Probably European built… I plead guilty on buying stuff from overseas, but: not expensive compared to some Scan Speak or Seas models or more exclusive brands.
Visaton, just as Monacor buys stuff all over the world, cheap. The difference between value, compared to other brands and retail price has exploded in the last years.
In my oppinion, development and state of the art manufacturing material have to be paid, but Visaton and Monacor are selling the same old program for more than 3 decades now. Nothing new, no development. No cause to triple prices in a few years.
If I compare a 50€ tweeter from one of those two German distributors with what I get from Seas, Scan Speak, Tympany, SB, WaveCore and the like, things look bad for their oldtimer program. What they have is a very broad distribution and Visaton this quite usefull Boxsim program, making it simple for newbies or one time builder to get a somehow satisfying result. Even as there are much better simulation programs for free, these all need a little more practice.
So if you are lazy, stay wit Visaton/ Boxsim. You pay more and your results are limited.
In my oppinion, development and state of the art manufacturing material have to be paid, but Visaton and Monacor are selling the same old program for more than 3 decades now. Nothing new, no development. No cause to triple prices in a few years.
If I compare a 50€ tweeter from one of those two German distributors with what I get from Seas, Scan Speak, Tympany, SB, WaveCore and the like, things look bad for their oldtimer program. What they have is a very broad distribution and Visaton this quite usefull Boxsim program, making it simple for newbies or one time builder to get a somehow satisfying result. Even as there are much better simulation programs for free, these all need a little more practice.
So if you are lazy, stay wit Visaton/ Boxsim. You pay more and your results are limited.
The strength of this forum are the many different people throwing in their 2 Cent. Andy sure is able to find some kit retailers online, but he was so wise to ask here. I don't think he wants to build just the same as he has, but a real improvement.
IMO his amp has a very high output impedance, the first thing to find would be a speaker with a matching, flat impedance. Which includes an impedance correction. Then, second, even as Andy may not have realized by him self how important this is, a 4 Watt amp get's more headroom the more efficient and easyer to drive the speaker is, at low SPL! It doesn't matter that his recend speaker "worked" loud enough with the amp. The difference between working and good sound is as large as the Atlantic ocean wet.
So a lot of quite good or even excellent kits may disapoint him as they will not sound much better than what he has. Different, for sure, but better? The usual "I build this kit and Bill from the butcher said it sounded fantastic" may not be the right thing for him.
In my world, where tube amp owner usually expect something extraordinare from their chain, people build all kinds of special speaker, like open baffle, horn and high effiency. Which often leads to very surprising results, in a positive way. Trolls G. for example, may have all kind of super linear kits, I don't see any I would recommend for a 4 Watt SE valve.
IMO his amp has a very high output impedance, the first thing to find would be a speaker with a matching, flat impedance. Which includes an impedance correction. Then, second, even as Andy may not have realized by him self how important this is, a 4 Watt amp get's more headroom the more efficient and easyer to drive the speaker is, at low SPL! It doesn't matter that his recend speaker "worked" loud enough with the amp. The difference between working and good sound is as large as the Atlantic ocean wet.
So a lot of quite good or even excellent kits may disapoint him as they will not sound much better than what he has. Different, for sure, but better? The usual "I build this kit and Bill from the butcher said it sounded fantastic" may not be the right thing for him.
In my world, where tube amp owner usually expect something extraordinare from their chain, people build all kinds of special speaker, like open baffle, horn and high effiency. Which often leads to very surprising results, in a positive way. Trolls G. for example, may have all kind of super linear kits, I don't see any I would recommend for a 4 Watt SE valve.
<< Troels G. for example, may have all kind of super linear kits, I don't see any I would recommend for a 4 Watt SE valve.
I'm open to an ordinary box speaker with a spl of 90db or more. Not horns, been there and didn't like them. Not open baffle either, no space.
I helped a friend find a very cheap pair of Snell J speakers a few weeks ago. That would be in your ballpark. An audio buddy has Snell K - 8" in a sealed box, 90db.
https://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/191snell/index.html
I'm open to an ordinary box speaker with a spl of 90db or more. Not horns, been there and didn't like them. Not open baffle either, no space.
I helped a friend find a very cheap pair of Snell J speakers a few weeks ago. That would be in your ballpark. An audio buddy has Snell K - 8" in a sealed box, 90db.
https://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/191snell/index.html
that's a sad reality, efficienty comes with bigger cabinet. Here we are far from 20L and cheap. Dunno if AJ has corners free with its front window !
that's a triangle choice factor where the angles are : Fs - Vas - efficienty ! You can not have it all. When you comes close to one corner you are farer with the others.
that's a triangle choice factor where the angles are : Fs - Vas - efficienty ! You can not have it all. When you comes close to one corner you are farer with the others.
All is not lost. You can do it differently, you have no power but you like SET and sealed bass.
What if you go with a 2 ways + 1 little active sub (this one near the chair, 8" style + passive driver or PP)
you need a standalone DSP plate amp (Black Friday is comming) and two drivers and few wood for a compact box and you stay with the good Mission, the solo sub will help. All sealed. If the Mission is a 2 ways vented, you close the vents with a towel, you keep the SET amp for them only. The Dayton RS-220 is known for its good low end and precise sound.
Or a second hand little Kef sub... but imo you do need the DSP trick of a little Hypex or like.
What if you go with a 2 ways + 1 little active sub (this one near the chair, 8" style + passive driver or PP)
you need a standalone DSP plate amp (Black Friday is comming) and two drivers and few wood for a compact box and you stay with the good Mission, the solo sub will help. All sealed. If the Mission is a 2 ways vented, you close the vents with a towel, you keep the SET amp for them only. The Dayton RS-220 is known for its good low end and precise sound.
Or a second hand little Kef sub... but imo you do need the DSP trick of a little Hypex or like.
See, Andy is a diffilcult customer 😉
He doesn't want a sub and no response below 60 Hz. At least he thinks so. Then he wants a closed cabinet.
So the usual, logical sollutions for a 4 Watt valve amp are somehow ruled out.
He already has some ideas he wants to realize. I think we should leave him allone and do his experiments with the drivers he already owns, in his planed aluminum cabinet.
Maybe he is happy with the result. If not, the door to this forum is always open and we can then discuss other options.
At least this is DIYS and solutions dead wrong for one person can be the heaven of audio for another. A lot has to do with getting used to a "sound" and no A/B comparison.
As a last offer, I have a small (very small) horn reflex kit that would fit his amp. Simple to build and of surprising quality, cheap enough to buy and build just for fun on a weekend.
It uses a 3" speaker and can be build with many different drivers. Which driver to choose depends a little on availability. I bet it will leave you with your mouth wide open...
Just to get an idea: https://www.lautsprechershop.de/hifi/ct265.htm
the inside https://www.ebay.de/itm/134306029564
with a very cheap driver: https://oaudio.de/CT-265-RC-I-Bausatz
with Dayton Audio https://variant-hifi.com/lautsprech...tsprecher/5392/ct265-e90-lautsprecherbausatz#
very nice and cheap https://www.soundimports.eu/de/dayton-audio-ps95-8.html
Drivers that have been used with it: Tang Band W3-881SJF, Tang Band W3-1319A.
Basically any 3" with a strong drive. The cabinet is very tollerant to different drivers and one may use a coil, cap and resistor to trim the sound to personel taste.
He doesn't want a sub and no response below 60 Hz. At least he thinks so. Then he wants a closed cabinet.
So the usual, logical sollutions for a 4 Watt valve amp are somehow ruled out.
He already has some ideas he wants to realize. I think we should leave him allone and do his experiments with the drivers he already owns, in his planed aluminum cabinet.
Maybe he is happy with the result. If not, the door to this forum is always open and we can then discuss other options.
At least this is DIYS and solutions dead wrong for one person can be the heaven of audio for another. A lot has to do with getting used to a "sound" and no A/B comparison.
As a last offer, I have a small (very small) horn reflex kit that would fit his amp. Simple to build and of surprising quality, cheap enough to buy and build just for fun on a weekend.
It uses a 3" speaker and can be build with many different drivers. Which driver to choose depends a little on availability. I bet it will leave you with your mouth wide open...
Just to get an idea: https://www.lautsprechershop.de/hifi/ct265.htm
the inside https://www.ebay.de/itm/134306029564
with a very cheap driver: https://oaudio.de/CT-265-RC-I-Bausatz
with Dayton Audio https://variant-hifi.com/lautsprech...tsprecher/5392/ct265-e90-lautsprecherbausatz#
very nice and cheap https://www.soundimports.eu/de/dayton-audio-ps95-8.html
Drivers that have been used with it: Tang Band W3-881SJF, Tang Band W3-1319A.
Basically any 3" with a strong drive. The cabinet is very tollerant to different drivers and one may use a coil, cap and resistor to trim the sound to personel taste.
These Snell designs wouldn’t appear on my list. Old school 8”-1” and although there is nothing wrong with the Vifa units (especially the D26T is still a good tweeter) those foam surrounds of the 8” units are prone to decay. The total concept is long overdue and I doubt that 90dB per 1W/1m claim.
By the way, transplanting the parts of one box into another cabinet, however strong build, will not give any surprising changes. The bass may get cleaner, that is all you can expect.
You can eliminate resonances of a cheap build box, but if there is nothing to make it resonate, ie low frequency, no change will be audible. Very simple. A thing called physics. Like that lorry passing under your window, making the glas shatter. No Lorry: Window stays quiet.
Foam surronds are a bad thing with old speakers, they can degrade from one day to the other. Even worse are repair surrounds. It is a major design element, so if you change it, you get a different chassis.
Today most foam surronds live much longer. Many only seem to be the old stuff, but in fact they are made from foamed rubber that is going to last ages.
You can eliminate resonances of a cheap build box, but if there is nothing to make it resonate, ie low frequency, no change will be audible. Very simple. A thing called physics. Like that lorry passing under your window, making the glas shatter. No Lorry: Window stays quiet.
Foam surronds are a bad thing with old speakers, they can degrade from one day to the other. Even worse are repair surrounds. It is a major design element, so if you change it, you get a different chassis.
Today most foam surronds live much longer. Many only seem to be the old stuff, but in fact they are made from foamed rubber that is going to last ages.
Probably the best option for Andy on that site. For a somewhat larger box than his minis a gain of 5-6dB. That speaker also makes use of room gain. This may mean a bass tone control is essential maybe even to cut it. There are other options but where to stop. REW stands for Room Equalisation Wizard. One of it's functions. The crossover F would be seen as high enough for some and given the relatively gentle slope the phase matching must be pretty good. Cross overs - what does a 3 way offer - keeps them well out of the important stuff. It's where phase problems may crop up.
Andy wants to use his own box. I think it's pretty clear by now that this would need a diy design. There are loads of apps that will help with that but for a beginner not much where crossovers are concerned. There is one app that adds various bits seeking certain goals. It can take a long time to run. A popular app is Xsim. It needs certain speaker data files. It doesn't really do a design but allows values to be changed and evaluated quickly. Some people with experience will do this fairly quickly. They will also have an idea what extra parts to add to basic crossover styles to improve things. All of these things are based on famous formulae but unfortunately speakers are not purely resistive so the formulae results won't match expectations. They are likely to be way off.
These data files. No problem with Dayton as they can be downloaded from Parts Express. But scant elsewhere. Boxsim has them buried in it for all of Visaton's drivers. Sadly not just downloadable. So what do people do - measure them. One suggestion made by someone to a person attempting a design for the first time was spend £120 on some Dayton kit to measure speakers. I assume it can do acoustic phase as well as the other needed data file. Some would say measure it all yourself anyway. Drivers vary, the spec sheets wont be exact. I am not sure if an app such as REW can generate these files.Looks like it can but doc's are not that task related in some areas.
One well regarded app is intended to design horn speakers. It can be used for other style but the interface is rather obscure, Not sure what it does for crossovers. There is a quick intro to using it for other types of speaker on a woofer site. Not of much interest to me as I expect a decent speaker design to be rather iterative how ever it's done 😉 Worse still I wont want to add corrective stuff in the chain to the speaker. In some ways active crossovers or dsp's make more sense than passive.
LOL Lazy. Bit like not spotting the cheapest 6.5 bass mid that can stand a pretty high crossover F. Seems Visaton haven't introduced new speaker or dropped some for ages, When they say high end prices rocket. Like most makers they produce what sells. High end stuff is expensive who ever makes it.
I'd say the biggest mistake a beginner could make is buy drivers at day one rather than simulating first.
Some wonderful suggestions, guys. But alas I have to face up to reality in a compact city apartment. Subs would just annoy my nice friends downstairs. I don't have any corners on the wall the speakers are on, just a big French window in the centre. I can only do very limited woodwork in a small kitchen and she who must be obeyed hates mess. So constructing larger wooden cabinets and horns is out. Hence ready-made aluminium parts that bolt together. The speakers themselves must be fairly compact - I like to see out of the window and walk around the room. A tall and thin floorstander isn't impossible but again we come up against the woodwork issue. So it all points to a 2-way stand mount. If I lived in a villa by a lake, different story.
You're are aware that subs don't have to go loud?
What about a FAST system, where the fullrange is being done by the tube amplifier and woofer has an active amplifier.
Slim floorstanders is where I ended up. My old speakers blocked the light a bit and it was hard to open the windows as they were in the way.
Mine new ones are 15cm wide and I went active as I was concerned about slim speakers producing any bass.
I ended up with surplus power as the smallest amps I could find at that time were Rod Elliot’s TDA7293s and I have 4 per cabinet.
I tend to play music when the neighbours are out as I live in a semi-detached house.
Mine new ones are 15cm wide and I went active as I was concerned about slim speakers producing any bass.
I ended up with surplus power as the smallest amps I could find at that time were Rod Elliot’s TDA7293s and I have 4 per cabinet.
I tend to play music when the neighbours are out as I live in a semi-detached house.
<< My new ones are 15cm wide and I went active as I was concerned about slim speakers producing any bass.>>
You can get 150mm square section quite easily in aluminium. No woodwork!
https://www.aluminium-online.co.uk/product/150-x-150-x-3mm-aluminium-square-tube/
I have a pair of such tubes looking for speaker units. Unfortunately just a tiny bit too thin for 6.5" mid-bass units with 145mm cutouts and I'm loathe to go smaller.
You can get 150mm square section quite easily in aluminium. No woodwork!
https://www.aluminium-online.co.uk/product/150-x-150-x-3mm-aluminium-square-tube/
I have a pair of such tubes looking for speaker units. Unfortunately just a tiny bit too thin for 6.5" mid-bass units with 145mm cutouts and I'm loathe to go smaller.
I went with 2 x 5 1/4” Monacor units SPH135C to try to recover a bit of surface area. These have the squared off shape, I couldn’t fit any circular ones.
My first prototype used 4 x 4” for bass, but they ended up taller than I wanted so went with the two bigger ones and added a few mm to the width.
These are 88dB/W but once you add baffle step compensation you’ll likely end up without quite enough power.
I have power to burn so this didn’t concern me.
My first prototype used 4 x 4” for bass, but they ended up taller than I wanted so went with the two bigger ones and added a few mm to the width.
These are 88dB/W but once you add baffle step compensation you’ll likely end up without quite enough power.
I have power to burn so this didn’t concern me.
I said it earlier but it seems to have been ignored. So I'll say it again: This one : ... 12 lters sealed, Scanspeak and Morel drivers, an incredibly clean, accurate full range sound and flat down to around 54Hz! Quite possibly the best speaker I have ever owned. Certainly the best I have ever built. @andyjevans, what is it about this that you do not like? It seems perfect for your needs yet I saw no comment from you one way or the other. Did you look at it? Thanks.
<< I said it earlier but it seems to have been ignored. So I'll say it again: This one : ... 12 lters sealed, Scanspeak and Morel drivers >>
How did I miss this? Can you give me the link again please? Thanks.
How did I miss this? Can you give me the link again please? Thanks.
Here 'tis @andyjevans . Sorry. I meant to include it in the previous post.
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/thr...-e-ix-mini-monitor-loudspeaker-system.112821/
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/thr...-e-ix-mini-monitor-loudspeaker-system.112821/
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