Visaton is not really bad, but there is a lot better arround now for similar prices. Visaton designs are mostly relative old, and the pricing is not really compettivie. The rest of the world moved on and many brands offer a lot better than visaton for similar prices.
I know visaton is popular in Germany, because they cater to diy for decades now, but they did not keep up with the evolution in speaker design and sell many drivers for way to much money compared to the others on the market. Monacor is a bit better at this, but suffers similar issues.
So Visaton is not bad, but not what i would use now for the prices the sell. SB, Dayton and some others offer a lot more for often even cheaper prices.
I know visaton is popular in Germany, because they cater to diy for decades now, but they did not keep up with the evolution in speaker design and sell many drivers for way to much money compared to the others on the market. Monacor is a bit better at this, but suffers similar issues.
So Visaton is not bad, but not what i would use now for the prices the sell. SB, Dayton and some others offer a lot more for often even cheaper prices.
I built a single driver (Fostex 206E, about £60 from memory) back loaded horn pair using the deisgn reccomended by Fostex. The Baltic Birch Ply cut to all the dimensions inc the many small internal parts was £220. I really enjoyed the build but getting them out of the workshop was a laugh at 10 stone each. They sounded very good and as they didn't require a crossover were really a doddle to put together. I think eveyone into audio should have a go at a pair of speakers at some point as you never know what you might create.I'm scared, It's beginning to sound very complicated.
Do you think home made speakers can sound as good as a pro manufacturer, they have the advantages of anechoic chambers all the test equipment
Also do you think any box designing software may be helpful, if so have you used any program paid or unpaid
Monacor are still around : https://www.monacor.com/products/components/speaker-technology/hi-fi-speakers-/msh-115hq/ for example.
Thank ! What do you think of the seas w22ex001 i mentioned earlier, it is an old unit do you think the sb and dayton units mentioned being more modern, would I be better off with them
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Have been offered RCF nd2530t3 and B&C DE 900 as midrange drivers, what do you think of these, are they hi-fi or PA type drivers. The manufacturer describes them as high end but if they are high end PA would they be all about the loudness not sound quality
Its good to about 300Hz,, then it starts to resonate. So morea sub or a woofer for a 3 way.
SB and Dayton offer similar quality, but often a lot cheaper than Seas. The SB Satori WO24P does it a lot better for a cheaper price for instance. And the Dayton RS225-8 is even cheaper and at least the same quality as that older Seas design.
Both are out of production, so no data to be found and i have no experience with them. If you want good mids from a compression driver, use coax CD's like the B&C DCX464 or the BMS (4592ND or so) in a suitable horn.
Sorry no horn i am afraid, i will have to buy one. The price is good £50 each, just wondering what the performance is like.
Thanks ! 300hz is not much, Think i'll forget the seas. What is the usable frequency response of these other two units
The RS225-8 to about 800Hz i think, The Satori to a bit higher arround 1200Hz. Both can be used a bit higher with higher order crossovers.
Why not 2000Hz like they suggest in the datasheet? It just looks like a hard speaker to work with because of the resonant peak at ~4.5kHz. This will require some fiddling with RLC components to tune a notch filter.
I'd try an R||L||C block in series with the speaker, so the load goes open-circuit at the tuning frequency. Alternatively, a series R+L+C block could be placed in parallel with the speaker, short-circuiting the resonant frequency, but the distortion is likely to be higher that way. Lars Risbo @ Purifi had a blog post showing the difference it can make, depending on how the notch is configured.
IMO the metal Seas could be a good "deep end" speaker for a 2-way. I'd start with a notch filter, and then make the overall system active hybrid. So: using active filters for bi-amping and EQ, while keeping the passive filters to reduce distortion.
The driver starts to beam above 300Hz, a lot more than most drivers of that size. And at that same point it start resonating, altough initially well damped. The big resonance is starting at 2kHz, but at 500Hz its already very reonanting, also with a higher distortion as result. There is a very hearable distortion peak arround 2kHz also, you don't even have to see measuremnts to know that, just listen. There are many measurements online that confirm that.
It's on it's own a good driver, but the good is between fs and 300hz, not above.
It's on it's own a good driver, but the good is between fs and 300hz, not above.
What was the hardware setup for some of those measurements? My guess is that a lot of measurements were done "active only", not realising that passive components can reduce the harmonic distortion well below the base-line that's achievable by a direct connection between the speaker and amplifier.
Thanks ! Most diy kit speakers compete pretty well with commercial speakers twice their price, how does the two kits you mentioned compete
Which drive unit would you recommend which gives a fast snappy kind of sound, would a small cone like a 5" help, are paper cones fast, are big cones slow
If you want a snappy sound, it's more the box alignment that does that. Look at group delay and step response of the cabinet to see that (lower is better), and then a sealed cabinet is the best.
Size of cone or cone material is not determing that. Light cones (low mms) may help, but will be harder to go low as for going low you need a strong cone (that are in general heavyer). And don't push the driver to it's limit, so a bigger cone has advantage there. Snappiness is how fast a cone react to the signal, in starting and stopping the movement of the cone.
But it's also the room you're in. If you have a very reverberant room, all detail like snappiness disssappear in the reverb mud...
Size of cone or cone material is not determing that. Light cones (low mms) may help, but will be harder to go low as for going low you need a strong cone (that are in general heavyer). And don't push the driver to it's limit, so a bigger cone has advantage there. Snappiness is how fast a cone react to the signal, in starting and stopping the movement of the cone.
But it's also the room you're in. If you have a very reverberant room, all detail like snappiness disssappear in the reverb mud...
Hmmm, there are some contradictions, Waxx, aren't there? Size of cone or cone material is directly associated with the air around, behind, the box size, the air impedance in front of the speaker etc etc.
size or cone material does not say how fast a speaker starts or stops, that is a combination of mechanical damping (cabinet, spider and surrounds) and electric damping and force (magnet), not cone material or size of cone. The cone define the dispertion and resonances by a big part, but not group delay or step response (or only in a very minor part). That is largely done by the cabinet and how you use it In a reflex or horn (whatever kind except frontloaded) or a TL you use a gap in the cabinet that is out of phase with the direct radiator, so the group delay is high (in ms). With a sealed there is no signal out of phase. So the cabinet has by far the biggest influence on that.
In reality the difference is not always big, and a reflex or a TL can be snappy, but it will be easier to do with a sealed acoustic suspension style cabinet.
In reality the difference is not always big, and a reflex or a TL can be snappy, but it will be easier to do with a sealed acoustic suspension style cabinet.