measurements of nude ribbons and a dome-dipole

I'd be interested to learn to what degree constant directivity matters in a "normal" living room. Also, of the many attributes of dipole/OB speakers how important they are to people's perception. For example, early reflections seem not to be a problem for Charlie.

The actual sound stage is two speaker boxes across the room. But with stereo coming out of the speakers, the brain prefers to struggle to construct a symphony sound stage and ignore the correct (AKA veridical) sound stage of the actual room*. I think that effort may be as much the active inclusion of cues as the suppression of unhelpful cues.

As with the conventional wisdom of keeping speakers away from walls and having a carpet in front of them, dipoles contribute suppressible cues which do not interfere with the symphony sound stage construction but do add to ambience.

(Some care is needed to ignore the psycho-babbling of physicists who view their models of hearing as, as the philosophers say, "necessity". Kind of as sophisticated as that 7th-grade meme, "the eye is nothing but a camera.")

B.
* I wonder if the original Bell Labs 3-speaker system would be easier on the brain? Been years since I experimented with middle speakers and can't remember how it went. Anybody game to try it? Not sure the crummy voice speaker under TV screens is the same, but seems to be helpful there.
 
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The best soundstage I have experienced with a dipole system was in a relatively large bare room, with mostly hardwood flooring plus some tile, sheet rock walls, and only one lone couch in the middle. It was almost too live but the effect from the dipole was stunning.

This matches my experience with dipole ribbon line arrays. They are not quite the same in a carpeted and heavily furnished room. A large CD horn works better in these more highly damped rooms.
 
The best soundstage I have experienced with a dipole system was in a relatively large bare room, with mostly hardwood flooring plus some tile, sheet rock walls, and only one lone couch in the middle. It was almost too live but the effect from the dipole was stunning.
Thanks Charlie. That would have been a reverberant room :). SL says his speakers were designed for a "normal" living room so I doubt that even spectral dispersion around the room is the main appeal.

What do you mean by best soundstage? I've found OB gives more depth but less focus.
 
As with the conventional wisdom of keeping speakers away from walls and having a carpet in front of them, dipoles contribute suppressible cues which do not interfere with the symphony sound stage construction but do add to ambience.
I certainly find they add ambience (they have to) then I find it recording/music/mood dependant on whether I want that added ambience.
 
Hi CharlieLaub,

very nice finding with the Dayton ND25FW-4.
So the waveguide from this tweeter is exactly what we need. Probably it is possible to combine this waveguide with other cone drivers or tweeters for superior results.
I have always wondered about the possibility of 3D printing a two-sided waveguide, as if the two Dayton ND25FW were joined with material.

I approached Joseph Crowe and tried to get him interested in two sided waveguides but he has rebuffed me multiple times so I gave up.

I don't have any experience in 3D printing or time to learn, but it would be great if someone was willing to give it a try.
 
Charlie, have you experimented with other waveguide loaded domes? Such as the Morel CAT378, the Seas DXT or the Wavecor TW030WA11?
The problem with pretty much every other waveguided tweeter is that the magnet assembly of the tweeter is "too large" meaning you cannot position the waveguides sufficiently close together to prevent some pattern breakdown in the few-kHz region. The Dayton waveguide tweeter uses a very small neo motor, so I was able to nest the two motors sort of side-by-side. If you put two WG tweeters with larger motor structures like the CAT378 and Seas DXT back to back it doesn't work well because the separation is too large. Also, you still need to cross over to a midrange no lower than about 1.75kHz or 2kHz, so you want the overall WG to be small enough to prevent a large center to center distance. The Dayton WG tweeters managed to balance all of these criteria.

Dayton offers the dome+motor as a bare assembly. If someone could print a back-to-back waveguide with the right size opening these could be glued into place.

Unfortunately I dont' know the specifics of the waveguide/flare geometry.
 
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Can you do a basic drawing of what you want? I'm not following what you are describing.

Do you know the flare geometry?

If it's relatively simple, I might be able to fit the modeling in at some point.
In the first post of this thread there is a picture of the two Dayton WG domes back to back. That's what I want to replicate, but in one enclosed unit. When I created this pair for the measurements I attempted to cut away part of each WG to clear the heat sink on the back of the neo magnet and next them closer. That actually did not work out well. In earlier embodiments I just placed the edge of the WG flange next to the heatsink. The best scenario would be without the heatsink but it comes from Dayton with it already glued on.
 
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The simple and best method is simply to do a frequency run of the tweeter using low power with mic at your chair. That will immediately show you where the tweeter falters. Go up an octave or two and that's how high the midrange should go, depending on XO slope (I find 24dB/8ave just fine).

I think it is usual to try to have a broad tweeter low range because tweeters are so great these days. But it has to be capable of handling the power and other judgments about crossover frequency.

To be sure, you want to go DSP because no other approach makes any sense today. Easiest path is with a Behringer. Just twist the knobs to get whatever you want.

B.