I was thinking about using the tad 1602 drivers for lower mid and using a single or 2 18" drivers for the low bass. does this sound like a good idea or not ? if so what would be a good driver to match the 1602's. what about cross over points ? will be using a atactive crossovers switch able 6-12-18 db and the crown dc300 amps any ideas out there
Kartsmart,
I have not heard the TAD woofers and I am no expert on crossover design but I will gladly throw my two cents into your thread since you seem anxious to at least here something. Here are my observations:
1) You don't specify what else you are thinking of doing up into the high mids and beyond so it is hard to understand what you are trying to get from your 1602's, but they have such a great rep that if I owned them, I would use them to cover the fundamental of the voice range and cross them just before beeming or crossover sensitivities are an issue. My own take on this is that 300Hz points tend to split a lot of vocal fundamentals and I would rather have a driver cover from 90-900 Hz and then cross to a high mid than run 300-3000 Hz and then cross to a tweeter. My reasoning is that there seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that 1.5-2.5 KHz is the zone where we can here most of the crossover junk in the system and it gets easier to design something smooth and musical as you get farther out of that zone in any direction. The problem with going higher is comb filtering between drivers so I like the idea of going lower and looking for some kind of near point source arrangement beyond that.
2) If you run your 1602's down to 90 Hz, then I don't think driver timbre matching is that big of an issue though I would probably not go with radically different materials like aluminum or magnesium cones. I think a great option would be the 18 inch JBLs in a ported enclosure with some eq to tune them down to low 30's or high 20's, I would still do stereo, so I would recommend buying two drivers and building two cabinets. I would post on the Pi forum for some help in getting the most out of these drivers.
3) I would cross the 1602's around 800 or 900 Hz to a TAD or BMS (depending on budget) compression driver in a round wooden Tractrix or Le'Cleach (sp?) horn that has a 15-18 inch mouth that you can build flush with a baffle that also holds the TAD 1602's, this would give a nice balanced look to the mains and also provide a more balanced delivery of sound pressure between all the drivers if you believe some of the Zingali (sp?) theories on horns for home hifi use. Their designer, and I can't remember his name or where I read this, thought that considtent mouth areas between cone bass/mid drivers and round horns help keep things a bit smoother. Also, Edgar and others have commented on vertical alignment for best imaging, so in a perfect world I would use two 1602's per main speaker, one above and one below a nice round wood horn that is about 40 inches off the floor to the center of the horn.
4) I would start here and then play with slopes and points, starting at 90 and slowly working down untill you like the hand off between the 18" JBLs and the TAD mid-woofers, and then working from maybe 1.2 Khz on down between the horn and the TADs, hoping that you can get close to 900 Hz and have both drivers still sound easy and musical even with tough source material being cranked through them.
If I end up going with a big project for big sound and end up with a living room at least 16 x 20 or bigger, this is probably what I will build myself in one form or another.
Good luck, I hope you get more help from others and crossover slopes and the 1602's in particular.
I have not heard the TAD woofers and I am no expert on crossover design but I will gladly throw my two cents into your thread since you seem anxious to at least here something. Here are my observations:
1) You don't specify what else you are thinking of doing up into the high mids and beyond so it is hard to understand what you are trying to get from your 1602's, but they have such a great rep that if I owned them, I would use them to cover the fundamental of the voice range and cross them just before beeming or crossover sensitivities are an issue. My own take on this is that 300Hz points tend to split a lot of vocal fundamentals and I would rather have a driver cover from 90-900 Hz and then cross to a high mid than run 300-3000 Hz and then cross to a tweeter. My reasoning is that there seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that 1.5-2.5 KHz is the zone where we can here most of the crossover junk in the system and it gets easier to design something smooth and musical as you get farther out of that zone in any direction. The problem with going higher is comb filtering between drivers so I like the idea of going lower and looking for some kind of near point source arrangement beyond that.
2) If you run your 1602's down to 90 Hz, then I don't think driver timbre matching is that big of an issue though I would probably not go with radically different materials like aluminum or magnesium cones. I think a great option would be the 18 inch JBLs in a ported enclosure with some eq to tune them down to low 30's or high 20's, I would still do stereo, so I would recommend buying two drivers and building two cabinets. I would post on the Pi forum for some help in getting the most out of these drivers.
3) I would cross the 1602's around 800 or 900 Hz to a TAD or BMS (depending on budget) compression driver in a round wooden Tractrix or Le'Cleach (sp?) horn that has a 15-18 inch mouth that you can build flush with a baffle that also holds the TAD 1602's, this would give a nice balanced look to the mains and also provide a more balanced delivery of sound pressure between all the drivers if you believe some of the Zingali (sp?) theories on horns for home hifi use. Their designer, and I can't remember his name or where I read this, thought that considtent mouth areas between cone bass/mid drivers and round horns help keep things a bit smoother. Also, Edgar and others have commented on vertical alignment for best imaging, so in a perfect world I would use two 1602's per main speaker, one above and one below a nice round wood horn that is about 40 inches off the floor to the center of the horn.
4) I would start here and then play with slopes and points, starting at 90 and slowly working down untill you like the hand off between the 18" JBLs and the TAD mid-woofers, and then working from maybe 1.2 Khz on down between the horn and the TADs, hoping that you can get close to 900 Hz and have both drivers still sound easy and musical even with tough source material being cranked through them.
If I end up going with a big project for big sound and end up with a living room at least 16 x 20 or bigger, this is probably what I will build myself in one form or another.
Good luck, I hope you get more help from others and crossover slopes and the 1602's in particular.
I cleaned out my closet and came up with some stuff from a old project years ago and this is what i have to start with, 2 tad 1602's, 2 jbl 2420 comp. drivers, 2 jbl 2345 horns. 3 crown 2 way ative crossovers and 1 crown dc 300 watt amp, 2 crown dc 150's through out the old lady and wanting to get back to some speaker projects.
Kartsmart,
JBL 2420 would work fine in a round wooden tractrix horn (often called a "salad bowl") though you may be inclined to add a supertweeter at some point as that driver really starts to roll off around 15k from what I have read. IMHO a round wooden horn just does the best job of keeping things as smooth and even as possible in a home environment. Look at Edgarhorn or Sierra Brooks and a couple of others for ideas or to just buy a horn from them that will mate well with your JBL compression driver.
I would look at this project for inspiration on the subwoofer, is the almighty subwoofer and it looks like a good one. There is another project on this forum that was posted in the last few weeks where this sub design served as the starting point for a tower speaker that has the JBLs firing out the side and a smaller MTM group of drivers on the front baffle.
I can't think of any reason why these drivers could not be combined into a great speaker system. Hopefully someone more knowledgable than myself will chime in here with some ideas for you.
JBL 2420 would work fine in a round wooden tractrix horn (often called a "salad bowl") though you may be inclined to add a supertweeter at some point as that driver really starts to roll off around 15k from what I have read. IMHO a round wooden horn just does the best job of keeping things as smooth and even as possible in a home environment. Look at Edgarhorn or Sierra Brooks and a couple of others for ideas or to just buy a horn from them that will mate well with your JBL compression driver.
I would look at this project for inspiration on the subwoofer, is the almighty subwoofer and it looks like a good one. There is another project on this forum that was posted in the last few weeks where this sub design served as the starting point for a tower speaker that has the JBLs firing out the side and a smaller MTM group of drivers on the front baffle.
I can't think of any reason why these drivers could not be combined into a great speaker system. Hopefully someone more knowledgable than myself will chime in here with some ideas for you.
i have been looking into the tads to build a system with recently too. i even emailed the tad engineers about frequency reponse graphs (as i could not find any for the low frequency drivers), but have not heard back yet. they were helpful before that though (with other questions), but have been quiet on this request 
i was looking more at the 1601b for my implementation. anyhow...the reason i am posting is to say that the 1602s have the lowest Fs of any tad driver (21hz). they say on the website that they were design specifically for people interested in "rich lows". i don't get why you would cross a driver like that over at 90hz. just curious? seems like it would be good to play all of the bottom octaves (save crazy-low bass). with room gain, i would think you could hear just about all there is down there. just my thoughts i realize you have these drivers on-hand, but if you were thinking of crossing over to subs, the 1601b would be better.
i was looking more at the 1601b for my implementation. anyhow...the reason i am posting is to say that the 1602s have the lowest Fs of any tad driver (21hz). they say on the website that they were design specifically for people interested in "rich lows". i don't get why you would cross a driver like that over at 90hz. just curious? seems like it would be good to play all of the bottom octaves (save crazy-low bass). with room gain, i would think you could hear just about all there is down there. just my thoughts
i realize you have these drivers on-hand, but if you were thinking of crossing over to subs, the 1601b would be better.this is some good stuff coming in ! maybe I'm wrong but I see the 1602's show to roll off in the low bass area and seem very flat from 100hz to to beond 5-600 hz, I would like to see a much flater responce in the bass area like the The Almighty Sub-woofer, could the be done by eq. the 1602's and keep it in safe limits of cone excursion. would it be asking to much of one driver to cover that many octave's 20hz to 5-600 hz's. been writing on this forum asking about rear horn loading the 1602,s for bass reinforcement but with little response is this a area ,should I still be looking, or better with a sub? the 1602's seem to be suited for horn loading with its low Q
TAD seemed to favor ported enclosures for their 15" studio monitors. I can't really see why you'd need the extra complexity of a bass horn in your relatively small room. With good box/port tuning and boundary/room gain, you should be able to get flat response down into the low 20's without any EQ. Tune it for a gradual rolloff below 100Hz and let the room lift the response to flat. I'm not sure the Almighty sub is a good example because the JBL's Fs is an octave higher than the TAD's and its Q is much higher as well.
out of curiosity...what makes you say that? personally, i am just looking at a 2-way right now, and i have heard quite the opposite (that the 1601b is exceptional in that region). isn't it also a good idea to keep crossovers away from the 300hz (vocal) range? just curious how that opinion was formed. not dissin', honestly interested.
Hi enochRoot
I should have stated that it's my personal opinion.
The TADs are very good up to the lower midrange,
but IMHO there's no escaping that it colors the sound a bit on female vocals and the like, if crossed over to high.
I was originally planning on a 2-way too, that's why I bought mine, but have realised that for me a three way is "better" sounding .
cheers
I should have stated that it's my personal opinion.
The TADs are very good up to the lower midrange,
but IMHO there's no escaping that it colors the sound a bit on female vocals and the like, if crossed over to high.
I was originally planning on a 2-way too, that's why I bought mine, but have realised that for me a three way is "better" sounding .
cheers
thanks. of course...i would *love* to build a 3-way, but i was trying to keep the cost down. of course...i'll probably slip into that mode
but again...you have not had problems crossing in the 300hz area? i have just read that is to be avoided. never tried it myself (only ever built fullrange or 2-ways before).
but again...you have not had problems crossing in the 300hz area? i have just read that is to be avoided. never tried it myself (only ever built fullrange or 2-ways before).
Hi
I have tried crossoverpoints for my TADs from 200Hz and up to 1600Hz, in 2-way and 3-way configurations. I'm using active setups and digital crossover and eq.
It's probably very individual where the crossover-points does the least harm, based on your hearing and the kind of music you usually listen to.
It's very instructive to listen to just the woofers, with no tweeters connected. If listened to in that way eventual colorations and the like is very noticable.
cheers
I have tried crossoverpoints for my TADs from 200Hz and up to 1600Hz, in 2-way and 3-way configurations. I'm using active setups and digital crossover and eq.
It's probably very individual where the crossover-points does the least harm, based on your hearing and the kind of music you usually listen to.
It's very instructive to listen to just the woofers, with no tweeters connected. If listened to in that way eventual colorations and the like is very noticable.
cheers
Because of its low frequency response of 21Hz, the TL-1602 low-frequency loudspeaker is especially suitable for a system with emphasis on rich lows. Featuring a well-designed cone diaphragm, the unit may be used for studio monitoring as is, or loaded with a horn in a sound reinforcement system.
VOICE COIL. The voice coil is relatively short so that it remains within the magnetic gap even during peak excursions. But its long travel distance results in reduced distortion at high input levels. The coil we use is ribbon wire, wound edgewise on a bobbin with heat-resistant adhesive. Making more effective use of the flux, it assures increased acoustic conversion efficiency and safe operation even when faced with 300 watts max. input.
MAGNETIC CIRCUIT. A heavy (3 lbs. 10 oz./1.65kg) alnico ring magnet of carefully selected materials and pole configuration produce an extremely high flux density of 11,800G. Lightweight moving parts and the long-travel voice coil together result in a sensitivity of 97dB/W (1m), and excellent specification for a unit of this size.
DIAPHRAGM. A wide piston motion range is assured thanks to a cone made of highly rigid carbon fiber. The diaphragm is covered with a special TAD-developed damping agent to reduce cone breakup and distortion. The polyurethane surround is structurally symmetrical and highly compliant to further reduce distortion. The frequency response is 21Hz for accurate reproduction of ultra-low frequencies.
HOUSING. A rugged, low-resonance frame of diecast aluminum alloy capably supports the heavy magnetic structure and the moving parts. It does its part in keeping coloration to a minimum. CROSSOVER. We recommend a crossover at 900Hz (12dB/oct. or 18dB/oct. roll-off) when using the unit in multi-speaker systems.
TL-1602 SPECIFICATIONS Voice coil impedance: 8 ohms. Lowest resonance frequency (fo): 21Hz. Frequency range: 21 - 2,000Hz. Rated input power: 150 watts. Maximum input power: 300 watts. Sound pressure level: 97dB/W (1m). Equivalent mass (infinite baffle): 4.3 oz./122g. Qo: 0.185 (fo = 21Hz). Total magnetic flux: 260,000 maxwells. Magnetic flux density: 11,800 gauss. Baffle opening: 13-7/8 inches/352mm. Mounting dimensions: 14-9/16 inches/370mm (8 holes). Weight: 24 lbs. 4 oz./11kg. Outer dimensions (diameter x depth): 15-3/4 x 6-9/16 inches/400 x 167mm.
VOICE COIL. The voice coil is relatively short so that it remains within the magnetic gap even during peak excursions. But its long travel distance results in reduced distortion at high input levels. The coil we use is ribbon wire, wound edgewise on a bobbin with heat-resistant adhesive. Making more effective use of the flux, it assures increased acoustic conversion efficiency and safe operation even when faced with 300 watts max. input.
MAGNETIC CIRCUIT. A heavy (3 lbs. 10 oz./1.65kg) alnico ring magnet of carefully selected materials and pole configuration produce an extremely high flux density of 11,800G. Lightweight moving parts and the long-travel voice coil together result in a sensitivity of 97dB/W (1m), and excellent specification for a unit of this size.
DIAPHRAGM. A wide piston motion range is assured thanks to a cone made of highly rigid carbon fiber. The diaphragm is covered with a special TAD-developed damping agent to reduce cone breakup and distortion. The polyurethane surround is structurally symmetrical and highly compliant to further reduce distortion. The frequency response is 21Hz for accurate reproduction of ultra-low frequencies.
HOUSING. A rugged, low-resonance frame of diecast aluminum alloy capably supports the heavy magnetic structure and the moving parts. It does its part in keeping coloration to a minimum. CROSSOVER. We recommend a crossover at 900Hz (12dB/oct. or 18dB/oct. roll-off) when using the unit in multi-speaker systems.
TL-1602 SPECIFICATIONS Voice coil impedance: 8 ohms. Lowest resonance frequency (fo): 21Hz. Frequency range: 21 - 2,000Hz. Rated input power: 150 watts. Maximum input power: 300 watts. Sound pressure level: 97dB/W (1m). Equivalent mass (infinite baffle): 4.3 oz./122g. Qo: 0.185 (fo = 21Hz). Total magnetic flux: 260,000 maxwells. Magnetic flux density: 11,800 gauss. Baffle opening: 13-7/8 inches/352mm. Mounting dimensions: 14-9/16 inches/370mm (8 holes). Weight: 24 lbs. 4 oz./11kg. Outer dimensions (diameter x depth): 15-3/4 x 6-9/16 inches/400 x 167mm.
you can find even more info on the international sites for some reason. such as:
http://www.pioneer-eur.com/eur/product_detail.jsp?product_id=1469&taxonomy_id=43-203
General TL-1602
Nominal Impedance 8 Ohm
Lowest Resonance Frequency (Fo) 21 Hz
Frequency Range 21-2000 Hz
Rated Input Power 150 Watt
Maximum Input Power 300 Watt
Sound Pressure Level 97 dB/W (1m)
Total Magnetic Flux 260.000 Mx
Magnetic Flux Density 11.800 G
Highest Recommended Crossover 1.200 Hz
Recommended Enclosure 57 - 519 liter
Effective Piston Diameter 335,0 mm
Baffle Opening 352,0 mm
Mounting Dimensions 370,0 mm
Weight 11 kg
Dimensions (diameter x depth) 400 x 167 mm
Theile-Small Parameters TL-1602
sd - Piston Area 0,0881 Sq M
Revc - DV Voice Coil Resistance 6 Ohm
Levc - Voice Coil Inductance 1kHz (mH) 0.9
BL - Flux Density (TM) 21,0
Vas - Equivalent Acoustic Volume (Liter) 519 liter
Cms - Mechanical Suspension Compliance (x 10-4 m/N) 4708
Mms - Mechanical Mass of Cone and Free Air Load 122 g
Mmd 92 g
Fs - Free Air Resonance Frequency 21 Hz
Qms - Mechanical Q Factor 2,78
Qes - Electrical Q Factor 0,23
Qts - Total Q factor 0,21
Xmax - Max Linear Peak Excursion (O-P) 5,5 mm
Pmax - RMS Thermal power Limit 300 Watt
no - Relative Efficiency 2,06 %
Vd (cm²) 485
Max. Excursion Before Damage (P-P) 36,0 mm
http://www.pioneer-eur.com/eur/product_detail.jsp?product_id=1469&taxonomy_id=43-203
General TL-1602
Nominal Impedance 8 Ohm
Lowest Resonance Frequency (Fo) 21 Hz
Frequency Range 21-2000 Hz
Rated Input Power 150 Watt
Maximum Input Power 300 Watt
Sound Pressure Level 97 dB/W (1m)
Total Magnetic Flux 260.000 Mx
Magnetic Flux Density 11.800 G
Highest Recommended Crossover 1.200 Hz
Recommended Enclosure 57 - 519 liter
Effective Piston Diameter 335,0 mm
Baffle Opening 352,0 mm
Mounting Dimensions 370,0 mm
Weight 11 kg
Dimensions (diameter x depth) 400 x 167 mm
Theile-Small Parameters TL-1602
sd - Piston Area 0,0881 Sq M
Revc - DV Voice Coil Resistance 6 Ohm
Levc - Voice Coil Inductance 1kHz (mH) 0.9
BL - Flux Density (TM) 21,0
Vas - Equivalent Acoustic Volume (Liter) 519 liter
Cms - Mechanical Suspension Compliance (x 10-4 m/N) 4708
Mms - Mechanical Mass of Cone and Free Air Load 122 g
Mmd 92 g
Fs - Free Air Resonance Frequency 21 Hz
Qms - Mechanical Q Factor 2,78
Qes - Electrical Q Factor 0,23
Qts - Total Q factor 0,21
Xmax - Max Linear Peak Excursion (O-P) 5,5 mm
Pmax - RMS Thermal power Limit 300 Watt
no - Relative Efficiency 2,06 %
Vd (cm²) 485
Max. Excursion Before Damage (P-P) 36,0 mm
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