My Calpamos Build

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#121
After repairing my self-inflicted crossover problem, I am happy to say that my new Sony VFet P-ch lottery amp is indeed an excellent companion to my Calpamos speakers! I think this coming weekend might be a good time to start rotating amps to see if one emerges as a favorite with new new full range speakers.

It’s times like these that I wish we had the ability to edit posts that are more than 30mins old…. What a great little amp this one is!
 
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#123
I don’t know that I’ll be able to do measurements and plots that some others have done using diy turntables to measure various degrees off axis, but I’m impressed so far. The horn seems to do what it is supposed to do. There is very little discernable difference standing vs sitting. I used to have a set of THX certified speakers that cast a VERY narrow vertical sound field. The Calpamos are nothing like this at all!

Moving side to side in front of the speaker reveals similarly good off axis dispersion. Before I assembled the speakers, I held the horn to my ear and panned the wide end of the horn around the room. I was impressed with how well I was able to hear point sources of noise as the horn swept back and forth by as much as +/- 90 degrees. The off-axis dispersion is much better than my FHXL speakers. Being on/off axis with the FHXL makes a big difference. Being on/off with the Calpamos barely makes a noticeable difference until you are at 75 to 90 degrees off axis.
 
#125
Eric,
Good to hear.
You should do a test by toeing in the speakers. You'll get less wall reflections but worse center wall reflections. Improvement depends on your seating position and dimensions to boundaries etc. Hopefully they are not too heavy to spin 😉

Edit: Just saw a photo of your room, may not be possible with TV and cabinet in the middle. In fact it would probably only make it worse.
 
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#126
Yeah, position is less than ideal for any speaker in that room. The tv and speakers sit in a recess in the wall, so there isn't much room to move things around very much. My wife and I often think we should have skipped on this house and bought a different one because of the layout of this room. There is a fireplace on one wall, so you can't put furniture there. Opposite of the fireplace, the family room shares space with the kitchen, so there is no wall at all there. This leaves two walls for arranging furniture - overall, not very much flexibility at all.

When we first saw the house, I thought that I didn't like the open floor plan of that room. I made a specific choice not to be judgemental and to give it a try. So, here we are 20 years later and I still don't like that room. I've learned that being judgement seems to work well for me and that I should pay attention to that voice 😉
 
#127

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#128
Great video, Mazza! Thanks for posting it. I have a little bit of room to play with, but not very much. The good news is that I already have each speaker on a dolly - I'd never get them into position otherwise at 150 lbs each. I can pull them out when no one else is around, and push them back into their original position otherwise.

I used the tape on the floor arrangement when I was positioning my open baffle speakers in my theater. It's a great way to experiment in a way that becomes repeatable.
 
#129
Domestic life, just like loudspeakers is a set of compromises 😀

My room setup just like yours is far from ideal, most of us here have to deal with the restrictions of a typical domestic setting. Hence my curiosity about the Calpamos' performance in your experience. It has piqued my interest for quite awhile now. I have not come across any negative feedback from builders as well but also hesitant because they are huge. My main concern is the bass would be too much for my 20sqm room. I would appreciate your opinion.



Eric said:
Yeah, position is less than ideal for any speaker in that room. The tv and speakers sit in a recess in the wall, so there isn't much room to move things around very much. My wife and I often think we should have skipped on this house and bought a different one because of the layout of this room. There is a fireplace on one wall, so you can't put furniture there. Opposite of the fireplace, the family room shares space with the kitchen, so there is no wall at all there. This leaves two walls for arranging furniture - overall, not very much flexibility at all.

When we first saw the house, I thought that I didn't like the open floor plan of that room. I made a specific choice not to be judgemental and to give it a try. So, here we are 20 years later and I still don't like that room. I've learned that being judgement seems to work well for me and that I should pay attention to that voice 😉
Click to expand...
 
#130
Room boundaries are likely to be causing *some* impact, for sure. Whatever they are, they are not obvious, obtrusive, or otherwise draw attention to themselves. My family room is about 23 sqm, but it shares space with the kitchen, so probably closer to 45 sqm in total. Bass is excellent. It is not “boomy” or overdone in any way. Given my placement, bass is probably reinforced by walls, and it is still well behaved and well balanced with the rest of the audio spectrum. My wife tends to be pretty sensitive to “too much” bass and isn't shy about letting me know when she thinks it is too much. I haven’t heard any complaints thus far.

It will be a little while still before I can make some measurements, but I will eventually get around to it.
 
#131
Thankyou for sharing your experience with this build Eric. Beautiful cabinets and a really well documented process. Sounds like you're very happy with them!

I was also hoping to build a pair but like other members have posted I am not sure if the crossover kits are available anymore which is a bit of a shame. I've emailed Tony nevertheless. The woofers look to still be available here in Australia although the HF driver and the wave guide may be trickier. It looks like a cracking speaker. 🙂
 
#134
mbrennwa said:
I the xovers are not sold anymore, someone who has the xovers could publish the schematic and parts values, so that people could continue to build this great speaker.
Click to expand...

Righto, so it seems the assembled crossovers ARE in fact available for purchase. I heard back from Tony who I must say is an awesome dude - extremely helpful and forthcoming. The values of the crossover components are not available of course unless you purchase the crossover. Given he's made pretty much all the other information available free, I think that's fair enough.

The issue may well be procurement of the compression drivers and the horn. I certainly can't find them in my neck of the woods (Australia) which makes purchase of the crossovers somewhat pointless at present. There does seem to be a cloned JBL 2385 horn (rather than the 2380) that I can get my hands on from an Australian distributor...I wonder if one could use DSP with this and an alternative compression driver to achieve a similar result in the same cabinet? This is certainly outside my current skillset but I suppose I could learn!? As COVID recovery accelerates globally, perhaps these parts will become available again..who's to know?

Anyway, long story short...if you can get (or already have) the drivers and the horn, it looks like Tony can still sort you out with the crossover. 🙂
 
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#135
Good to hear that the crossovers are still available from Tony. I will say that the crossovers are top flight for sure. Very high quality components are used throughout and the construction quality is quite robust. Just don't mount them on top of something that will short out a cap like I did and you'll be in great shape. 😉 I would suspect the drivers and horns will become more easily available in the near future. I didn't source my drivers until June of this summer (well into the pandemic) and I had a little bit of trouble finding the woofers, but they seem to be more readily available now.

Funny situation, when I completed my FHXL build a few years ago, I found the speakers irritating because of a 7-10kHz hump in the frequency response. My solution was to build a notch filter to bring the hump down. Then they sounded fine- so much so that I forgot about adding the filter. Putting the Calpamos speakers in place of the FHXL, I found the same 7-10kHz response hump. This is clearly an artifact of placement and nearfield reflections. With a new pre/pro behind my family room setup, I just tweaked the electronic crossover to trim the hump down.

Overall, I'm really enjoying the Calpamos! A few people expressed some potential concerns about the horn/tweeter combo. I find this combo to be superb. The soundstage is deep and wide and they provide quite a large sweet spot in terms of imaging. There is no detectable difference in treble response from sitting to standing or wandering around in the room.
 
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