Ive been contemplating a new set of studio monitor ls for a while now. Ive been eye balling the M-Audio M3-8 active monitors for a while now but in the spirit of DIY i jist cant bring myself to pull the trigger :O
So! My latest plan involves a 2 way horizontal configuration using Dayton's ES180-Ti woofer paired with a Dayton PT2C-8 planar tweeter.
Call me a fan boy but I have had great sucess with prior Dayton products, albeit my previous projects where always low budget.
Anyways, my design goal is a full range 2 way in a moderate sized enclosure with 40Hz extension. Ive been wanting to hear this planar for a while now, I am privy of its narrow vertical dispersion given my studio is fairly small and this will be a near field application.
I would be powering these actively with an ART SLA4 using a minidsp 2x4 for x-over.
My questions, is it more acceptable to use such an arrangement horizontally given the tweeter dispersion pattern?
How will this pairing fair in a monitor application assuming an crossover of 3khz?
Ive also been looking are options from Morel and Dynavox but im liking that the dayton has more xmax and needs slightly less space to dig as deep.
Just wanted to emphasize, full and accurate representation to 40Hz is paramount for me given the genres I am mixing/producing.
These will be for monitoring so i dont need earbleeding volume, i have a second "master channel" with plenty of power for chest crushing bass when I feel the need for such a thing.
Anyways, I apologize for being long winded. Hopefully someone can chime in with possible cons/trade off of my driver selection and preferred orientation.
-Josh
So! My latest plan involves a 2 way horizontal configuration using Dayton's ES180-Ti woofer paired with a Dayton PT2C-8 planar tweeter.
Call me a fan boy but I have had great sucess with prior Dayton products, albeit my previous projects where always low budget.
Anyways, my design goal is a full range 2 way in a moderate sized enclosure with 40Hz extension. Ive been wanting to hear this planar for a while now, I am privy of its narrow vertical dispersion given my studio is fairly small and this will be a near field application.
I would be powering these actively with an ART SLA4 using a minidsp 2x4 for x-over.
My questions, is it more acceptable to use such an arrangement horizontally given the tweeter dispersion pattern?
How will this pairing fair in a monitor application assuming an crossover of 3khz?
Ive also been looking are options from Morel and Dynavox but im liking that the dayton has more xmax and needs slightly less space to dig as deep.
Just wanted to emphasize, full and accurate representation to 40Hz is paramount for me given the genres I am mixing/producing.
These will be for monitoring so i dont need earbleeding volume, i have a second "master channel" with plenty of power for chest crushing bass when I feel the need for such a thing.
Anyways, I apologize for being long winded. Hopefully someone can chime in with possible cons/trade off of my driver selection and preferred orientation.
-Josh
Dayton's ES180-Ti has peak at 3.5 kHz, so you must use crossover point lower than 3 kHz, say at 2 kHz (with notch filter at 3 kHz). You have to find another tweeter which can be crossed below 3 kHz.
Vertical arrangement is better.
Vertical arrangement is better.
This vid may be helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MdYWmD0gE
Most Monitors that can be configured Horizontally are 3 ways,
but the drivers you've chosen seem to have good dispersion,
I'd say build some test cabs and try them both ways....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MdYWmD0gE
Most Monitors that can be configured Horizontally are 3 ways,
but the drivers you've chosen seem to have good dispersion,
I'd say build some test cabs and try them both ways....
I'm not sure I understand what you see as the benefits of a horizontal orientation?
Sure, the tweeter has wider horizontal dispersion than vertical, but that should generally be a good reason in my book to go with a vertical orientation (smooth horizontal polars are subjectively more important than smooth vertical polars).
Moreover, if you do go with a horizontal orientation, the horizontal off-axis response will be very chaotic around the crossover point. So it will be important to heavily damp the first sidewall reflection with absorbent material.
But all other things being equal I'd say the speakers would image better and produce a wider soundstage and more natural timbre if vertically oriented with sidewall diffusion or a combination of diffusion/absorption.
Wider horizontal and narrower vertical dispersion is to prevent floor bounce, which arrives too soon after main direct signal and is very detrimental to clarity. Not a good idea to flip monitor horizontally.
Some old B&O 3-way monitors (maybe even some Technics?) had an option to rotate mid and tweeter 90 degrees to allow horizontal placement. Neat!
Some old B&O 3-way monitors (maybe even some Technics?) had an option to rotate mid and tweeter 90 degrees to allow horizontal placement. Neat!
I used the Dayton AMT3-4 which has a similar roll off above 10K. I was disappointed until I added a super tweeter.
Was this in an active or passive system? I.e. was the AMT3-4 EQ'd flat before you tried the super-tweeter or was the natural roll-off present in the system?
That was a passive system. The AMT3-4 was EQ'ed close to flat before deciding to use a super tweeter. The large AMT3-4 had narrowing dispersion which I would expect the PT2C to be similar.
I used the Dayton ND20FB crossed at 12K as the super tweeter.
These days Genelec, Quested and JBL have 3way monitors with rotatable mid/high units for portrait or landscape placement.
There might be more...
you might want to consider a delay derived crossover technique to avoid the lobing errors that you may create in the horizontal plane. sse the AES anthologies from Jvanderkooy on this. this way the relative phase of the summed signals of LO and HI does not change much in the XO region such that the image stays stable