If you create a large-ish panel from a bunch of individual ribbons and you cause this panel to emit low midrange and/or bass frequencies, it will have large excursions.
Have you ever owned and/or experienced panel speakers (electrostat, planar magnetic, etc)? They are highly unloaded at low frequencies and they make large excursions when asked to emit low frequencies.
Near field vs far field. You are making my point for me. Headphones have small excursions because they are almost in your ear. A large planar mid-woof is meters away from you.
A planar headphone diaphragm is orders of magnitude lighter than a large planar mid-woof.
The distortion of planar magnetic speakers is in part due to the fact that the magnets are behind the diaphragm making the force on the diaphragm not linear over excursion distance. In other words, they are not push-pull.
A collection of small diaphragms performing the job of one large diaphragm pushing lots of air at low frequencies will not be lower in distortion.
Now, if the individual small diaphragms are all push-pull and the large diaphragm is not push-pull, then you have a point. If that is your point, then you need to clearly make that point.
If it is not a planar, then what is it? Are the magnets behind the driven element(s)?
Without some clarity concerning how it operates, discussion is difficult.
If the ribbons are free-swinging and only attached at the ends, then I do not see any advantage placing many of them in parallel. All of the ribbons that I have built, have virtually no usable output below 1kHz.
If the ribbons are spread apart with magnets between them, you will have comb filter problems.
The only way to make usable lower frequencies is to block the front of the ribbon from the rear making the speaker into a drum-head with a baffle and no longer a ribbon.
If you devise a way to make a good full range speaker out of a bunch of ribbons, hats off to you. I would enjoy seeing such a design.
Yes because of the distance between ribbons.
Notice that he says to EQ. This will trade lower extension for SPLs and will introduce Doppler distortion. When you make a ribbon which carries high frequencies move large excursions, you are modulating the highs with the lows. This is why Magnepan's best speakers have a mid-woof panel and separate ribbon tweeter. ...And.. the same reason Apogee had a mid-woof panel and a separate ribbon tweeter.
Notice that he says to EQ. This will trade lower extension for SPLs and will introduce Doppler distortion. When you make a ribbon which carries high frequencies move large excursions, you are modulating the highs with the lows. This is why Magnepan's best speakers have a mid-woof panel and separate ribbon tweeter. ...And.. the same reason Apogee had a mid-woof panel and a separate ribbon tweeter.
Your magnets are 1.5mm thick? How are the magnets mounted?
The crossover freq will depend on how well the midrange rolls off as frequency increases. As a practical matter, I have used from 1kHz to 3kHz. I think that the slope is more important than the exact crossover freq. First order networks are not steep enough.The ribbon will jump out of the gap with a 1st order 1kHz crossover freq.
Like this but with thinner magnets
That helps quite a bit.
Will your implementation be much larger? This one looks quite small.
I recommend driving the very center ribbon with only treble. All of the other ribbons should be driven with only the midrange.
Another thing that you will experience is a notch in freq resp at the freq where the distance between facing magnets is a 1/4 or 1/2 wave length. I can't remember which. For the Magnepan ribbon tweeter, the notch is 9 kHz.
I'm going to stack them like this
So the horizontal and vertical dispersion are even.
The dispersion will be different at every frequency. There may be one magic frequency where the dispersion will be "even". All of the other frequencies will be something other than "even".
You will have comb filtering.
My guess is that this will be an experience not unlike the McIntosh speakers with dozens of individual dome tweeters.
If you build it and you like it, that is all that matters.
What are the real dimensions?
Try to model them in "The Edge": Tolvan Data
If they are really close (mm?) I think you can see it as one ribbon maybe...
Dont forget whatever "baffle" you will need.
//
Try to model them in "The Edge": Tolvan Data
If they are really close (mm?) I think you can see it as one ribbon maybe...
Dont forget whatever "baffle" you will need.
//
Yeah the distance between the ribbons will literally be 1.6mm or less.
Since I'm making modules of 4 ribbons I'll be able to stack them to any dimension I wish.
Although I need to take into account the impedance, this is the key factor what supply voltage I end up using. I'm planning on running the supply at 20A idle, that allows for 40A swings before it starts to get iffy, although my 4'' ribbon was pretty loud on 1.5A swing so I doubt it will need that much, better to be safe than sorry I guess.
How low of an impedance do you think I can realistically get the "load" to be? That is a key factor that will determine the power supply design. If I can keep it under 1 ohm that would be ideal.
Since I'm making modules of 4 ribbons I'll be able to stack them to any dimension I wish.
Although I need to take into account the impedance, this is the key factor what supply voltage I end up using. I'm planning on running the supply at 20A idle, that allows for 40A swings before it starts to get iffy, although my 4'' ribbon was pretty loud on 1.5A swing so I doubt it will need that much, better to be safe than sorry I guess.
How low of an impedance do you think I can realistically get the "load" to be? That is a key factor that will determine the power supply design. If I can keep it under 1 ohm that would be ideal.
I am not knowledgeable enough to know what I'm doing in that software.
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have you successfully crafted your project? I'm also working on making a headphone like the SR1A
i tried plugging it into my ipad and having to turn the volume all the way up but the sound is still very low. i just want the volume to be a little louder but not damage my hearing and i don't know how. I'll probably have to buy a portable audio amplifier. but as far as I know and calculate, these amplifiers are only about 0.1-0.2Ampere. this makes no sense with ribbon headphones that require high amps and low voltage. besides i don't know how many amps i need for it.
there are solutions offered is to add a small resistor in. What do you think about this.
i tried plugging it into my ipad and having to turn the volume all the way up but the sound is still very low. i just want the volume to be a little louder but not damage my hearing and i don't know how. I'll probably have to buy a portable audio amplifier. but as far as I know and calculate, these amplifiers are only about 0.1-0.2Ampere. this makes no sense with ribbon headphones that require high amps and low voltage. besides i don't know how many amps i need for it.
there are solutions offered is to add a small resistor in. What do you think about this.