Frugel-Horn XL for Alpair 10.3/10p, Fostex FF165wk, more

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#1,602
@iaRIVR. Thanks for opening the door to the Alpair MTM rabbit hole. :yikes: I hadn’t seen those yet but based on how I feel about the other Alpair speakers I bet they are smooth. Thanks also (for real) for the insight into the grills. I always overbuilt any that I tried.
 
#1,606
A question to all on this forum. How many of you are old bastards like me who have lost high frequency hearing? My handle, FourEars is an allusion to the fact that I have hearing aids, like four eyes for people who wear glasses. While I found the sound of the frugels wonderful, my wife found them somewhat shrill. Because I have a fancy pair of hearing aids, I can use my phone to create and apply hearing profiles. After much back and forth, (did I mention I have a wonderful wife?) We came up with a profile for me that matched her hearing. Now I also could hear what she was saying about the speakers. Somewhat shrill or shouty. It only took a bit of bass boost until we were both happy with the sound. Trimming the highs led to a feeling of missing content or dullness. I guess my question is, does anybody else hear shrill or shouty and if not, are you half deaf? I am totally astounded by what this speaker can do. The range and impact are unbelievable. I had my neighbor over and (so cliche) he got up to look for a sub. I'm just saying, that if there is an issue, let's get it out there and deal with it. Let me know if I'm totally off base here also. When I first got hearing aids is when my interest in sound was re-awoken. I always had a decent stereo, Infinity, Onkyo, etc. But over the years my interest waned. Now I'm buying old KLH and Advents and building my own. Last count I had 33 pairs of speakers in the house. In the short time that I've been listening to the Frugels, they have become my favorites but now I question whether they REALLY sound that good.
 
#1,608
These probably have around 300 hrs. or less on them. They were originally bought for an open baffle experiment and were broken in the 100 hrs. at that time. They then spent time in that role and another MLTL experiment. I know from the pair in my DNAs that they keep sounding better until 400hrs. and even longer although I thought the change after that threshold was slight. I remember the DNAs going through shrill to shouty to good during break in but I think I have enough time on these.
 
#1,610
@FourEars: Here is a frequency plot that I made with my FHXL *in my room.* When I first put them in place, I thought they sounded odd compared to my previous speakers. I gave them a few months to break in and still didn't like what I was hearing. So I made some measurements and confirmed what I was hearing that I didn't like - it was a response hump in the 5-12kHz range.

So, after several days of measuring and experimenting, I built a notch filter: 28R, 1.4uF, 0.27mH all in parallel to one another, and put this in series with the driver. This flattened out the hump I was seeing/hearing and then I liked them a lot more!

Fast forward a few years and I put another pair of speakers in that same place and found the SAME response hump. Silly me, it was room placement, not the specific speaker... This time around, I have a new receiver, so I made the change with the electronic crossover in the unit instead of using an external notch filter.
 

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#1,611
@Eric. I’ve had other speakers in that same spot and not had an issue but I do have a Umik and have not tried the actual listening position check. I think part of the issue is the height and 5 degree angle puts these on axis with your ears, whereas the DNAs are only 30 inches tall so they are always off axis. I’ll get off my duff and check these. My amp is Audyssey capable so I could try that also. I’ve always wanted to make the speaker sound right instead of compensating because my speakers get moved from time to time. I don’t know about anyone else’s experience with the A10p but it seems to me that putting ANYTHING other than a resistor in-line seems to kill my favorite aspect of the speaker and that’s how coherent the midrange is. I’m loathe to add passive filters because of this.
 
#1,613
@Eric, here is an in room, at listening position sweep with no correction of any kind. I certainly do not have anything showing that would lead to shrillness. If anything, this is showing that I have a very “dead” room. If I add some bass, the average of the lower frequencies moves up to level with the mids and that is what my ear said sounded best. I moved them closer and farther from the wall with little effect. A bit less jagged low response closer to the wall but no big difference. Audyssey on my receiver did little or nothing to improve or flatten the spikes even though I used the same tripod for both mics. My receiver has EQ but only nine bands so I cannot make much fine improvement there. The big waves on the bottom may be room issues. These are playing to the short dimension of the room so I could see standing waves being a problem.
 

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#1,614
Eric said:
@iaRIVR - I like your approach to buried magnets for your grille. I thought about doing something like that with my build, then I got distracted and it never happened before I closed the cabinets. I was going to drill into the hardwood baffle from the back side and glue them in... oh well...
Click to expand...
Just a “been down that road” for anybody that wants to try this. Do NOT use JB Weld to glue the magnets in. I always thought that the metal in JB Weld was powdered aluminum but it is some kind of ferrous metal that in effect will “short” out your magnet. It will cut the power of your expensive neodymium magnets by half at least.
 
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