurt.

I did no diagnosis whatsoever, it was just easier to use a 32 bit laptop.
 
That is very cool and similar to what I am going to do (a dedicated speaker related laptop) but an 8 inch screen seems a bit small for some of these things. Even my 10.4 inch netbook screen is frustratingly small when using some programs. I'm planning on getting a regular size notebook for this stuff.

This is also maybe personal preference, but I prefer a full size keyboard. It doesn't need the number pad on the right side but I like full size real keys. i never did like touchscreens much for typing, or the smaller (not full size) netbook keypad.

For outside measurements the tablet would be kind of ideal, very portable and very long battery life but for anything else I think I would prefer at least a 14 inch laptop. But this is all just personal preference.

Yeah, a laptop will definitely be a bit more versatile and easy to use (blinking tablet only has one USB port and it's microUSB so I have to remember to walk with the dongle). A laptop won't fit in my toolkit though :).

The Asus laptop makes it a little easier by including Wacom tech for its pen - apart from making it easier to work with software not really designed for tablet use, I can measure, screen capture, annotate on the image with the pen in Paint, then save to OneDrive for looking at later on my PC.
 
Hello

would there anyone who can help me with Abec

I modelize a design and I wanted to go in the ABEC

I understood the basis of logiciele but when I want to program it does not do anything

I have an error message, telling me that there is a problem to generate the mesh

it is possible for me to send you my project to make me correction

waiting for your answer thank you



 
I dont know if it is still actuall.
So you cant import mesh file to abec?
What program have you build mesh in? What formats can you export it to?
I have different problem:
Looks like solving stage calculate only few first frequencies.
For example:
Control_Solver
f1=1000; f2=5000; NumFrequencies=19; Abscissa=log;
MeshFrequency=100Hz
Dim=3D
Meshing=Delunay

Gives me fields for 1000, 1093, 1195Hz and so on untill 2445 Hz skipping rest (2673-5000Hz)
Seems like some bug.
There is a way around(different inputs changes thing a bit but it is blind shoot methodology and dont work on large scale)

For this photo above make mesh of phase plug with normals calculated outside. Horn itself with normals calculated inside. Both connect in solving stage to domain one(in propherties interior).
Seperatly make exterior of whole speaker enclosure with hole exactly for above horn and normals calculated outside. Connect it to domain 2. In domain 2 propherties make it exterior.
Seperatly make face exactly as horn exit. Make from it interface connecting domain 1 and domain2
Make box of rear chamber with normals calculated inside( domain 3). In propherties interior.
Connect front membrane to domain 1, rear to domain3.
HF.

Hmm is it freecad?
 
Your meshfrequency is way too low. Use 5000 if you want to sim to 5000.
If your computer cant handle this, divide your model in sub domains. I see you have a domain for the horn en for the outside but no coupler?

Also use symetries, so only make a quarter of your model.
Final tip, always calculate a multiple of processor cores number of frequencies, so if you have 4 cores, calculate 4 or 8 or 12 etc.
 
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When I write higher mesh frequency it suprisingly calculates less:(
There is interface "Inter1E" connecting domains 1 and 3. Pc is solid 9k on benchmark.
How does it work if there is whole model and symetry?

Do you make seperate properthies of mesh frequency or edge length for each mesh file?
 
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