This is and has been a very interesting first journey into speaker design.
I would like to say thanks to all forum members who spent some time advising. I learned a lot.
I would like to say thanks to all forum members who spent some time advising. I learned a lot.
Something happened...
I found 2 pairs of kinda "exotic" woofers in Italy and I bought them all for around 100 Euro, brand new, but not in production anymore (the reason for the price drop).
These are very fast 6,5" cones (8 grams) and in my first rough simulations seems to blend very well with a well known Seas tweeter (I mean, also in a series crossover...!) to build a high sensitivity WWT or D'Appolito config, we'll see...
So, after buying new drivers, I'm moving to another projec now.
Will open a new thread when things will be more mature, because I'll need to measure raw data for these new drivers (production seems not to be very coherent, and so manufacturer data is not to be taken as very accurate).
Nevertheless, I would like to share my last simulations using a cheap italian woofer (the Ciare HW 159 -33Euro each) blended with VIFA XT25BG60-04 in a WWT configuration.
This was my last variation to this project (started with Wavecor).
Maybe they will be useful to somebody in the search for a cheap and good speaker.
I found 2 pairs of kinda "exotic" woofers in Italy and I bought them all for around 100 Euro, brand new, but not in production anymore (the reason for the price drop).
These are very fast 6,5" cones (8 grams) and in my first rough simulations seems to blend very well with a well known Seas tweeter (I mean, also in a series crossover...!) to build a high sensitivity WWT or D'Appolito config, we'll see...
So, after buying new drivers, I'm moving to another projec now.
Will open a new thread when things will be more mature, because I'll need to measure raw data for these new drivers (production seems not to be very coherent, and so manufacturer data is not to be taken as very accurate).
Nevertheless, I would like to share my last simulations using a cheap italian woofer (the Ciare HW 159 -33Euro each) blended with VIFA XT25BG60-04 in a WWT configuration.
This was my last variation to this project (started with Wavecor).
Maybe they will be useful to somebody in the search for a cheap and good speaker.
CIARE HW159 is an Italian little 6,5" woofer which cone breakup's are not difficult to handle. VIFA XT25BG60-04 is a very well known gorgeous sounding tweeter. I selected them for the price/performance ratio.
I'm sharing my last crossover simulations, showing good phase and also a fair spl response very easy to adjust to match any common baffle step scenario.
Who knows, maybe in the future will resume this project.
This is the end (by now).
I'm sharing my last crossover simulations, showing good phase and also a fair spl response very easy to adjust to match any common baffle step scenario.
Who knows, maybe in the future will resume this project.
This is the end (by now).
Attachments
You should actually measure the drivers in the enclosure as diffraction simulation may not be 100% accurate, and I often find the manufacturers freq resp with simulation don't produce the same result. Then every driver has its own tone and simulation tools are helpful to get the job started, but even flat freq resp doesn't guarantee good sound. Directivity, resonances, cone material, suspension, motor, etc have influence. Trust me it's long way from CAD prototype to very satisfying loudspeaker. Maybe it would be better idea to build a small 3way, with more efficient drivers and have less crossover and cone break ups problems, possibly use 12dB slopes as they often sound smoother - personally I would not cross 1" tweeter below 2kHz, and often a little BBC dip above x-o point helps smoothing out the sound. Too bad you already set for Aleph, 30W needs 90dB loudspeaker to sound dynamic.
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There's link to Polish diy site, for some ideas, as they have quite a few designs posted and Wavecore is quite popular in Poland.
Projekty-kolumny
Projekty-kolumny
Sorry because I left this thread die...
I finally changed everything and used Tang Band W6-789S speakers in a 2.5 configuration, leaving to a Beston RT003C the scope of work of being something like a supertweeter.
The Tang Band W6-789 are discontinued and this allowed me to buy four of them for a few bucks. With a notch they can perform as a "semi full range" up to 10 kHz.
They are simply awesome, with low distortion even in the cone breakup area, so my project turned out to be a 2.5 way speaker.
Maybe they were discontinued because offer only 15 Watts RMS of pure sound with high sensitivity (not a commercial thing for many watt-lovers). They have a surround made of santoprene very light and sound awesome to me (a merely subjective perspective). I measured them (impedance and SPL freq response) and used VituixCad to simulate the performance and set-up the notch filter.
Over the 8 kHz I left the job to the Beston ribbon drivers. They are awfully distorted below 8 kHz but above such frequency limit they perform as something I never heard before (for the price, of course). Simply superb above 8 kHz. Fast and detailed with all the transients. Cymbals (yes, the cymbals test everybody knows...) are alive!!!. As they are rated 15 Watts RMS I'm sure that above 8 kHz hey will stand even the ultrasonic aliasing evil things coming from a NOS DAC... (I hope so)...
So, finally, one of the Tang Band drivers performs as a "semi-full-range" with nothing else but a notch filter to tame the cone breakup (and of course the roll-off in the highs is 100% natural). Other of the same kind is in parallel to reinforce bass and overcome some baffle step issues, with a first order low-pass filter. The tweeter deserved a second order crossover with some series resistance to equalize the sensitivity differences.
Initially I got some bad results in my testings and got mad and crazy, but then realized that I forgot to include the off axis distance of the tweeter in respect to the main driver on the VituixCad simulations. Fortunately this 13 cm turned out to be 180 degrees in phase (I was getting awful cancellations in the crossover zone) and finally everything came out superb. (my initial design contemplated the tweeter in inverse polarizing and suddenly after interchanging two wires the universe revealed to be crystal clear to me).
Obbligato gold and Jantzen capacitors complete the picture
I decided for a ported design with a 10 cm diameter and 10 cm length port tuned very near to the fs freq of the main drivers.
I'm running them for a while and have to say that sounds very very very great with all kinds of music.
Some photos attached.
I finally changed everything and used Tang Band W6-789S speakers in a 2.5 configuration, leaving to a Beston RT003C the scope of work of being something like a supertweeter.
The Tang Band W6-789 are discontinued and this allowed me to buy four of them for a few bucks. With a notch they can perform as a "semi full range" up to 10 kHz.
They are simply awesome, with low distortion even in the cone breakup area, so my project turned out to be a 2.5 way speaker.
Maybe they were discontinued because offer only 15 Watts RMS of pure sound with high sensitivity (not a commercial thing for many watt-lovers). They have a surround made of santoprene very light and sound awesome to me (a merely subjective perspective). I measured them (impedance and SPL freq response) and used VituixCad to simulate the performance and set-up the notch filter.
Over the 8 kHz I left the job to the Beston ribbon drivers. They are awfully distorted below 8 kHz but above such frequency limit they perform as something I never heard before (for the price, of course). Simply superb above 8 kHz. Fast and detailed with all the transients. Cymbals (yes, the cymbals test everybody knows...) are alive!!!. As they are rated 15 Watts RMS I'm sure that above 8 kHz hey will stand even the ultrasonic aliasing evil things coming from a NOS DAC... (I hope so)...
So, finally, one of the Tang Band drivers performs as a "semi-full-range" with nothing else but a notch filter to tame the cone breakup (and of course the roll-off in the highs is 100% natural). Other of the same kind is in parallel to reinforce bass and overcome some baffle step issues, with a first order low-pass filter. The tweeter deserved a second order crossover with some series resistance to equalize the sensitivity differences.
Initially I got some bad results in my testings and got mad and crazy, but then realized that I forgot to include the off axis distance of the tweeter in respect to the main driver on the VituixCad simulations. Fortunately this 13 cm turned out to be 180 degrees in phase (I was getting awful cancellations in the crossover zone) and finally everything came out superb. (my initial design contemplated the tweeter in inverse polarizing and suddenly after interchanging two wires the universe revealed to be crystal clear to me).
Obbligato gold and Jantzen capacitors complete the picture
I decided for a ported design with a 10 cm diameter and 10 cm length port tuned very near to the fs freq of the main drivers.
I'm running them for a while and have to say that sounds very very very great with all kinds of music.
Some photos attached.
Attachments
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