I finished up my EZ10's last night. As of now there is no damping material inside them, and the drivers have about 3 hours on them. These are my first speaker build in 35 years other than stuffing some Hawthorne Silver Iris into a pair of old Zenith console radios. I connected them to a P-P tube amp that makes 125 WPC, which is obviously way more power than needed.
The Silver Iris (claimed 96 db) can do rock concert levels with this amp with wall shaking bass. I was surprised to find that the EZ10's can also get quite loud with about 10 watts of power. The bass is powerful but not well controlled, but that is expected without damping. The realism factor is far better than the Silver Iris but not Lowther quality yet.
These speakers will get fed daily doses of local radio stations for 10 hours a day while I am at work at 3 WPC or so to assist with the break in. Today I left the boombox on a rap station.......
The Silver Iris (claimed 96 db) can do rock concert levels with this amp with wall shaking bass. I was surprised to find that the EZ10's can also get quite loud with about 10 watts of power. The bass is powerful but not well controlled, but that is expected without damping. The realism factor is far better than the Silver Iris but not Lowther quality yet.
These speakers will get fed daily doses of local radio stations for 10 hours a day while I am at work at 3 WPC or so to assist with the break in. Today I left the boombox on a rap station.......
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Hi tubelab,
I was wondering if you could share a bit about how your EZ10 sound after some burn-in.
I am still experimenting with damping and fine-tuning on mine. I have solved a number of issues already (such as noise floor) but do not seem to get the damping right. The sound still tends to "stick" to the drivers and does not form a nicely laid-out soundstage (except perhaps for voice). Because of my room size limitations, my speakers cannot be more than 1,5 meters apart, which may be too little. How about your finetuning process?
Peter
I was wondering if you could share a bit about how your EZ10 sound after some burn-in.
I am still experimenting with damping and fine-tuning on mine. I have solved a number of issues already (such as noise floor) but do not seem to get the damping right. The sound still tends to "stick" to the drivers and does not form a nicely laid-out soundstage (except perhaps for voice). Because of my room size limitations, my speakers cannot be more than 1,5 meters apart, which may be too little. How about your finetuning process?
Peter
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Good to see you built them! You are the third person I know of to do so. They seem to be well received. Suggestions for damping is all walls in the CC with 1 inch batting or wool, Felt on the mouth of the horn, Felt on the face around the driver to smooth out diffraction and possibly enabling the driver. Let me know what you think of them. Since they seem to be taking off I may do a second iteration of the design once I build a set. Thanks!
Tom
The sound seems to have mellowed a bit after 2 weeks of being fed the radio for 10 hours a day. Unfortunately I have had no time to tune them since my mother passed away 2 weeks ago (expected, she was 90) and I have been out of town for the last 2 weekends. The boxes have no stuffing at all, just bare wood, so the bass is rather boomy.
My wife was out of town when these were built. When she saw them she was not impressed, so I haven't decided which room they will live in, but all of my choices are also rather small. I plan to add stuffing until the bass sounds right, then play with room placement for a while before doing anything drastic. I glued the cabinets together with PL premium except for one side. I planned to glue that side once the tuning was done, but there are no rattles even at stupid volume levels so I may not glue them at all. There are about 40 screws in each side.
Speaking of drastic, I got this itch to stuff some Electro Voice 10 inch guitar speakers into these cabinets and plug then into a 200 watt head. I bet it would go past eleven!
I have been building amplifiers for 40+ years, tube and solid state. Any of my speaker projects have been rather crude and oriented toward guitar cabinets or disco boxes. I have been itching to make some good speakers for a while, and due to two favorable trades I recently got some drivers. The AN10's went into these cabinets and so far I like what I hear. I also got some Enabled FE126En's from Planet 10 and the Frugel Horn Mk3's are being built now. It will be interesting to see how the two sets of horns compare. My initial thoughts were to use the FH3's for detailed music at reasonable levels with a small SE amp and the EZ10's for loud rock with bigger bass fed by a big tube amp. So far the EZ10's do that well but sound good at reasonable levels too.
Hi Peter,
I am interested in the EnABL treatment for my Audio Nirvana's too so am looking forward to your opinion/results.
Hi Alazira,
I put up some new info on the EnABL treatment of AN drivers in this thread:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/182148-enabl-project-audio-nirvana-super-12-a-3.html
Peter
I put up some new info on the EnABL treatment of AN drivers in this thread:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/182148-enabl-project-audio-nirvana-super-12-a-3.html
Peter
Thanks you are a legend. I have been looking everywhere for decent plywood in Australia.
I had not thought of bamboo though.
high pass filter
Has anyone got any experience using a high pass filter set at around 50hz on the super cast 10's? I currently have my 10's in a bass reflex and with a sub helping with the low range. Really like the sound but was thinking that a high pass filter might help driver reproduce the rest of the frequencies a bit better and make me not worry about breaking the drivers if i play them loud!
Has anyone got any experience using a high pass filter set at around 50hz on the super cast 10's? I currently have my 10's in a bass reflex and with a sub helping with the low range. Really like the sound but was thinking that a high pass filter might help driver reproduce the rest of the frequencies a bit better and make me not worry about breaking the drivers if i play them loud!
Depends on how the sub gets its signal. Adding a single cap in front of the input of the power amp driving the AN10s is WAY less expensive and WAY more accurate. Due to the resonance peaks of any speaker in the low end, a passive solution is a hige can of worms. And even if it wasn't costs a whole lot of £££ for such a big cap of decent quality.To the point where active (ie before the amp) is the only thing that makes sense.
One thou, might be able to do something with a sealed enclosure for the AN10... sub XO would likely need to bemoved higher thou (IIRC, no power tomy modeling computer at the moment)
dave
One thou, might be able to do something with a sealed enclosure for the AN10... sub XO would likely need to bemoved higher thou (IIRC, no power tomy modeling computer at the moment)
dave
Thanks for your help, I appreciate it. Would the passive line level option look something like this? FMODS If so looks like a simple and inexpensive solution.
I've also remembered those lovely treble and bass controls on my amp! Being playing around with them; reducing the bass on the amp and increasing the volume and frequency response on the sub. My subjective findings are that dong this does make the mids and trebles clearer resulting in a more detailed sound. Main problems are that as a result I lose alot of midbass output (too high for sub) and that I want to try out a t-amp which would have no tone controls in the future.
I've also remembered those lovely treble and bass controls on my amp! Being playing around with them; reducing the bass on the amp and increasing the volume and frequency response on the sub. My subjective findings are that dong this does make the mids and trebles clearer resulting in a more detailed sound. Main problems are that as a result I lose alot of midbass output (too high for sub) and that I want to try out a t-amp which would have no tone controls in the future.
sealed enclosure and fr driver blowout
As well as normal hifi I like to use my AN 10's for parties (only occasioanlly...). Currently use a cambridge audio A5 (want to try t-amps though) which i think has 60 watts or so whilst the An10's are only rated to 30 watts. As well as better audio was interested in reducing low Hz so it would better protect driver.
Therefore, If I went for the sealed enclosure route would this protect my speaker from breaking in the same as using a crossover solution to filter out the low hz. In other words when a driver breaks is it normally due to overextension or does the magnet itself break? Sorry for my severe lack of knowledge!
As well as normal hifi I like to use my AN 10's for parties (only occasioanlly...). Currently use a cambridge audio A5 (want to try t-amps though) which i think has 60 watts or so whilst the An10's are only rated to 30 watts. As well as better audio was interested in reducing low Hz so it would better protect driver.
Therefore, If I went for the sealed enclosure route would this protect my speaker from breaking in the same as using a crossover solution to filter out the low hz. In other words when a driver breaks is it normally due to overextension or does the magnet itself break? Sorry for my severe lack of knowledge!
if not understood and considered, capacitor reactance vs system impedance peaks can exacerbate cone excursion beyond using nothing at all. The technique is useful at times for "boosting" LF with sealed boxes and that means more power delivered to the driver and greater excursion at system resonance. Think of it roughly that at resonance, the impedance may be 4 times that of the nominal impedance - so that has moved the pure RC situation crossover down as much as two octaves. This can be a problem with F.A.S.T. types.
to control excursion, the AN could be used in a Karlson coupler such as the original K15 - that will preserve power output within its small usable excursion. Having a small voice coil, you'll have thermal limits as to not overheat the coil and physical limits where the coil will come apart, etc.
look at this Eminence Alpha 6A on a horn with 36uF highpass- without impedance compensation, it was trying to play "bass" - nearly 20dB
higher than target.
here's a series cap simulation with a 15" woofer - note the impedance and excursion effects.
a way to measure input impedance is a good thing for the hobbyist - of course its all balanced compromise trying to get the best subjective result.
to control excursion, the AN could be used in a Karlson coupler such as the original K15 - that will preserve power output within its small usable excursion. Having a small voice coil, you'll have thermal limits as to not overheat the coil and physical limits where the coil will come apart, etc.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
look at this Eminence Alpha 6A on a horn with 36uF highpass- without impedance compensation, it was trying to play "bass" - nearly 20dB
higher than target.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
here's a series cap simulation with a 15" woofer - note the impedance and excursion effects.
a way to measure input impedance is a good thing for the hobbyist - of course its all balanced compromise trying to get the best subjective result.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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They are a generic implentation of PLLXO which usually means not optimum.
And expensive if you are a diyer.
Have a look at this article on the subject... use the amps input impedance as the shunt R and just add a series cap of appropriate size.
TLS.org | Passive Line-Level Crossover
dave
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