Anyone have thoughts on the LaVoce SSF122.50L 12" Paper Cone Subwoofer? Specs look good but I don't find anything from anyone who has ACTUALLY used it. LaVoce is not widely used by the DIY HiFi crowd in the U.S., at least those who frequent the forums.
@tktran303 -- You might consider it youthful overreach, but I don't see anything wrong with building something that more than fulfills your needs. The assurance that the system won't ever be overstressed by your demands: That's worth something. Maybe a lot.
Having said that, I have to admit, considering all the factors, the SB Acoustics SB34NRX75-6 is probably the most capable woofer suggested here so far. It reaches deep enough, plays loud enough, probably goes high enough, in not huge boxes closed or not, and is decently priced around the world. Tough to beat.
that SB Acoustics SB34NRX75-6 is good, but on the upper side of our price limits i think. That's why i started look at Faital and Peerless. But it's a great driver that can go low sealed and is usable to about 500Hz (so relative easy to crosso to a smaller mid in a small sealed cabinet). If the price is no issue, it's also what i would choose. But it's about 200€ in europe, that may be too much for a budget build.
I think the Lavoce start to resonate to early in the frequency band, you need to cross it not higher than 250Hz, which is to low for a classic monkey coffin speaker. If you can find a mid that can get there in a sealed config it can work, but not when you want to crosssover in the 300 to 500Hz region like a classic monkey coffin speaker.
I think the 12" Peerless might be a good choice. Here's a sim at 50w input. Two box sizes are in the graph. Both are smaller than the absolute ideal, but any builder can increase the box size by adding depth. The f3 is between 43hz, and 48hz. Any size in between would fall between the two lines.
One of my rooms has a very significant bass peak at 45hz. Anything below 100hz is largely room dependent.
I know that hearing a solid 40hz is important to many, but the speaker f3 could be somewhat higher, and still achieve that extension.
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Quoting myself here. This is a screenshot of a tweeter measurement with a REW target overlay. Anyone could measure any tweeter on the same baffle, and filter it to a target. This tweeter could be matched to your mid, and someone else's woofer. So one person might use a $20 Dayton, and another might want a $100 Morel. Shouldn't matter, other than small diffraction differences.
Most woofers will have a slight dip in the nearfield.
The Lavoce is no exception and has a dip at 700Hz thanks to Joseph’s near field measurement. I would think that a XO of around 350-400Hz would OK.
The Peerless 830668, 830669 mentioned also exhibit this; When they are measured at longer distances sometimes they are not visible in the datasheet, but in the nearfield it is there
(I have a 830668).
Here’s speaker that has a dip at around 400Hz-450Hz, but was used all the way to it’s XO point of 800Hz:
https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/jbl_m2/
Remember, dips are not as audible as peaks.. and whilst it’s not ideal, I don’t think we should be expecting perfection at this price.
The Lavoce is no exception and has a dip at 700Hz thanks to Joseph’s near field measurement. I would think that a XO of around 350-400Hz would OK.
The Peerless 830668, 830669 mentioned also exhibit this; When they are measured at longer distances sometimes they are not visible in the datasheet, but in the nearfield it is there
(I have a 830668).
Here’s speaker that has a dip at around 400Hz-450Hz, but was used all the way to it’s XO point of 800Hz:
https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/jbl_m2/
Remember, dips are not as audible as peaks.. and whilst it’s not ideal, I don’t think we should be expecting perfection at this price.
That may be true, but the woofer (and mid) in a classic monkey coffin probably had plenty of in-band driver resonances.
yes, and for $159 USD, that is very nice performance. Of course a driver that is twice the price will perform much better.
The sim results in the link are a good place to start.
Here is the actual measured response in a 70 liter sealed box 14.5 x 14.5 x 30.5 inch (368 x 368 x 775 mm).
Near Field. The measurement becomes invalid above 430 Hz due to the size of the diaphragm. You can see the cancellation null between 500 - 700 Hz. This is not real, it is an artifact of the near field measurement process.
Here is the adjustment to 4-pi anechoic, using my baffle size/shape
One interesting thing about this driver is that it requires little or no baffle step correction.
j.
I'm torn between two goals...get the absolute best technical performance we can with a hard cap on a $600 total driver budget...or see how far below that budget we can get with still good performance. I am well aware that $600 is NOT a BUDGET project for many people and if a well performing Budget Classic 3-way could be build for $400 or less, I think that would be appealing to a lot of people.
The SB34NRX is really good. I think it would be difficult to keep within a $600 goal but not impossible, but I can definitely come up with some lower cost tweeters such that it could work. Maybe irrational of me, but I almost feel it is "too" good. One of the challenges of a Budget project is to make those hard trade-offs to keep to the tight budget. If we are using really good quality drivers, maybe our budget is too high.
Just posting thoughts, nothing technically relevant to the design🙂
The SB34NRX is really good. I think it would be difficult to keep within a $600 goal but not impossible, but I can definitely come up with some lower cost tweeters such that it could work. Maybe irrational of me, but I almost feel it is "too" good. One of the challenges of a Budget project is to make those hard trade-offs to keep to the tight budget. If we are using really good quality drivers, maybe our budget is too high.
Just posting thoughts, nothing technically relevant to the design🙂
One way to illuminate that kind of tradeoff is to go through the design process at each price point. Design a virtual speaker with a $600 driver budget, making all the decisions and compromises necessary to get the best speaker that $600 of driver will produce. Carry the design process up to the point where we have a virtual design, but not to the point where we build a cabinet to make real measurements.
Then repeat the entire process at a $500 driver price point... then at $400.
This is would fully illuminate what kind of performance the extra $100 would buy.
And yes, I think the SB34NRX75-6 is a rather expensive woofer to be considered for a "budget classic 3-way". I also think that a 12" woofer might be overly ambitious for a speaker at this price point. A 10" woofer allows a smaller cabinet, and a higher crossover point to the mid. The cabinet will be a significant portion of the overall cost of this kind of project, and a higher crossover point allows more midrange options (including cheaper midranges), and smaller L's and C's in the crossover.
j.
Then repeat the entire process at a $500 driver price point... then at $400.
This is would fully illuminate what kind of performance the extra $100 would buy.
And yes, I think the SB34NRX75-6 is a rather expensive woofer to be considered for a "budget classic 3-way". I also think that a 12" woofer might be overly ambitious for a speaker at this price point. A 10" woofer allows a smaller cabinet, and a higher crossover point to the mid. The cabinet will be a significant portion of the overall cost of this kind of project, and a higher crossover point allows more midrange options (including cheaper midranges), and smaller L's and C's in the crossover.
j.
Anybody give thought to the Dayton MX10 or MX12? As long as sensitivity is high enough, they dig deep in smaller volumes.
SB34NRX+SB12MNRX2+SB19ST comes out to $308 at Madisound... seems reasonable to me if the SB34 is sealed
The MX drivers allegedly have poor inductance control (and high Le to begin with) so better for sub duty
The MX drivers allegedly have poor inductance control (and high Le to begin with) so better for sub duty
This make the higher cost worthwhile in lots of ways. Means higher sensitivity, no power waste in damping resistors in the crossover & greater range of mid choices.
Given the topic I think this was a quite insensitive suggestion... borderline rude 😉
//
The bigger 5" SB15NBAC30 would be a better choice to mate with the 12" and it would still be ok crossing to a 19mm tweeter at >3khz. Not much $ difference. At Solen it's $85 vs $90 (or close to that).
Without other constraints I might go for that too since the SB19 can be crossed even below 2kHz (as in Buchardts), but the smaller 12MNRX2 seems to match the SB34 in headroom while being closer to budget.