Made up some quick braces in the mill tonight. I'm going to router the edges over tomorrow at my dad's. I'm not sure if all 4 will be used, it was easy to make 2 at a time with the mill.
This was actually pretty easy to install, the cabinets have enough give you can get the braces inside and twist them into place.
I was actually on the manufacturers website this morning and found it interesting how on the masterpiece series uses a second, rear firing woofer with phase correction. Probably really hard to duplicate but still cool.
You could try an active crossover on just the bass. You would need a 12dB/oct lowpass at 450Hz. And leave the ESL portion passive...
That would actually be really easy to do as I think I already have a crossover sitting around at my shop.
What's the benefits of going this route instead of staying with the passive crossover? I suppose it would allow me to play with the slopes and frequency a bit.
The main benefit would be eliminating the series inductor between the amp and the woofer, so the amp can have direct control over the woofer without a huge 'spring' in-between.
The ability to independently adjust the woofer level is also a benefit, since you're dealing with a point source and basically a dipole line source together. They behave differently with distance, which changes the frequency balance if you're not listening at the intended distance.
You could also add DSP/EQ to the woofer, which would give you room correction. Typically that significantly flattens in-room bass frequency response, but may require some delay on the ESL also.
In the grand scheme of things, neither of these may be that important to you. It's a question of degree and cost/complexity to achieve the improvement. If you were happy with the Aerius previously, it may not be worth the trouble. All of this hardware adds to cost, as the newer Martin Logans demonstrate.
You could also add DSP/EQ to the woofer, which would give you room correction. Typically that significantly flattens in-room bass frequency response, but may require some delay on the ESL also.
In the grand scheme of things, neither of these may be that important to you. It's a question of degree and cost/complexity to achieve the improvement. If you were happy with the Aerius previously, it may not be worth the trouble. All of this hardware adds to cost, as the newer Martin Logans demonstrate.
All those old Martin Logan hybrids deserve an active xo on the bass, which brings them up-to-date with the newest models.
Not to discourage you at all, in my view Aerius and Aerius'i' are just a bit short in height and with an xo point a bit too high (450Hz) compared to the larger SL3 (250Hz) and Ascent (280Hz) to make it worth a serious investment.
But if you already have the active xo, plus a spare amp, then it's a pretty easy mod to just bypass the bass xo since the extra speaker terminals are there. Try it!
I'm attaching this collection of ML impedance curves for future discussion....
Not to discourage you at all, in my view Aerius and Aerius'i' are just a bit short in height and with an xo point a bit too high (450Hz) compared to the larger SL3 (250Hz) and Ascent (280Hz) to make it worth a serious investment.
But if you already have the active xo, plus a spare amp, then it's a pretty easy mod to just bypass the bass xo since the extra speaker terminals are there. Try it!
I'm attaching this collection of ML impedance curves for future discussion....
Attachments
You all have been unbelievably helpful, stuff like this reminds me why I stay away from Facebook. I never thought this thread would go anywhere honestly.
I actually have an old active XOver but just this afternoon someone is looking to buy it from me, I was looking at this online and it will do DSP as well, looks like it would be a good fit. It's also worth noting that I can buy this unit for less than it would cost to use film caps in the passive woofer Xover.
https://cosmomusic.ca/products/crossover-behringer-dcx2496le
I'm absolutely loving these ideas and will have to put them to good use. I love playing with stuff like this, I'm excited.
At least on the aerius i nobody seems to notice that the component pc boards and the bias supply board in particular is long, flat and suspended at the ends with four screws making a fine radiator to cause low freq cancellation or attenuation inside the cabinet.
So I was playing the Martin Logan's on and off through the Canadian long weekend, I played mix of video games and vinyl Saturday through Sunday.
Monday morning I went to throw a record on and a rectifier tube in one of my amps immediately blew up. I swapped over to my Schiit Aegir at a whopping 20WPC, it got hot enough to cook egg on and sounded like hot garbage.
I switched back to my Wharfedale Evo 4.2s and immediately noticed how much better both the lower bass and mid bass is on these speakers. Even on a low power amp these just trash the ML in every aspect of the bass department.
This really makes me want to see what I can do the the Martin Logan's to improve them. I think that ESL panel has real potential but is totally let down by that bass section.
Monday morning I went to throw a record on and a rectifier tube in one of my amps immediately blew up. I swapped over to my Schiit Aegir at a whopping 20WPC, it got hot enough to cook egg on and sounded like hot garbage.
I switched back to my Wharfedale Evo 4.2s and immediately noticed how much better both the lower bass and mid bass is on these speakers. Even on a low power amp these just trash the ML in every aspect of the bass department.
This really makes me want to see what I can do the the Martin Logan's to improve them. I think that ESL panel has real potential but is totally let down by that bass section.
Howdy guys!
I placed an order yesterday Parts Connexion, my wonder local DIY HiFi shop and everything arrived this morning. I got myself some beautiful and enormous Clarity Caps for the ELS panel crossover. I didn't buy anything for the woofer section of the crossover as I'll likely be going active at some point.
These are hilarious
Saturday evening I'll pull these out of the corner and get the crossover units on the bench.
I placed an order yesterday Parts Connexion, my wonder local DIY HiFi shop and everything arrived this morning. I got myself some beautiful and enormous Clarity Caps for the ELS panel crossover. I didn't buy anything for the woofer section of the crossover as I'll likely be going active at some point.
These are hilarious
Saturday evening I'll pull these out of the corner and get the crossover units on the bench.
I got the caps roughly mounted tonight, but I'll have to get some silicone tomorrow to glue them down.
So I finally got everything finished and wired back up and everything still works so that's a good start.
Overall it was a successful project so I'm happy, I'll put some more hours on them, so far they sound great.
Overall it was a successful project so I'm happy, I'll put some more hours on them, so far they sound great.
Nice that playing with the Xo but I do wonder about the condition of the panels. I too was mucky around with my Odyssey but along the way I noticed sound was loosing loudness & clarity. Finally panels died, Ml want 3k for replacements too expensive & decided to perform surgery recoated panels & change bias strip myself. Lots of patience needed but end result was panel sounded like new again.
So far I don't notice any loss in clarity or anything. If I do decide mine need replacing ML only wants about $1000 Canadian for the pair, also I'd try washing my existing ones if it came to that. Best case I bring them back to life, worst case I need new ones.
So a couple days ago a picked up a Dayton DSP 408 for another project I'm working on and decided to give it a try running my Aerius I's in a fully active configuration. The passive crossover on the panel can be bypassed simply by tapping into the 2 leads going to the step up transformers.
I'm running the panels down to 450 Hz at 24bd/octave, I played with this X over point a bit and found the factory setting of 450hz sounded the best to me. I found it got a touch muddy if trying to drop it much lower.
The woofer section runs a bandpass Xover from 450hz to 60hz and the subwoofers pickup from 60hz and down. I have not touched the EQ yet as I'd like to do a room sweep first.
The ability to make adjustments on the fly really makes this nice to use, you can just sit on the couch and dial things in to your liking. It makes setting up phase and levels an absolute breeze. So far I really like how it sounds, definitely improved some things without a doubt
I threw a bookshelf speaker together with some random parts and a box, they sounded decent but nothing like the ESLs
I'm running the panels down to 450 Hz at 24bd/octave, I played with this X over point a bit and found the factory setting of 450hz sounded the best to me. I found it got a touch muddy if trying to drop it much lower.
The woofer section runs a bandpass Xover from 450hz to 60hz and the subwoofers pickup from 60hz and down. I have not touched the EQ yet as I'd like to do a room sweep first.
The ability to make adjustments on the fly really makes this nice to use, you can just sit on the couch and dial things in to your liking. It makes setting up phase and levels an absolute breeze. So far I really like how it sounds, definitely improved some things without a doubt
I threw a bookshelf speaker together with some random parts and a box, they sounded decent but nothing like the ESLs
Hi Brandon. I am thinking about this crossover update for my Aerius i speakers. Curious to see how you are going with the speakers. Also curious why there appear to be 2 caps for cx1, based on the pics? did you ever modify the low pass?
Hello Brandon!
I would like to ask for help! I have a dcx2496 crossover. And I would also like to actively operate aerius. Eliminating the crossover of the subwoofer does not cause any problems... but which wire should I connect to eliminate the crossover of the panel speaker? Thanks for the help! Henry
I would like to ask for help! I have a dcx2496 crossover. And I would also like to actively operate aerius. Eliminating the crossover of the subwoofer does not cause any problems... but which wire should I connect to eliminate the crossover of the panel speaker? Thanks for the help! Henry
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