...so I decided to climb on.
My original intention was to build an open baffle line array, but knowing nothing about them I decided to start with some cheap experiments.
I took a pair of three way speakers I had laying around that were pretty good ($1,000 in 1985) but had that mid 1980's exaggerated bass with an increase in volume and I dissected them.
I had already started to tame them by tweaking the crossovers, wiring, and cabinets with promising results.
These speakers are quite rare (not valuable, just rare) and although I had a lot of factory info on them I still have no idea what the TS measurements are.
I decided to wing it.
I built separate baffles for the mids and really liked what I heard.
Then I built baffles for the 12" woofers.
I really wasn't ready for a life changing experience but that is what happened. (Overly dramatic? Yeah maybe so.)
The bass now pressurized the room like I have never heard from an audio system before.
It will make you nauseous with some selections. This isn't good. I needed to fix this.
Looking at the woofer crossover it was divided at 40 Hz. One voice coil was playing from 0-40Hz and the other was playing from 40-350 Hz. I took out the deepest crossover point and ran both coils from 0-350Hz. Way better! Now we’re onto something.
A pressurized room without the nausea.
I have a long way to go with these but at the moment I am using a single 300b SE amp to drive each of the three ways and no EQ at all.
Maybe I got lucky with my driver choice but the sound is way better than it should be and these have convinced me that I will not be building a box speaker in the near or distant future.
The whole purpose of this post is to encourage people to experiment with dipoles/open baffles and the drivers they have laying around. It just might surprise you, it did me.
Good luck!
My original intention was to build an open baffle line array, but knowing nothing about them I decided to start with some cheap experiments.
I took a pair of three way speakers I had laying around that were pretty good ($1,000 in 1985) but had that mid 1980's exaggerated bass with an increase in volume and I dissected them.
I had already started to tame them by tweaking the crossovers, wiring, and cabinets with promising results.
These speakers are quite rare (not valuable, just rare) and although I had a lot of factory info on them I still have no idea what the TS measurements are.
I decided to wing it.
I built separate baffles for the mids and really liked what I heard.
Then I built baffles for the 12" woofers.
I really wasn't ready for a life changing experience but that is what happened. (Overly dramatic? Yeah maybe so.)
The bass now pressurized the room like I have never heard from an audio system before.
It will make you nauseous with some selections. This isn't good. I needed to fix this.
Looking at the woofer crossover it was divided at 40 Hz. One voice coil was playing from 0-40Hz and the other was playing from 40-350 Hz. I took out the deepest crossover point and ran both coils from 0-350Hz. Way better! Now we’re onto something.
A pressurized room without the nausea.
I have a long way to go with these but at the moment I am using a single 300b SE amp to drive each of the three ways and no EQ at all.
Maybe I got lucky with my driver choice but the sound is way better than it should be and these have convinced me that I will not be building a box speaker in the near or distant future.
The whole purpose of this post is to encourage people to experiment with dipoles/open baffles and the drivers they have laying around. It just might surprise you, it did me.
Good luck!