Anyone used waveguided ribbons?

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head_unit

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#1
I was reading someone's comments who had just bought some speakers with a ribbon tweeter and loved them. I had a college roommate, I helped him design some speakers with ribbons which he still has. Narrow directivity is often an Achilles' Heel of these (or if badly designed an Achilles' Hell as spell-check wants to write 😆). So I started thinking, how about waveguided ribbons? I recall a Dutch PA company using such, and I see Radian has a few waveguides for pro ribbons.

I'm really curious about this not-too-expensive item from Parts Express
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-PHT1-6-Planar-Horn-Tweeter-6-Ohm-275-087?quantity=1
has anyone used this? Or this Fountek
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/ribbon-tweeters/fountek-neocd3.5h-horn-tweeter/
 
#3
Two weeks ago I aquired a set of Genelec 1022a from 1985. https://www.genelec.com/previous-models/1022a . I already love them madly 😍.
Sweet spot is wide and stable, the waveguided mid is naturally a great part of this too. I sit at 2,5m and the couch is 2m wide - still I never seem to fall "outside".
Imaging is precise, and different from a flushmounted driver, more like a coaxial perhaps. I don't have a huge number of references as comparison.
1705666425797.png
 
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#4
head_unit said:
I was reading someone's comments who had just bought some speakers with a ribbon tweeter and loved them. I had a college roommate, I helped him design some speakers with ribbons which he still has. Narrow directivity is often an Achilles' Heel of these (or if badly designed an Achilles' Hell as spell-check wants to write 😆). So I started thinking, how about waveguided ribbons? I recall a Dutch PA company using such, and I see Radian has a few waveguides for pro ribbons.

I'm really curious about this not-too-expensive item from Parts Express
https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-PHT1-6-Planar-Horn-Tweeter-6-Ohm-275-087?quantity=1
has anyone used this? Or this Fountek
https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/ribbon-tweeters/fountek-neocd3.5h-horn-tweeter/
Click to expand...
the first tweeter linked isn’t a ribbon…..its a planar. The response falls like a rock above 10khz so there’s lots of shaping needed

the second link IS a ribbon, but Fountek is gone and all that’s out there is new old stock. Apparently GRS speakers bought the design/distribution for the Fountek ribbons and maybe even the B&G stuff. They appear to be exact reproductions but I haven’t heard any real world talk on performance from the street

True ribbons have AMAZING of axis horizontal dispersion…….likely the best of all HF transducers but sadly, yes…..vertical is good to maybe 15 degrees at best.

A horn lens/waveguide can help a little, but the added compression on the ribbon isn’t an acceptable tradeoff IMO…….ribbon elements are very light and fragile although very secure in the gap but the compression takes the extra detail they’re known for and crushes it. Planars have a different fold patter, operating principle and material……they do just fine with planars and AMTs.

IMO, ribbons are for the ultimate detail in HF reproduction when it’s a speaker for critical listening, or in other words a sit down and listen situation. Line arrays of course will increase the vertical to the length of the line but that gets expensive pretty quick. I’ve heard some true ribbon lines with the Fountek 2.0 long ribbon and. It might have been the best speaker I’ve ever heard. It was paired with a line of 5 1/4 ScansSpeak midwoofers all active vintage Mark Levinson Amps.
 
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#5
mayhem13 said:
the first tweeter linked isn’t a ribbon…..its a planar. The response falls like a rock above 10khz
Click to expand...
10 kHz?!? We don' need no steenkin' 10 kHz!
Maybe I gotta look at that again. The Fountek looks like it has a transformer on the back? The ribbons seem loaded more like with a "waveguide" than a big horn load but it's an interesting point about the load on relatively fragile diaphragms. Mostly I was intrigued to get the clean shimmeryness of a ribbon but with higher efficiency, and more low frequency loading to better match to some woofers (maybe twin PA-ish 6.5" to flank narrow space on the sides of a TV)
 
#7
Speedysteve7 said:
Autotech waveguides on my Raal Lazy Ribbons...They did increase the efficiency slightly.
Click to expand...
Hmmm thereby a contradiction, for higher efficiency, you can have two approaches:
(1) More directivity (which is not really higher efficiency per se, but at a far listening distance like mine has somewhat of that effect)
(2) More loading, which on a fragile diaphragm might not be a good thing.

I guess another thing I'm looking for is a less ragged response than a lot of compression drivers seem to offer, plus less depth which is an issue for me.
 
#8
Guess it was more loading..
I run them at low to normal hifi listening levels, so not an issue.

I did try a 4 way with the Raals doing 3.5KHz up for a little while back in 2014 - maybe it was.
Worked pretty well, but the Vitavox S2 compression drivers if properly configured, slay pretty much all else.
I missed their sound and went back to 5 way. Raals just doing the snow where the compression driver drops off.
 
#10
I'm doing a PA design with the PHT1-6 planar tweeter. Its a good driver but its rather large and requires a mid with very good bandwidth to allow crossing both above at least 3k BW18. Efficiency is good at almost 98dB when flattened out to 14k. The overall sound is detailed and reasonably smooth. Horizontal dispersion is decent but as expected, vertical isn't more than maybe 20 degrees. I chose a Celestion 6" mid to compliment the HF along with an Eminence KL3015HO in a ported 60 ltr box.
 
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#12
jawen said:
Ribbons don´t need waveguide, because even if you get a "match" for a midrange, you never find a woofer to go with the project.
Almost everytime you need to "take down" the SPL for the tweeter/Ribbon/AMT, to match the rest.
Click to expand...
True of passive radiators.
Not true in front loaded horn land.
I have to boost my efficient ribbons (~111dB/W) a bit to keep up.
 
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#14
Hello everyone,

I hope you're all doing well. Im building a horn waveguide based on the horn no.1931 model designed by Joseph Crowe. I realize that the main focus of this thread is on ribbon tweeters, but I thought you might find this interesting as well. Design uses GRS PT6825.

Once I've progressed further with the build, I’d be happy to post some measurements, if anyone is interested in the frequency response of the planar tweeter in this configuration.
rsz_1horn_no1931.jpg
 
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#16
Thanks! So far, I've been using epoxy glue and filler for the necessary bonding and filling tasks. Additionally, I've also utilized basic wood putty.

Regarding the weight, each horn currently weighs around six to seven kilograms. They are printed on Sunlu PLA+ (costs around 13€ per kg) Infill is 18% gyroid.
 
#17
Speedysteve7 said:
Not true in front loaded horn land.
I have to boost my efficient ribbons (~111dB/W) a bit to keep up
Click to expand...

Interesting !
Can you please show me your speaakers ?

I have build 6 reflexboxes a´100 liter netto with Peerlees XXLS 830847, 92 dB sensitivity and +-12,5 mm linear xmax.
Using 3 per side connected 2x8 ohm coils to 16 ohm and parallelconected outside for a total of 5,66 ohms.
Maby i have around 98 dB sensitivity with this 3 XXLS 12 inch woofers, and they reach around 120 dB SPL at 20-21 hz if i feed them with around 700 class A watt per 3. And weight is 215 kg per side.

111 dB feels like a dream, how low they do?

Regards John
 

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