That's some nice work!
I've been discreetly amplifying each driver in my system with mostly tube amps, actively crossed over.
Recently I made a 3 way splitter box, with vintage mil spec silver mica caps filtering each amp's line level inputs.
I like the sound of direct coupling the amp to the driver, while being fortunate enough to have drivers whose upper range rolls off smoothly enough to hand over to a first order filtered amp.
Used quality amplification is plentiful these days, and reasonably priced.
I tried this out on an open baffle pair of Alpair 12s, with one tube amp, and 2 pairs of GRS 10" woofers, driven with an old Sumo amp, with very fine results.
Just make sure to do your line level wiring in twisted pairs, otherwise it's almost sure to hum.
I find no downside to filtering the deep bass from a full ranger in this way, and even high quality caps are cheap.
That's just it. People haven't been looking it up before posting pics of their non-OB speakers.
The speakers really fit the very nice looking room you have there!
I guess it's a passive design?
I'm curious of the crossover points chosen and if the the woofers can deliver the same kind of sensitivity in the bass as the Lowthers do in the rest of the spectrum? I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to construct woofers that can put out bass down to to say 35-40Hz on a narrow OB at sensitivities anywhere near that of fullrangers (95-97dB). What is your experience regarding this?
Hello Oido,
I get close to 40Hz with 2 15" EV per channel.
Had to reduce the tweeter (FT96 Fostex) with 6dB.
This is passive, cut the woofers at 5kHz or so.
They don't need any extra bass, but they are huge, 3 times bigger than yours I'd say
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Hi Leonidas, that response looks absolutely fantastic!
But you must be padding down the Lowther quite a lot, or active EQ or DSP on the bass?
Nice work head1962!
I think they have a distinct marine feeling to them, with the shape and the material. You must get a quality of seamlessness through high bass and midrange without a crossover there. I'm not sure of these particular woofers, but don't you still get quite a "bump" in the midrange compared to bass output? /oido
OK, I understand. A bit sad to throw away all that efficiency, but then again, there is no design without compromises, and you do get a very nice responce curve out of it. /oido
Well, I have lived for 25 years with a pair of two way open baffle speakers 120 cm wide and 1 m high with a thick layer of horse hair felt on the full back. 6 db filtering at 600 herz.
These spakers have a lot of bass for the technology.
they were . . . the 1957 Quad's.
(I dumped them for three reasons: WAF, bass-heavy tendency and balanced sound only at higher levels, such as 85-90 dB).
WAF: how they fit in the room. They did not.
