I have attached a picture of something similar that I built about 3 years ago (2102). Jojip is already aware of this system so I am just posting here for those who are not. There are grills and a fold down shutter for the electronics to ensure that the system is less noticeable when we don't need it.
I believe many who buy speakers with side mounted subwoofers do so because their rooms/applications do not permit a separate subwoofer (or 2). Jojip may have this same challenge.
I still believe that this system can be salvaged by toning down the mids, changing the cabinet volume, and chamfering the baffle. Only the last of these 3 mods are irreversible so why not try it? I am a fan of changes that are reversible since there are so many unknowns (room effects, etc..) that we just cant possibly account for each of these.
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Joji,
Sorry for my late reply but I went back and read over many of the posts and also looked at some of your graphs that I originally missed. I am a little familiar with Arta (a local friend uses it); however, am not so sure why your system curve (minus the subwoofer) is so different than what I measured. Some of that can be accounted for, such as measurement distance and axis being different but the large step in the response is puzzling.
Part of that could be a floor cancellation so I focused on your nearfield of the W15. That showed a significant loss of output from the lower midrange , -10db versus my transfer function at the frequency I selected. The only explanations would be 1) improper volume and damping of the subenclosure or 2) some kind of issue in either your front end or measurement equipment.
The latter would be pretty rare but once you correct the volume of the subenclosure you would be able to determine the source of the issue.
The sketch of the W22 schematic is incorrect - the shunt capacitor actually follows the series inductor in the circuit. The other topologies are correct. The guessing on the crossover point of the mid / tweeter has been off so some of the conclusions drawn on that have been incorrect. The response curve on the W15 indicates good suppression of the upper end breakup.
The distortion measurements indicate the 3rd harmonics being -40db or lower in the upper range of the mid and lower range of the tweeter. I'm not sure how the measurement level compares to your normal listening level (maybe you can shed some light on that); however, those are reasonable numbers that don't indicate a severe problem. It's possible the spike at around 2.8K in the mid is diffraction related from the baffle. If so, a nearfield measurement of the harmonics would verify the baffle interference. If not baffle related then possibly a result of baffle obstruction on the rear opening of the driver, again, removing the excess material and re-testing helps here.
To answer some of your questions / observations...
Some distortion curves at your normal listening level would be helpful (assuming the curves already taken were lower than normal?). If you can give an idea of the general frequency range of the distortion / straining (or maybe I missed that from earlier posts - I have not read all of them). As a rule most of this type of complaint is from the 2-5K range but it can also be due to heavily compressed recordings via the recording engineer. As you noted you found a variety of material that sounded very good which isn't going to be the case with a speaker lacking in any baffle step control and / or significant response problems.
A comparison of the on-axis curve with one off-axis at thirty degrees horizontally will help show the effectiveness of padding the tweeter and /or midrange levels. With your room size / listening level / available amplifier power reducing the midrange and tweeter output a moderate amount should be no problem. Excess energy from the recording in the 2-5K area could be a problem if there's some off-axis peaking and /or distortion in that range. I advise that you measure further back and use some smoothing (1/12 or 1/6 octave) with the subwoofer properly calibrated. Due to the driver layout you really need to be back more than 1M in order to get an accurate picture of the response along with the original axis which is centered on the tweeter.
True, a lower crossover point with a dome tweeter substitution may help, especially if the room response is elevated in the upper frequencies. The narrow ribbon has greater output off-axis in the horizontal plane than say a 1" dome which room problems can exaggerate. If you decide to go active I would try it first with the ribbon and a blocking cap in place before you switch to a dome. As Navin (and others have noted) it is certainly possible to have good sound from the W15 and a ribbon, contrary to the opinion of some of the posters in this thread.
I have to put my hats off to Rick Craig, it is rare to see such a composed reply with the goal of nothing but the satisfaction of listening through his speakers even though the person is not his direct customer.
you are in good hands jojip 🙂
you are in good hands jojip 🙂
Yes i fully agree to this. Rick had responded promptly with help when i contacted by email before posting here. I did not expect elaborate support from him as i wasn't a direct customer. Hence i brought my problem to the experts in the DIY community. But Rick has joined in the investigation and has been providing useful direction from his insights of his original design. I truly appreciate and respect this.
This thread itself has had a lot of thoughtful experimentation and comments and instructions from many. I am truly grateful for that.
This thread itself has had a lot of thoughtful experimentation and comments and instructions from many. I am truly grateful for that.
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Thanks Rick. I made all measurements on-axis at 1m from the center of the midrange. The subwoofers were off.
I am using calibrated Dayton Emm6. Focusrite 2i2 with ASIO driver is used as the external USB sound card. This seems to be a device of good quality and sufficient for DIY application.
Joji
Rick, I am trying to understand your comment. by subenclosure, do you mean the midrange enclosure?
Rick and I exchanged possibly 100 emails before I even chose my speakers. We wandered over many designs and discussed various brands of drivers. Since the speakers I chose were a "cabinet-less kit" I had to exchange many, many, emails detailing my proposed cabinet and room install (such as the on wall speakers) so he could make the requisite changes in his crossover.
2 years after I built the speakers the Yung Amplifiers died (maybe they had died earlier but I don't use the subwoofers often so did not notice that) and Rick went out of his way to ensure I got replacement amplifiers (at a good price).
In all possible ways, Rick is truly a gentleman. I can recommend him without hesitation.
Yes it is good to see a contribution from Rick and in an open forum with all the risks attached to that but I think you are wrong about the goal. Rick is almost certainly primarily posting to support his business and, in my view, that is a better reason. He is supporting issues with a discontinued product to an extent that can only build confidence for potential customers although that will be coming at a significant cost in terms of his time.
The tricky aspect is that this is not a particularly wise design. How to handle this and come out ahead in the eyes of potential customers is a far from easy task which I am watching with interest. So far he seems to be doing quite well given the posts in his support and rather better than I think I would in his place. The contrast between this thread and the current "Wilmslow Audio - prestige platinum" thread is striking.
Did Wilmslow attempt to help to Kattieandad on this forum? I did briefly read some of the posts on that thread but not all of them. I dare say that bushmeister has got a great deal. Anyway lets get back to our regular programming...😉
You got a point there, but he didnt need to help jojip in the way he did, as the original builder goes outside of the plan, and from what i read in regards to the crossover, he is absolutely spot on. a lot of the posts in this thread were misleading and pure guessing imho, so having Rick to elaborate his design (which he didnt have to) is surely positive thing to have
No and I rather doubt many businesses would opted to do so. Katieanddad was a customer and since there may have been a problem the normal thing to do would be to sort it out swiftly and privately. Possibly a note to the forum to this effect. However the business has been for sale for a while and Katieanddad was a bit odd in not perform any diagnostics making it all but impossible for anybody including Wilmslow to address the problem. Hopefully we will get some idea of what the problems might have been in the future given the new owner has posted to the thread.
In the Wilmslow thread quite a few stones are being thrown and if some of the posts are to be believed it is harming the business. Quite different here.
It is interesting to know that this is how you read the thread. Rick's efforts seem to be bearing fruit but given the issues and an open forum the potential still exists for it to get away from him. We will see.
I hope the challenges Jojip has with his speaker are solved. I believe they can be partly because of my own experience with similar drivers.
The Wilmslow speaker seems to be a good one but like in all DIY efforts the builder has to spend considerable amount of time building, debugging, tuning etc.. Like I mentioned before I first investigated commercial speakers until I realised anything I liked, I could not afford. That led me to Salk and then Selah and I exchanged literally 100s of emails BEFORE even deciding on driver topology, speaker locations, etc.. and it was after a lot of planning by both Rick and me that we chose what we chose TOGETHER that fit in my BUDGET. That saved me a lot of effort during building but an ounce of planning is often worth a pound of debugging.
It is sad that it did not work out for Kattieandad. Maybe he needed to put in more effort than he expected to. People who buy kits, sometimes do not recognise the quantum of sweat one still has to put in. Jojip seems to be willing to got that extra mile and even understands that this speaker is none of Rick's responsibility. Hence I believe that Jojip should have an acceptable speaker at the end of this exercise.
I understand K&D's situation. First you buy for a truckload of money a speaker
kit that is supposed to play flawlessly and then, hey what the heck is wrong
with it? My mediocre B&W works better!
I am convinced it can be made to work great.
Not sure I would wholly agree. Katieanddad started out with enthusiasm and some wonky beliefs and what followed was a series of unwise choices eventually leading to him being sufficiently upset to just want rid of the project. One might suggest that it would have been a lot sadder if doing so much wrong had been rewarded by a successful outcome. Anyway, Katieanddad's loss (assuming he hasn't learnt from his experience) has been Bushmeister's gain. Wilmslow Audio have lost some goodwill but have not had to fork out for a fix and so they have probably come out about even given they want out of the business. So has there been a net loss or gain in happiness?
if you mean that i would be a potential customer, no I'm not, as i have been designing speakers myself, and groups of people seemed to like what i have to offer.
for Rick to stay cool and make an effort to improve jojip speakers is for me a top rated business person and designer.
many people thinks that if on paper things won't work then it won't work, until you have done it yourself, you will never know, in audio imho this is always the case. (and yes, sometimes we need to accept more compromises)
for easy example, audio note speakers, they are far from perfect and common way to design and build speakers, and yet they are enjoyable in their regard and choice of music (it is not universal and somewhat particular to certain genre like acoustic jazz and a certain classical music) whenever i visit their room in few different shows in few different country.
Rick, are you referring to c5 in my sketch of W22 XO? I rechecked and thats exactly how its wired on the boards. Please clarify.
Joji
Rick,
Here are some measurements I need to get next based on your feedback. Please confirm.
1. Near field distortion for mid and tweeter
2. Distortion curve at normal listening level
3. Off axis measurements, measurements at greater than 1m, measurements with tweeter and the center.
4. Subwoofer calibration
I think, the previous set of measurements were carried out close to listening levels. But my judgment of the sweep tone level with normal music listening level could be off.
The speakers need some reassembly before I can make more measurements. Will do that soon. Also plan to try and cleanup some of the woodwork over the weekend.
The baffle is a shoddy patch up work at many levels. Underneath the MDF layer, there is a layer of ply baffle whose holes are completely misaligned. So there are regions around the W22 mounting holes where the separation between the two holes is very small and any chiseling or shaping may break right through it. So most of my effort will be focused on the W15 holes, even that is obstructed by the lower wall of the mid enclosure. This again is tough ply.
Here are some measurements I need to get next based on your feedback. Please confirm.
1. Near field distortion for mid and tweeter
2. Distortion curve at normal listening level
3. Off axis measurements, measurements at greater than 1m, measurements with tweeter and the center.
4. Subwoofer calibration
I think, the previous set of measurements were carried out close to listening levels. But my judgment of the sweep tone level with normal music listening level could be off.
The speakers need some reassembly before I can make more measurements. Will do that soon. Also plan to try and cleanup some of the woodwork over the weekend.
The baffle is a shoddy patch up work at many levels. Underneath the MDF layer, there is a layer of ply baffle whose holes are completely misaligned. So there are regions around the W22 mounting holes where the separation between the two holes is very small and any chiseling or shaping may break right through it. So most of my effort will be focused on the W15 holes, even that is obstructed by the lower wall of the mid enclosure. This again is tough ply.
Rick,
I was not sure which series resistor in the mid XO needs tweaking.
Are you suggesting to add a resistor in series with the series inductor?
Also does it make sense in investing in
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/l-pads-attenuators/yung-lp100-3/4-100w-8-ohm-l-pad/
to figure out the right level of padding instead of getting a few fairly expensive resistors?
thanks
Joji
I was not sure which series resistor in the mid XO needs tweaking.
Are you suggesting to add a resistor in series with the series inductor?
Also does it make sense in investing in
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/l-pads-attenuators/yung-lp100-3/4-100w-8-ohm-l-pad/
to figure out the right level of padding instead of getting a few fairly expensive resistors?
thanks
Joji
The designer should really have gone for the W15CH001s with this motor structure to allow the cone to breath more.
These drivers are amazing indeed.
Need to reuse the existing midrange though. I removed the rubber boots on the magnets, adding 2mm to the magnet radius for no good reason
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