Newb - Grand Piano bass….how do I get there?

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bmihlfeith

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Joined 2016
#1
I’m new to DIY speakers but have a good understanding of basic electronics and I’d say I’m an advanced DIY’r with all the necessary tools and equipment to build a very nice system. I just don’t know how to design the speakers for the sound I’m looking for. I’ll try to explain.

At the beginning of Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel”, on one of the best systems I’ve heard (the one I’d like to build) the grand piano gives a massive “heart thumping” feeling. The remake of Sound of Silence by Disturbed is another song that my system can’t seem to “dig” into enough.

I have Kef R300s and two large subs (SVS PB-13 Ultra and Definitive Tech Supercube Reference 111lbs ). These are run with a Denon AVR-X3800H in my home theatre/music room. I also have a KEF R200C with R800DS surrounds some DT surrounds all running in 7.2.4 for now. The room has also been treated with 6 very large hanging panels and a large floor rug.

But no matter what I do I can’t seem to tune my system to give me that intense grand piano bass. Thomas and Stereo (the YouTuber) describes his Earthquake Sound Tigris here as doing exactly that.

How would I go about building and designing a set of towers to give me this “sound” that would make it different than any other pair? Here’s where I have zero experience but it seems this frequency I’m looking for is around 300-400hz?

Is it the cabinets? Woofer size? Crossover?

I understand no one is going to be able to answer this with a single simple response, I get that it’s a combination of the parts. Maybe that’s what I’m asking, what combination of parts is more likely to give me this finished product that can give results? What general direction should I be looking? Or is it even a realistic expectation?

Thanks all in advance!
 
#3
Assuming no issues with the recording, the short version is 'there's no replacement for displacement'. A grand / concert grand is a big instrument, with a big sounding board, and if you're wanting that 'realistic' SPL, then that means big speakers. As in a couple of 15in HE bass drivers per channel to move sufficient air at both the average SPL and with sufficient headroom (LF dynamic range) on top of that -which 'realistically' means at least 20dB. Probably with a compression mid-tweet above that. Think traditional Altec Lansing. Unfortunately, that means a/ size, b/ cost, and c/ very few actually believe it. 😉

Working on the assumption of the latter (alas), size & efficiency are still your friends in this regard: all other things being equal, the larger & higher the better. Since most things aren't always equal, there's usually a point where most of us either want or have to stop, but a quality big banger is likely to get you further along in this regard than a modest sized floorstander with a pair of long throw 8in midbass / woofers.

If you fancy a limited bit of mathematical self-abuse, it's worth thinking about the room size, your listening distance, & the acoustic / electrical power requirements. Pulling some numbers out of the air as an example, say you have a speaker like the Tigris, rated 87dB @1m, probably 1w. Sticking with that, they say it's a 4ohm nominal impedance, so we'll call it that here. We'll also say you listen at 3m, averaging 85dB at your seating position & need 20dB headroom on top of that to handle realistic LF dynamic peaks. That means using those values, at 1m the speaker would need to be putting out 114.54dB without obvious distortion / compression. Compromising a touch for a -3dB compression on that headroom, it's still 109.77dB [nearly] at 1m. Peak voltage will be about 67.4, and peak wattage requirement will be about 568.49w [per channel]. If we compromise with a -3dB on that headroom per the above, it's still 189.5w [per channel]. You know I said there's no replacement for displacement -in this case the quantity of air being shifted at low frequencies? Especially with something like a concert grand that gets down to about 27.5Hz? There you go. I could be wrong (it's been known on a second-by-second basis) but I doubt even a couple of decent subs are going to give you sufficient volume displacement.
 
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#5
jayme said:
Was it your piece of media (CD?) that you heard it on the better system? Not all recordings retain those lowest registers.
Click to expand...
I can’t confirm, but one was at a Magnolia Best Buy and the other was a high end audio shop ($100k speakers- rep was cool and really enjoyed showing me the gear even when I told him I was a brokie, lol). The magnolia was a streamer and the other place was a CD. I use both CD’s and flac from a Plex server.
 
#6
Scottmoose said:
Assuming no issues with the recording, the short version is 'there's no replacement for displacement'. A grand / concert grand is a big instrument, with a big sounding board, and if you're wanting that 'realistic' SPL, then that means big speakers. As in a couple of 15in HE bass drivers per channel to move sufficient air at both the average SPL and with sufficient headroom (LF dynamic range) on top of that -which 'realistically' means at least 20dB. Probably with a compression mid-tweet above that. Think traditional Altec Lansing. Unfortunately, that means a/ size, b/ cost, and c/ very few actually believe it. 😉

Working on the assumption of the latter (alas), size & efficiency are still your friends in this regard: all other things being equal, the larger & higher the better. Since most things aren't always equal, there's usually a point where most of us either want or have to stop, but a quality big banger is likely to get you further along in this regard than a modest sized floorstander with a pair of long throw 8in midbass / woofers.

If you fancy a limited bit of mathematical self-abuse, it's worth thinking about the room size, your listening distance, & the acoustic / electrical power requirements. Pulling some numbers out of the air as an example, say you have a speaker like the Tigris, rated 87dB @1m, probably 1w. Sticking with that, they say it's a 4ohm nominal impedance, so we'll call it that here. We'll also say you listen at 3m, averaging 85dB at your seating position & need 20dB headroom on top of that to handle realistic LF dynamic peaks. That means using those values, at 1m the speaker would need to be putting out 114.54dB without obvious distortion / compression. Compromising a touch for a -3dB compression on that headroom, it's still 109.77dB [nearly] at 1m. Peak voltage will be about 67.4, and peak wattage requirement will be about 568.49w [per channel]. If we compromise with a -3dB on that headroom per the above, it's still 189.5w [per channel]. You know I said there's no replacement for displacement -in this case the quantity of air being shifted at low frequencies? Especially with something like a concert grand that gets down to about 27.5Hz? There you go. I could be wrong (it's been known on a second-by-second basis) but I doubt even a couple of decent subs are going to give you sufficient volume displacement.
Click to expand...
Wow! thanks for the time to go through that in so much detail. It pretty much confirms what I expected.

I appreciate the math, it helps me grasp just how much I’d need to put into these.

I do have a question, something I don’t quite understand- to get the SPL you need the watts/power to move that much air, but at those volumes aren’t the highs so loud it wouldn't be an enjoyable experience?

What I noticed in these systems is I got the real “chest thumping” experience without the intense volume. I understand those terms are really vague and I’m not doing a great job at explaining, but hopefully that makes sense.

Also, and I know this isn’t the place to ask to be spoonfed, but I’ve got a busy life and have little spare time to do all the research that it would take to design these myself. Because of that I was looking at the CSS kits (any kits really). Ideally what I’d want to find is this speaker that would be my “ideal” in a kit, like the CSS Tritons.
Im quite capable at cabinet assembly and actually everything involved with speaker building, but don’t thst I’d ever have time to do the research to design such a system. That’s why the CSS kits (or from any vendor) sounds ideal.

I’d be really happy to find kit where I had all the plans (crossover mostly) and a list of drivers and I’d be off to the races.

Does such an animal exist to mimic these speakers? Or am I on my own?
 
#7
Just some examples of subwoofer flat packs that are available, in different grades of finished product.
A DSP plate amp, will take care of the xo and amplification in a better way then a passive xos for subs.

there is no replacement for displacement 🙂

https://shop.gsgad.com/collections/evolution-series-subwoofers-flat-packs-and-finished-subs

https://www.rythmikaudio.com/products2.html


https://www.diysoundgroup.com/flat-pack-cabinets/subwoofer-flat-packs.html

https://www.soundimports.eu/en/accessories/speaker-cabinets/subwoofer-speaker-cabinets/
 
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#8
I'm very familiar with 'Angel', one of my test tracks and a beautiful song and vocal. I don't get that 'thumping'/big' sound on the piano, even with our 7" MTMs and a sub. The volume is there, but not the 'oomph'. However, there's no way we're going to put larger speakers in our room to enable that sort of sound, plus I don't think the neighbours would like it.

John Lennon's 'Mother' is another track where the piano really needs that sort of reproduction. Beethoven's 4th and 5th piano concertos, too.

Check out Paul Carmody's 'Tarkus' and 'Pit Vipers' 3 way projects for some ideas.

Geoff
 
#15
If you go to a larger concert where the piano is amplified, you got that impressive "hit" near the speaker. If you only have an open grand piano, it is impressive, but from normal listening distance, not that intense.
Any instrument playing a single note has many harmonics, which make you realize it is a piano and not a bass guitar or organ. These have to fit to reproduce the complete spectrum. So you need a good, impulsive tweeter for realistic reproduction of most low reaching instruments.
I found active, motion controlled (MFB) subs, with amps in the 400W range, very good in giving such problematic, large instruments a solid base.
 
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#16
It's a piano, not a giant celesta. The notes are not supposed to sound chest-thumpy. Though I'll agree that for life-like levels and low distortion, some decent cone area is probably very necessary, but chest-thump definitely errs on the "larger than life" side. I was one of those poor souls lucky enough to have been put through years of piano practise, so AMA lol.

You can take some inspiration from the physical structure -- basically a giant metal harp bolted onto a resonant wooden sound board. But you may not want everything to sound like that. I'd be careful playing piano through horns, even if it's just the highs. If tweeters must be 'boosted' to match the bass, then I'd experiment with some "classic" horn profiles to find out what sounds most natural, and avoid sharp edges on the speaker boxes that promote diffraction. Flat baffles with sharp 90° corners often have this fake, wispy "air" or "zingy" reverb from high frequencies bouncing off the edges. You may not know it exists until you start doing practical A/B experiments with wave guides and learn what it sounds like by catching diffraction effects red-handed, so to speak.
 
#18
From your system description you have plenty of sub bass. From what I've seen of the videos "Angle" is played on the middle of the keyboard. You problem maybe with midbass. That's were pros sound 12s and 15s shine.

Also, it may be the room. Some room just don't do dynamics so well.
 
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