Thanks. Feels good to get pats on one's back.sachi said:Your project will no doubt be an inspiration for all us Indians dreaming of going the DIY way with wholly built Indian drive units.
The techniques used in your cabinet building will be most useful for budding Indian DIYers such as myself.
Yes, I agree that the cabinet building and bracing is one major area of learning that the Asawari story can contribute to. The results of the Asawari should encourage a lot of other new designers/builders to get good sound from their floorstanders. This area is one which experienced designers seem to know a lot about, but doesn't get discussed explicitly in the forums as much as beginners need. Even Vance Dickason doesn't really prescribe a specific approach to bracing in detail; he mentions the various options and leaves the issue open. As a result, beginner builders focus on things like heavy gauge copper wiring (low impedance), expensive drivers, and boutique xo components, but ignore xo tuning and bracing; this results in mediocre sounding but very expensive speakers.
You have to be fanatical about building a dead enclosure. No expense incurred in that quest is too much expense, IMHO. If I've understood right, it's as if the driver's sound and characteristics emerge only after the enclosure has been totally silenced. What is worse, ordinary MLS measurements of the driver's output do not capture the sound from the enclosures. Therefore, you can't even measure the distortions and vibrations contributed by the enclosure by taking MLS measurements of the driver... but you can hear them all the time.
A dead enclosure is probably Gooroo Angshoo's Number One rule.
Re: Thanks for sharing, tcpip
I've had some email correspondence with John Krutke about tweeters in general, and his comments have totally sealed this decision in my mind for now. No spending of dollars on any tweeters more expensive than them Seas, till I figure out why!!! (My words, not John's, BTW.)
The D28 do appear to be very good tweeters, going by the paper description. How did you find them? It is very possible that veteran designers/listeners can hear differences between $30 Seas tweeters and say, the North D28 or the Scanspeak 9500, but I doubt I can, at this stage of my growth.
The North stuff will go off the retail market in one and a half months more, BTW. North is closing down their retail business.
Thanks.Shaun said:
So totally true. I wouldn't have been anywhere without these forums and my real-life speaker-building friends. It was as if I was apprenticed to all my online and offline friends for something like four years from 2001 to 2005, just reading, watching, and asking. I started building the Asawari in 2005. My apprenticeship continues; I'm slow.
Yes, I know it takes time. But I was lucky, I had access to a Drupal-based Website. The job of actually preparing the pages took very little time... it was as easy as writing with a text editor. And I had to write only the main body of the text. All the surrounding stuff, the framing, the headers and footers, the menus, everything is generated on the fly by Drupal.
Let's hope I get better luck. I'm actually hoping that it'll work out, because the Asawari's front baffles are quite similar to the ones that George Short uses for a lot of his North designs. And the D28 is simply not an option, because they cost more than twice as much as the Seas TBFC/G and TDFC, and I've decided that I'll refuse to spend more on tweeters than these Seas models, till I understand what the higher priced tweeters contribute to my ears. Given the limits of my knowledge today, I'll use those Seas tweeters even if I'm building a mega-buck speaker with Seas Excel midbass or Scanspeak sliced paper cone drivers.
I've had some email correspondence with John Krutke about tweeters in general, and his comments have totally sealed this decision in my mind for now. No spending of dollars on any tweeters more expensive than them Seas, till I figure out why!!!
(My words, not John's, BTW.)The D28 do appear to be very good tweeters, going by the paper description. How did you find them? It is very possible that veteran designers/listeners can hear differences between $30 Seas tweeters and say, the North D28 or the Scanspeak 9500, but I doubt I can, at this stage of my growth.
The North stuff will go off the retail market in one and a half months more, BTW. North is closing down their retail business.
Aha. About USD 150 for Customs Duty, and USD 80 for shipping. The whole thing now makes sense. Yes, I'd guessed there would be some xo parts, but the big chunks were the shipping and Customs. Good to know there's someone who just goes and buys the parts he wants from abroad, instead of sitting in India and blaming circumstances. I've always felt that this go-pay-for-it is much better than sitting and cribbing. Save money if needed, pay more than what our American friends would pay, but go for what you want. Life is way too short.sangram said:
I read in some other thread that you're spending Rs.11k on your amp chassis, built by Dinrack. Your approach makes sense to me.
Yes, I really respect this guy's attitude to work... he overshoots his schedule quite routinely, just because he's taking time taking accurate measurements, or finishing the pieces accurately to make them fit tightly, and so on. Send me email with your contact info, and I'll ask him to give you a call.
I've seen some superb pieces of work with plywood, those were apparently done with sanding and sealing the plywood first, then applying a wood stain and finishing with auto lacquer. But it wasn't made in India (Taiwan IIRC). I also handle a furniture business as one of my clients, so let me see if I can get one of their guys to do something for me.
Oh really, how much did those cost you? Sounds interesting. Maybe they would have wound your 220 uH coil if you said it was .22 mH ... 17 SWG should be around 15 AWG, not bad but I would have preferred slightly thicker wire. I had not even considered them earlier because the website said 17 and 22 guage - I assumed it was AWG - which were way too thin anyway.
On the other hand, 14AWG for your tweeter parallel coil was overkill IMO, I'm using 19 AWG for my parallel coils and 14 AWG foil coils for the woofers.
Good to see you're planning on other tweeters, I hadn't seen that page
I would still urge to try out slightly more expensive tweeters instead of the North, your filter may get very complex to be able to handle both the slopes if you're insisting on staying with 6" mids.
One suggestion from my end for SOA (Son of Asawari) is to bring the midwoofers closer to each other, and since your flush mounting method is so innovative
try flush mounting them. If similar drivers are available in a 5", maybe try those out?My supposition was based on the fact that SPL curves may not actually be telling the whole story, most experienced builders on the web acknowledge that the listenability of a speaker is not told well by curves alone, and distortion of various forms (or its lack) is a better guage of speaker sonics than SPL curves.
Since you've decided to leave it as it is, that's great. As long as you're happy with the results it's all that matters. I would still try to drop a second inductor on the lower woofer to add some more BSC, and lower the first woofer inductor to the textbook value based on Fc. Zaph documents this on his 2.5 waveguide project, but that's a TMM, not MTM so I suppose the topology will be significantly different.
Great learning from you, Tarun, the design looks like a labour of love, and look forward to the sequel to the hit! [/B][/QUOTE]
Sorry Sangram, my last response got screwed up because I hit the 30-minute edit-post deadline while I went looking for Corrson's email. I'll complete my answers here.
BTW, since you are in touch with the furniture business, I presume you know about the four kinds of wood "polish" which the polishwallahs of Bombay do, right? The list, AFAIK, going from cheapest to costliest, is:
My current pair has glossy melamine finish; I paid Rs.2.5k/pair for material and labour.
AFAIU (U = understand), the initial stage of smoothing using fine emery paper and application of colour with shellac and spirit (optional, if you don't want any stains) is the same in all the methods. It's the sealant stage from where the differences start.
If you know any more details about these four methods, or have pointers to stuff I can read, I'd really appreciate it. I'm really curious about these methods, and I've gotten various bits of furniture done at home with the first three out of these four methods. They're very distinctly different from each other. And the popular TouchWood brand of varnish/lacquer/whatever which many Indians know about, is a cheaper and inferior version of what you get using melamine polish, apparently.
WHY??? WHY????
Do you know how much of a bloody fool you make me feel? Angshu had said the same thing when I'd told him Corrson doesn't know how to do micro-Henry coils.
And he was right!!!! I asked Corrson later, can they do a 0.22mH? And they said yes!!!
And there's not much scope to flush mount these drivers, because they appear flush mounted when you surface-mount them. Their flanges taper smoothly down to the baffle surface and end in a knife-edge.
Thanks for the patience and comments.
Do you know where Visha Electronics is? Dev Elec is in the next building, at the same level (first floor), in the same row of buildings. Both Visha and Dev open out into balconies which face the LRoad Police Station.
Aha... I think I now know what you mean. I've seen good stuff too. In this approach, you will have to settle for darker stains, and can't opt for the lighter finishes like pine-wood or ash. And you'll have to depend on the skills of the polish chap.. he actually draws the grain structure using different shades of brown, right? They can make faux teakwood finishes this way, I've seen. But they are constrained by the basic shade of the raw plywood... they can only make things darker, not lighter, in shade. Am I understanding this right? If yes, then most good polish guys in Bombay will be able to do this for you. Check with Hiralalji about the feasibility of this.
BTW, since you are in touch with the furniture business, I presume you know about the four kinds of wood "polish" which the polishwallahs of Bombay do, right? The list, AFAIK, going from cheapest to costliest, is:
- "haath polish", applied by hand, using shellac lacquer and spirit. This process, and its chemicals, has changed little over the last few centuries, I suspect.
- "melamine polish" where they use a different type of sealant and apply the last water-resistant coat using a spray gun. Available in matt or glossy, and the matt finish using this approach looks better than the glossy.
- "PU polish", which uses again a different sealant, followed by a poly-urethane layer (made by Asian Paints) applied by spray gun. Available in matt and glossy, and both look pretty good. The layer here is visibly thicker than with melamine finish. And finally,
- "lamination", which uses some imported chemicals from Malaysia and creates a glass-like, totally transparent, 3-mm thick coat on the veneer. This is usually done glossy, never matt, and requires a lot of buffing of intermediate layers using a motorised buffer, and large quantities of raw material for all those layers.
My current pair has glossy melamine finish; I paid Rs.2.5k/pair for material and labour.AFAIU (U = understand), the initial stage of smoothing using fine emery paper and application of colour with shellac and spirit (optional, if you don't want any stains) is the same in all the methods. It's the sealant stage from where the differences start.
If you know any more details about these four methods, or have pointers to stuff I can read, I'd really appreciate it. I'm really curious about these methods, and I've gotten various bits of furniture done at home with the first three out of these four methods. They're very distinctly different from each other. And the popular TouchWood brand of varnish/lacquer/whatever which many Indians know about, is a cheaper and inferior version of what you get using melamine polish, apparently.
Tried looking for that mail from Corrson, but couldn't find it. The price of a large coil (> 1mH) is less than Rs.400 each, I remember. Just send them an email with coil sizes, and they'll respond in one working day. They're pretty prompt and good to deal with.
First Angshu, then you!!!
WHY??? WHY???? Do you know how much of a bloody fool you make me feel?
Angshu had said the same thing when I'd told him Corrson doesn't know how to do micro-Henry coils.And he was right!!!! I asked Corrson later, can they do a 0.22mH? And they said yes!!!
I'm not sure there's any audible differences between series resistance of, say, 0.15 Ohms and 0.25 Ohms. So I'll go with the convenience of Corrson for now, till I start building 3-ways and want huge 3mH and 5mH coils for woofers.
Yes, 14AWG is not needed, but then I'd described how I'd arrived at that gauge.
Later, later. There will be many more stories. I don't want to make the classic mistake (documented in Mythical Man-Month) of the Second Project Syndrome.
There is no flexibility in choice of midbass drivers if I'm building another Asawari derivative... this driver is probably the only decent Indian-made midbass available. And I'm not sure I want to play with the driver positioning for now, because I'm not sure the resultant small narrowing in the lobing pattern will have much audible effect on the sound right now. In fact, there are some opinions on the Net that a wider MTM spacing has some benefits, though it increases comb filtering.One suggestion from my end for SOA (Son of Asawari) is to bring the midwoofers closer to each other, and since your flush mounting method is so innovative
And there's not much scope to flush mount these drivers, because they appear flush mounted when you surface-mount them. Their flanges taper smoothly down to the baffle surface and end in a knife-edge.
I understand what you mean. Resonances are not always caught in the SPL curves, other than the huge ones for metal cones. Other resonances are caught as inflexions in the phase curve of the impedance measurements. Jon Marsh had explained to me, in a post on his MTM Modula thread on htguide.com, about how he looks for these mild resonances in the phase curves of impedance plots. Very interesting. And guess what?? You actually introduce new resonances after you fit the driver in the enclosure, and those too can be seen in the phase plot of the impedance measurements.
There are MTM 2.5-ways too, see Roman Bednarek's site. But for me, all that will come later. I'm interested in iterations and learning and listening now, not in that Ultimate Worldbeater.
Thanks for the patience and comments.
What an excellent write-up! Reminds me of Tony Gee and the old SpeakerBuilding site (which I don't think has been updated since 2000). I am hoping that you continue your second DIY phase.
I look forward to the next set of Asawaris, and possibly matching subwoofers to match(?). And a centre channel? Careful, as this can be catching. But whatever you do, I look forward to an excellent write-up of it.
I look forward to the next set of Asawaris, and possibly matching subwoofers to match(?). And a centre channel? Careful, as this can be catching. But whatever you do, I look forward to an excellent write-up of it.
I totally agree. I was actually comparing US prices for both.sangram said:
You know what? I'd once done some R&D on this forum, asking for opinions from the Village Elders of Speaker Building what they thought were the good tweeters for upto $25 each. I got excellent inputs; you can probably find that old thread on this forum somewhere. And I then discovered that the sweet spot for tweeter prices is about $25-30 or so. If one has that budget, one can get a wide range of really excellent tweeters. Beyond that price, one often does not get major audible improvement unless the circumstances and the entire signal chain are very very special. This was an OT digression, but I thought I'd just tell you about it...
I agree. Their Indian prices are very reasonable, considering low volumes, and I would certainly want to buy from them whatever they offer. But as you said, they offer so little.
I agree they are ancient 15+years old drivers. But for some beginners, they offer excellent step up in sound quality compared to the alternatives you get, both commercial and DIY.
How do you know they are listenable if you haven't heard them?
On a more serious note, one veteran DIY speaker building friend went to Corrson's shop/office and heard their floorstanders. He came away saying that they sounded horribly bright. After having built the Asawaris, I now tend to believe this might be yet another case of designing an xo using readily available CAD tools like SW, but failing to tune by ear.
I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm obscenely rich!! Don't let my penny-pinching ways fool you!! I actually own (drum roll....) a pair of JX92S and G2Si's!!! (clash of cymbals...)
My next project will be a ready designed 2-way standmount with the JX92S and G2Si tweeters, based on an xo designed by one of the members on this forum. Then I'll listen and measure, and tweak that xo. And then, later, I'll add probably some Dayton RS woofers for the range 100Hz and below, active xo'd.
Thanks.Cloth Ears said:
I'm surprised how many of you have liked my long writing style. I'd written it for my own pleasure, and for a (very) few friends, never expecting that there are many of you who actually like reading such long accounts. The norm for speaker design projects appears to be one medium-sized HTML page, with Lynn Olson's Ariel pages the major exception. And every builder seems to enjoy talking about their beautiful finished designs, but no one likes talking about the mistakes made and painful screwups done along the way. Thanks a lot. My next project will be an experimental small pair of standmounts where I'll hear ribbon tweeters for the first time; I'll be mating my JX92S with the G2Si based on a readily available design. Then I'll build a pair of Asawari Mk II's for another friend, and learn something more about xo and box design. Yes, I'll certainly write what happens.
Should be good, specially since those Dayton drivers need low Fc. BTW, why did you opt for these (more expensive) tweeters instead of, say, the Dayton RS tweeters, or the Seas TDFC fabric domes? Just curious.Shaun said:I have not heard them yet
I got them just as the RS drivers were being released. They had been intended for a production prototype, back when I wanted to start my own speaker manufacturing business (my local market won't support this, though). This project has morphed from MTM to 2.5-way to 3-way TMWW. You may be interested to know that since these speakers will now become my own, I have actually ordered RS mids and tweeters to match to the Extremis 6.8's (no, I'm not rich, it's just a project that never happened). The only regret I have is that I did not pay the same level of attention to enclosure innertness that you did.
tcpip said:
Thanks for that! I will get over there on my next trip.
tcpip said:
Actualy, I'm an advertising guy, so I know it superficially and yes, it is the PU finish and you can only go darker (I'm looking for black oak or dark cherry) and I'm going to ask my client for a favour and put me in touch with someone really finicky.
Post which I may have a few more answers. Right now your R&D is a lot more polished than mine.
tcpip said:
That's an awesome price!!! I'll pad the tweeters and buy my coils from them. Are they well-constructed or just slapped together with tape?
I'm only worried about wasting power more than audibility of series resistance (I doubt if there's any actually except for a slightly lower volume).
tcpip said:
Like the Vifa TC, I suppose. Those have frames designed for surface mounting... I'll maybe pick up a pair to play with.
One more question for you.
Could you have done it without a router, since you didn't really countersink the tweeter, so would a circle cutter have been enough?
I will follow the same procedure for 'countersinking', except I may end up using black glass for the top layer of the baffle instead of veneer, and the aforesaid black oak or dark cherry for the sides.
My humble request, don't do this. Use real veneer. And then get a guy to do a good PU polish, glossy or matt. The money you save by avoiding veneer is nothing in the long run, and the difference in appearance is major. And remember Gooroo Angshoo Axiom One: if it looks great, it sounds excellent.sangram said:
I really believe it. There's (at least) one area where your R&D is deeper than mine, though it's OT on the Asawari thread. Tell me whatever you've learned about getting custom-built chassis made from Dinrack? Is he able to do something about integrated heatsinks too?
I wish you had some basic practice with SW and could load any one or two FRD and ZMA files into it. If you could, then you would have been able to see how little the extra DC resistance of 17SWG versus 15SWG affects either phase or amplitude of the resultant speaker. It'll certainly be less than 0.5dB, and people like you or me will hear other distortions/problems much before we hear the difference due to this tiny extra resistance. I have tried changing values of caps or coils by 10% and it makes almost no difference to the (modelled) SPL and phase in many cases. In the Asawari, I actually had to deviate from a visually-flat SPL curve in order to get the tweeter level to sound right. Those problems are much bigger than the DC resistance change in coils moving from 14 to 16 gauge, IMHO.
They're as well-constructed as the Dayton or Madisound coils, not like the premium boutique brand coils (I'm going purely by photos on the overseas Websites here). And Angshu uses Corrson coils and is perfectly happy with their construction, so I don't bother with their quality any more. They're not slapped together with tape... they're neater than what I'd make if I made them at home.
You won't. An extra 0.1 Ohm in the series path won't be even felt at the volume control of your amp, except in A-to-B comparison tests.
Quite similar, I think. But if you want to use those, try the Kevlars instead... they may actually be better.
Yes, certainly. You don't need a router at all. Before you begin construction, study the flange depth of each of your drivers. Usually, thick flanges of tweeters and midbass drivers are about 4mm. (The Kevlars of course are flush mounted, so they don't count.) Add 2mm for the sealing foam/gasket which you will add. This gives you 6mm. Just ensure that you add a 5-6mm additional thickness on top of your MDF baffles, in the form of thin sheets of ply, that's all. In my case, it's 3mm veneer sheet + an additional 3mm of ply. Even though I had a router when the Asawari was built, I didn't use it for recessing for the tweeter flange. I just told Hiralalji to cut the veneer and the 3mm ply sheets to the outer diameter of the tweeter, and the rest of the baffle (for me, this meant 2 sheets of 18-20mm ply) as per the inner diameter. He understood perfectly.
Forget routers, you don't even need a circle cutter. Indian carpenters are perfectly comfortable cutting circles using a drilling machine, a narrow-blade saw, and a file. They take a few times as long as they would with a router, but that's all. Their hole accuracy doesn't suffer to any significant degree (for speaker building purposes that is).
Black glass for the front baffle... that's an idea I have never thought of or seen before. Very interesting. I've already used black glass for the table-top of the Asawari.
There is one problem with black glass baffles which applies only to top-mounted drivers. You can't (usually) get the glass workshop to drill holes for you closer than an inch from the edge of the sheet. So you can't drill screwholes for top-mounted drivers. However, in your case, since all drivers will be recess-mounted, you don't have this problem. You can use 5mm or 6mm thick black glass stuck on the MDF with Araldite, and it should look lovely.
Just one tip. Get the glass baffles cut by the glass workshop before the carpenter starts making your MDF baffles. Glass workshops are known not to maintain accuracy closer than about one-eighth inch. Therefore, their holes for your drivers won't be as accurate as needed for your carpenter to work blind. Hence, it's better that he gets the glass sheets on hand before he starts cutting the MDF, so that he knows that he can keep all specs and dimensions aside and ensure that his MDF matches your glass sheet perfectly.
It'll be even better if you first ask your carpenter to make an accurate "pharmaa" (a Hindi distortion for the English word "form", used to mean "template") using 3mm ply for what the glass baffle should be like. Give this template to the glass workshop. They'll find it easier to do an accurate job when they see a template together with the measurements.
Great, the veneer it is then. I saw some nice imported textured maple veneer that don't need a polish, and are nice and thin too (none of the 4mm stuff, .3-.4 mm at best) at my client's place yesterday. Or I may go for an automotive red or silver and clearcoat, like on a guitar. Not really sure of the finish at this point.
The idea was to use glass as the top plate of the baffle, so I could countersink the drivers without having to route the wood, and it seemed a way to make the baffle look fancy and decoupled completely from the driver mounting surface. I don't want to surface mount any drivers after taking a look at Zaph's info on the effects of doing that, but if I use tapered frame drivers, I would probably not use glass at all, or bevel it to a needle point where the driver frame meets the baffle, sort of horn-loading it. Hmm. Actually, not use glass at all.
I was planning on printing out a template on A3 stiff sheets for all circles, one for the carpenter and one for the glass guy. On the other hand, a plywood or particle board template would probably be better.
OT: Dinrack is slow about custom orders. I had to go through hell to get him to agree to build a custom job, and then it's taking too long (I placed an order in June, have yet to take delivery). He works with sheets and extrusions only, so it's difficult to get a heatsink integrated. I asked for 5 mm (he couldn't imagine why I wanted it so thick) for both the chassis (amp and pre) on all sides except the back and top, which didn't fit his extrusions naturally so we had to hand-tweak the design to accomodate such thick sheets. For smaller projects I've located an aluminum supplier who sells by the sheet and am looking for a guy with a machine shop. All these speakers need amps, and I'm not going to shell out these kind of amounts for every amp I build. So my next project is either going to use the heatsinks as the main structure with the panels bolted on to it, or L-angles and panels.
The idea was to use glass as the top plate of the baffle, so I could countersink the drivers without having to route the wood, and it seemed a way to make the baffle look fancy and decoupled completely from the driver mounting surface. I don't want to surface mount any drivers after taking a look at Zaph's info on the effects of doing that, but if I use tapered frame drivers, I would probably not use glass at all, or bevel it to a needle point where the driver frame meets the baffle, sort of horn-loading it. Hmm. Actually, not use glass at all.
I was planning on printing out a template on A3 stiff sheets for all circles, one for the carpenter and one for the glass guy. On the other hand, a plywood or particle board template would probably be better.
OT: Dinrack is slow about custom orders. I had to go through hell to get him to agree to build a custom job, and then it's taking too long (I placed an order in June, have yet to take delivery). He works with sheets and extrusions only, so it's difficult to get a heatsink integrated. I asked for 5 mm (he couldn't imagine why I wanted it so thick) for both the chassis (amp and pre) on all sides except the back and top, which didn't fit his extrusions naturally so we had to hand-tweak the design to accomodate such thick sheets. For smaller projects I've located an aluminum supplier who sells by the sheet and am looking for a guy with a machine shop. All these speakers need amps, and I'm not going to shell out these kind of amounts for every amp I build. So my next project is either going to use the heatsinks as the main structure with the panels bolted on to it, or L-angles and panels.
I suspect his comments will be about surface-mounting drivers which have thick flanges and need recessing. I doubt his comments would apply to surface-mounting for drivers which were designed to be surface mounted.sangram said:
The carpenter will not be able to use your A3 template directly... he'll need to take measurements and then draw the circles by hand/compass anyway. The glass guy however can use the ply template to check the accuracy of his cutting.
And thanks about the Dinrack info.
Amp chassis: why not build active speakers? That way, you can build the amp chamber into the rear of the speaker itself.
tcpip said:why not build active speakers? That way, you can build the amp chamber into the rear of the speaker itself.
Next project is a 70 + 30 watt actively amped two-way system using locally available drivers. Already planned it out, sort of. Maybe next year. I'll still need some aluminum though, at least as a chassis for the amp.
tcpip said:
I had assumed the adhesive layer and the fact that it was two materials with different densities, would be enough decoupling...
Go with a larger speaker enclosure, that's all. Put all the electronics in a chamber at the rear of the speaker. And just one sheet of metal, only for the back plate, on which you can fit the RCA/XLR input sockets, IEC socket, heatsink, and so on. No separate chassis needed. At least that's how my thinking goes currently. Should be easier to build and use this way.sangram said:
Aha, I get it. Yes, you'll get what I believe some people call constrained-layer damping, not decoupling. Basically, if two sheets with two very different resonant frequencies (density is only one of the factors which affects resonant frequency) are stuck together, then they form a composite sheet which will absorb a wider range of frequencies better than either material alone can. But decoupling will mean some intermediate layer which will not pass the vibrations from one layer to the next. This can only be done if you put an intermediate layer of sponge/cloth/foam/felt etc. Harder to do that and still keep the good looks.
I have to admit, sheepishly, one idea I tried but whose results really disappointed me. (This is not meant as a negative comment on your use of glass baffles... they'll be smart, I think.)
I built one pair of large floorstander enclosures, and lined the insides with 20mm thick Kudappa stone sheets. (In other parts of India, you can use Kota stone... basically any low cost stone slabs. Stone resonates less than thick glass, is much cheaper than 12mm glass, and is heavier.) In this box, I didn't put any bracing at all, believing that the stone slab stuck on with Araldite to the inside of the MDF wall would provide huge mass loading, constrained layer damping, and would absorb vibrations beautifully.
Unfortunately, it fails the knuckle test quite badly, compared to the Asawari. The Asawari, with its lighter construction and dense matrix bracing, is much deader that that exotic stone-sheet monster. In fact, it was that experiment in stone which inspired me to go the totally opposite way with the Asawari and try just fanatical bracing. It paid off.
I now intend to resume work on that stone-slab monster, and I'll place cross-braces made of solid wood beams, perhaps 2"x2" in cross-section, to brace the walls. That should improve matters considerably. We'll see...
Just wanted to put on record that this idea worked very well. The cross-beams made of solid, inexpensive 2"x2" saal wood and shoved into place by my carpenter, then fixed using lots of Araldite, resulted in immediate and marked deadening of the side panels. It's clear to me now that if you want to use just one method for deadening of walls, use cross-bracing of some kind (i.e. bracing which pushes outwards against two opposing walls.)tcpip said:
Started work on the Asawari Mark II. Enclosures are ready (that's the easy part, because I pay a carpenter to do it). Drivers need to be mounted and measurements taken.fibbrilator said:
If you want Peerless India drivers in B'lore, I believe Dev Electronics will ship them to you. He's done that to other diyers, I believe.
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