Some trade-offs of a 2-Way Waveguide Speaker played through
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Today, I quickly assembled digital filters for my Hypex FA123 driven Econowave prototype. I meassured indoors gated with Arta and REW, the speaker on a "stand" (table on a table) and corrected the observed FR with Hypex Filter Designer. I was happily listening to the very 'clear sound' until I saw a video on youtube where someone showed his 3-way which was allegedly playing down to only f3 @55, but it sounded fuller than my speaker which was calculated to reach f3 of 35 to 38. Then I realised I forgot baffle step compensation!
I have not done near-field or mic-in-box measurements of the bass response yet so tried a free hand BSC on the go. I ask for your opinions if this is a legit exploit, this is what I did. All corrections up to step 3 concern the woofer channel only:
The speaker has a lot of foundation now, so as a side issue I also reduced the bass boost by 2 dB. WinISD suggest f3 is now at 38 instead of 35 and shows a gentler slope to f6=32 and f10=27. I did this because at low volumes there was already a lot of energy in the room now and I was limiting it so to not get problems with the neighbors, but I was missing presence.
Some introductory remarks in the meantime said:This thread was started to tackle my first and most pressing questions I had when I began working on an Econowave-inspired, Hypex-powered digital 2-Way speaker. Throughout the course of my trials and errors, reading and simultaneous developements elsewhere, I learned some assumptions that where stated by the original developers had to be discarded. Most noteworthy the asymmetric waveguide and the close center-to-center distancing. Using the speakers from a floor level also does not make sense and a much more aggressive EQ-ing could be done. If one is not in pursuit of absolute audio perfection, on could state the question whether it is actually neccessary to use such big boxes. Given that power is cheap and active solutions with DSP abilities are readily at hand and many big commercial manufacturers implement heavy DSPing in ther Pro grade products. Without a doubt, if a passive solution was intended, I would now pursue a floor standing, tall but shallow box, as this is needed for a good position of the image anyway and also due to volume considerations, and would possibly implement a free-stand waveguide on top. With DSP and ample power at hand, I will instead look into minimizing the footprint. This is why my endeavour has not ended and is still in the making. Please understand this thread as an ongoing elaboration of what is actually needed by a certain user-type and what can be achieved with some compromises. Over the time, I will annotate my findings in this post as a list and resource.
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Today, I quickly assembled digital filters for my Hypex FA123 driven Econowave prototype. I meassured indoors gated with Arta and REW, the speaker on a "stand" (table on a table) and corrected the observed FR with Hypex Filter Designer. I was happily listening to the very 'clear sound' until I saw a video on youtube where someone showed his 3-way which was allegedly playing down to only f3 @55, but it sounded fuller than my speaker which was calculated to reach f3 of 35 to 38. Then I realised I forgot baffle step compensation!
I have not done near-field or mic-in-box measurements of the bass response yet so tried a free hand BSC on the go. I ask for your opinions if this is a legit exploit, this is what I did. All corrections up to step 3 concern the woofer channel only:
- Step 0) REW frequency response shows good crossover (1,2 kHz), cannot see bass response because of room
- Step 1) Taking a baffle step simulation from vituixCAD
- suggested values: -6 dB high shelf with center ~ 175 Hz, -2 dB cut at 500 Hz
- Step 2) what I did in Hypex Filter Designer:
- 2a) high shelf, center frequency 160 Hz, Q=0,7, -4 dB
- 2b) cut, center frequency 500 Hz, Q =4, -2 dB
- Step 3) in Hypex Filter Designer:
- add -4 dB gain to compression driver channel to realign both drivers at crossover frequency.
The speaker has a lot of foundation now, so as a side issue I also reduced the bass boost by 2 dB. WinISD suggest f3 is now at 38 instead of 35 and shows a gentler slope to f6=32 and f10=27. I did this because at low volumes there was already a lot of energy in the room now and I was limiting it so to not get problems with the neighbors, but I was missing presence.
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