Hi all,
Finished some Live Oak slabs I've been working on. Mainly focused on practicing new finishes like hardwood, epoxy, etc. Otherwise, a simple bass reflex build with a full range driver. I used the MarkAudio CHP-90 driver with a white paper cone, silver hardware, 2.5" x 6.5" round pipe port. It's about 1 ft^3 net internal volume, 38hz tuned port (with a final output goal of peak at 40~41hz; goal was to get Fundamental E1 from this pair at peak instead of F3 or F6). About 7.5" wide cabinet, by 22" tall cabinet, by 15" depth cabinet. Slabs are larger, 8~9" wide with variations, 28~30" tall at peak of slab crowns, 1.5" depth on the slabs. The slabs are sealed in several coats of epoxy.
Left DATS:
Right DATS:
Near field port vs driver output:
Final response with a little DSP work for my preferences, handles this to about 20 watts before distortion.
Very best,
Finished some Live Oak slabs I've been working on. Mainly focused on practicing new finishes like hardwood, epoxy, etc. Otherwise, a simple bass reflex build with a full range driver. I used the MarkAudio CHP-90 driver with a white paper cone, silver hardware, 2.5" x 6.5" round pipe port. It's about 1 ft^3 net internal volume, 38hz tuned port (with a final output goal of peak at 40~41hz; goal was to get Fundamental E1 from this pair at peak instead of F3 or F6). About 7.5" wide cabinet, by 22" tall cabinet, by 15" depth cabinet. Slabs are larger, 8~9" wide with variations, 28~30" tall at peak of slab crowns, 1.5" depth on the slabs. The slabs are sealed in several coats of epoxy.
Left DATS:
Right DATS:
Near field port vs driver output:
Final response with a little DSP work for my preferences, handles this to about 20 watts before distortion.
Very best,
Thanks,
With my current active DSP (to handle baffle step and I just prefer a warmer curve so they peak at 40hz, like my FR graph shows) they sound great with what I use the mostly for. I built them a while back and listened for a good week before measuring and working on that side of things. I like Mark Audio drivers, they do vocals nicely. I went small on the driver to avoid beaming and less critical of axis. Vocals are wonderful. I really like these with 70's rock, 80's soft rock, 80'~90's pop, jazz, classical and some synth. I pushed them hard to distortion just to see where that would happen and it was in the mid 90's db SPL by that point, so I was fine with that, knowing they take about 20w to get there. Plenty loud. The excursion is impressive for a small driver without horrible distortion and cone break up unless pushed too hard. Pretty smooth, not sibilant. Vocals are just sublime. Not a winner for response smoothness, but I think its pretty great for a single full range driver pushing as low as 40hz like this.
Very best,
Thanks! Yea, it was around 450~460g into less than 1 ft^3 since the lower chamber was not stuffed with polyfil. Still, without measurements, I wasn't hearing anything weird.
Thanks! It was definitely different for me, just trying different things to step up my finish game. Learned a bunch on this one.
With deep pour (good for 2~4" in one pour), I did thick 1.5" pour to fill the voids. Cure. Remove excess (planer it off). Then for the entire surface I did thin coats with the same epoxy. Sanded it finely between coats. Final coat is thin and glass smooth. I let the excess run off and give it a few hours. When it starts to get tacky and isn't running, I just rubbed away drips at the edges with a gloved finger.
Very best,
With the contour filter they no longer are bright and sound neutral with good bass. I use these fairly near field, 1~2 meters at most. So they are not demanding and don't require tons of excursion leading to cone breakup, but these drivers do handle some excursion rather well which was part of their selection point. With this filter though, I no longer need DSP for the response, and that was the goal to move forward with after doing proper measurements to then work on it in virtuixcad. For now, DSP is just so I can integrate with a sub if I want, which I do sometimes, but I mostly use them without a sub at my workstation and they're just for music basically.
Soon I will start a full tower 2 way with integrated dual 8" subs (sealed) with similar oak baffles, but tall towers, after learning a lot from building these and measuring and building the filter based on the measurements, etc. I feel good about moving on to a more complicated larger build with better experience.
Thanks everyone for the help along the way!
Very best,