There are actually a few reasons I settled on 1200Hz even byond the fact that I like how it sounds there.GeorgeJ said:
- My old system was a 4 way system where the subs (tuned to 28Hz) took the first ~1-1/2 qctaves, the 2 10" JBL's (only 1 - 10" for many years) has the next ~3-1/2 octaves, the LE85's had the next ~3-1/2 octaves and an 077 horn (super)tweeter had the last ~octave. The thought was to limit the BW to keep IM distortion down and keep the drivers working in a range where dispersion was acceptable.
- 1200 is above most voice or instuments funamental frequencies. This will help it get some of the benefit of a FR type system.
- Crossing over in the 800Hz to 1000Hz range always sounded bad to me. Not sure why. 500Hz to ~700Hz is too low for the second reason above.
Initially, when I went to the TAD's, the sound was distant and a bit strained. Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed. What I found was the TAD's though purchased used (at a very very good price) had very few hours on them. It took about 3 week of average levels a few hours everyday to break them in. The sound was wonderful. Sooo much smoother and extended then the JBL's with all the detail. I'm thinking on adding the 077's to get some of the "air" I lost by going 3-way, but I could be happy without them if I had to. Imaging and depth was never a problem with my system and it still is fantastic.
As you can see from the above it was a 4 way system with a passive x-over to the tweeter at 8000Hz. With the TAD's, I'm currently running a 3-way system with thoughts of adding the 077's above ~12,500HzGeorgeJ said:
I have found that crossing at 1200Hz allows for a very smooth transition from the direct radiators to the CD with horns.GeorgeJ said:
Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.😉GeorgeJ said:
Taking this a little off-topic but not too far -GeorgeJ said:
Ratio's are Ceiling ht x 1.6 gives width, that result times 1.6 gives length.
I just did a major renovation where I based the floor plan around a listening/media room.
Assuming you have an 8 ft ceiling you come as close to a Golden Cubiod as you're likely to get. AES standard listenng room is a Golden Cubiod with 10 ft ceiling.
I would think long and hard before making any changes to the dimensions of your room.
To determine initial speaker placement, multiply ceiling height by 0.618 to determine the distance from the rear wall to the center of the woofer. Then multiply the room width by 0.276 to determine the distance from the side wall to the center of the speaker.
this resulted in a speaker placemnt that was considerably different and better than I had been using. When I moved into my golden cubiod (roughly) room, this speaker placement formula and the room worked so well that I haven't attempted any other positions.
Later
Ken L
If you’re willing to consider drivers not currently in production, you could also consider something like the Altec 604 co-ax, although finding good ones at a reasonable price is getting tougher.
I picked up a pair of 604-8G’s that where in very good shape but where living in pretty ratty boxes. I built the cabinets you can see in the attached link using premium materials like Baltic birch and wood backed cherry veneer and at the end of the day, came in around what you stated budget wise.
I am VERY happy with these driven by a 300B SET in a small (11 x 12) room – good, fast bass with lifelike dynamics and the great imaging a point source driver can pull off. I seriously considered full-rangers because I like a lot of what they do but I wanted bass and effortless dynamics as well and I just don’t think you can get there with 1 driver.
I have heard high dollar AER full rangers in Oris front horns which was very nice but I didn’t like the bass integration with the poly coned Onkens – lightning fast meets comparatively slow and plodding. The best horn system I ever heard was the full tilt Edgar Titan system with a horn subwoofer but this is large dollars and you really need a huge room (IMHO) for a multi-way horn system to sound it’s best. The Slimlines where quite nice as well but they only go down to maybe 70hz so some kind of sub would be needed and finding one to match the speed and dynamics of a horn system would be a challenge.
Until I have the room to build Edgar Titans, I’m real happy with the truly full range sound I get with 604s. Everything is a compromise when taking room size and budget into consideration and the 604s certainly have their problems, but I haven’t found anything that comes close to the level of performance you get with these for the bucks. Actually, in a small room, I can’t think of any speakers I rather have, regardless of cost.
Altec 604 DIY
I picked up a pair of 604-8G’s that where in very good shape but where living in pretty ratty boxes. I built the cabinets you can see in the attached link using premium materials like Baltic birch and wood backed cherry veneer and at the end of the day, came in around what you stated budget wise.
I am VERY happy with these driven by a 300B SET in a small (11 x 12) room – good, fast bass with lifelike dynamics and the great imaging a point source driver can pull off. I seriously considered full-rangers because I like a lot of what they do but I wanted bass and effortless dynamics as well and I just don’t think you can get there with 1 driver.
I have heard high dollar AER full rangers in Oris front horns which was very nice but I didn’t like the bass integration with the poly coned Onkens – lightning fast meets comparatively slow and plodding. The best horn system I ever heard was the full tilt Edgar Titan system with a horn subwoofer but this is large dollars and you really need a huge room (IMHO) for a multi-way horn system to sound it’s best. The Slimlines where quite nice as well but they only go down to maybe 70hz so some kind of sub would be needed and finding one to match the speed and dynamics of a horn system would be a challenge.
Until I have the room to build Edgar Titans, I’m real happy with the truly full range sound I get with 604s. Everything is a compromise when taking room size and budget into consideration and the 604s certainly have their problems, but I haven’t found anything that comes close to the level of performance you get with these for the bucks. Actually, in a small room, I can’t think of any speakers I rather have, regardless of cost.
Altec 604 DIY
Fish On!
Hope this helps.
See my LE10A parameters below with the theoretical response. These drivers are available on eBay on a regular basis for about $100 a pair for working units. They will usually have their surrounds replaced and are cheaper if you are willing to replace them yourself. They are designed to be used in a ~2cu.ft. ported enclosure down to about 40Hz, but individually work well in a closed box of ~1cu.ft. for an f3 in the 70Hz to 80Hz range. These driver like to be directly coupled to the output of the amp and perform the best that way.gonefishin said:
Hope this helps.
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billfort said:
Hi Billfort
You make it sound tempting. Definitely in the ballpark moneywise and relatively easy to get setup. I took a look at your web page, very nice work.
I apologize for the following barrage of questions
Have you tried them away from the corners? Does the bass suffer much? Does the so called "forward, agressive" character get in the way of musical enjoyment? Do you have any familiarity with the 605's?GeorgeJ
Ken L said:
Thanks for the ratios and suggestions Ken:
I'm going to knock that wall down (i'ts a rather flimsy affair anyway) and experiment. I will rebuild a solid one if it doesn't work out. It probably won't, as a long thin room seems intuitively wrong.
GeorgeJ
Not a JBL fan, the only horn of theirs I liked was the 'baby cheeks', but don't recall the number now. In a ~do-all horn, a tweaked 511/808/alum. is my fave.
When corner loading you optimize the design to suit and the adjustment is via moving the listening position, so the room ideally needs to be ~26.18ft deep (min) from the sound wall. I learned this the hard way with my corner loaded system. My house now sports a 7ft living room extension out the side yard.
Thanks for the info. I had heard of it, but no info beyond reading a few folks comments that they didn't like it too much. Still, quite a bargain though.
Rodd and I will have to agree to disagree WRT XO points since in my horn experiments I kept coming back to the tried n' true 500Hz that Bell Labs had concluded was a good compromise breakpoint to keep the extremely high energy centered around 300Hz confined to the higher power handling LF section, ergo keeping AMD low, yet low enough to be >octave away from where our hearing acuity picks up. With horns you have to split the human fundamentals somewhere anyway, so the only other downsides that I'm aware of are a larger horn and the male's speech power response peaks at 500Hz. The latter can be a real problem for some horn/driver combos, but I've never heard any complaints WRT this with the Altecs if the bells are damped.
GM
Hi GM,GM said:
I respect the point you've made. My first CD/horn combination wasn't truly usable at 500Hz. The TAD/McCauley is certianly capable of operating at 500Hz, and as I try different horns, I may find myself leaning in your direction (I've never had the Altec horns to try).
Consider this thought. Taking the octave from 600Hz to 1200Hz, I can make the upper driver take this band or the lower driver. If I give it to the upper driver, I will extend its BW downward by 1 octave. This has to have a profound effect on the drivers ability to deliver quality sound. On the other hand, extending the lower driver up 1 octave is much less a strain on the driver than asking it to drive the lower octave.
Maybe I'll do somemore experimenting.🙂
Mornin', 🙂
IIRC TAD recommends a 600Hz/2nd order min. for the 4001 so even if the McCauley has at least a <250Hz Fc like the 511 you'll need a steeper XO to push it to 500Hz, and being beryllium I'm not sure I'd want to gamble, but what the heck, it's only money. 😉
For instance, Altec designed the 811/511 horns at a time when tube front ends with their transformer impedance matching and smiley face EQ flattened their peakiness and EQ'd the falling HF response. Fast forward to the '70s and now driven with negligible output impedance/flat to at least 100kHz SS systems and the mids tear your ears off, with no highs. Reviewers quite rightly trashed them.
Their knee-jerk response was to redesign the driver (a couple of times), but horns can only do so much BW and in getting the response out to 20kHz ~flat meant giving away some bottom end, pushing the XO up to 'ta-da'!....1200Hz (they still rate it as 500Hz like the older models though, go figure). From a bean counter's POV this had the side benefit of dropping the 1" throat 511 from their line-up since all the 1" systems could now get by with the 811 (800Hz) version.
To get some more mileage out of the 511's 'fame', its tooling was modded to put a 1.4" throat on it to accept their large format drivers, dooming it the fate of all poorly thought out management decisions. Oh well, on a more positive note, it makes mine worth more if I ever decide to sell. 😉
GM
Right, I understand that part of why you chose a relatively high XO point, just don't agree that your other reasons are the more valid. Obviously you have plenty of company though since JBL has been championing it for as long as I can remember, not to mention the Altec folks who feel the Model 19, which has a 1200Hz XO, was their best HIFI design overall. 😉
IIRC TAD recommends a 600Hz/2nd order min. for the 4001 so even if the McCauley has at least a <250Hz Fc like the 511 you'll need a steeper XO to push it to 500Hz, and being beryllium I'm not sure I'd want to gamble, but what the heck, it's only money. 😉
Not if it's designed to handle the BW. Also, this assumes the lower driver has sufficient extension to cover through the XO BW. At 1200Hz/4th order it needs to extend to ~1700Hz, or too far away from an 80-100hz starting point. AMD will be an issue here unless you use a high compression horn, which will generate its own throat distortion. Speaker design, and especially horns, is about robbing Peter to pay Paul and why relatively few sound worth a toot since they don't have the right 'balance' of tradeoffs.
For instance, Altec designed the 811/511 horns at a time when tube front ends with their transformer impedance matching and smiley face EQ flattened their peakiness and EQ'd the falling HF response. Fast forward to the '70s and now driven with negligible output impedance/flat to at least 100kHz SS systems and the mids tear your ears off, with no highs. Reviewers quite rightly trashed them.
Their knee-jerk response was to redesign the driver (a couple of times), but horns can only do so much BW and in getting the response out to 20kHz ~flat meant giving away some bottom end, pushing the XO up to 'ta-da'!....1200Hz (they still rate it as 500Hz like the older models though, go figure). From a bean counter's POV this had the side benefit of dropping the 1" throat 511 from their line-up since all the 1" systems could now get by with the 811 (800Hz) version.
To get some more mileage out of the 511's 'fame', its tooling was modded to put a 1.4" throat on it to accept their large format drivers, dooming it the fate of all poorly thought out management decisions. Oh well, on a more positive note, it makes mine worth more if I ever decide to sell. 😉
GM
Are you talking about these ?
http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/specs/pro-comp/2344.htm
Regards
Charles
phase_accurate said:
As used in these 😉 ?
http://www.lansingheritage.org/html/jbl/specs/jb-specs.htm
Any opinions on these monitors?
GeorgeJ
Hey Fish-on,
Beautiful setup. Are you happy with it? Here a link to some pics of my old system.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4840&highlight=rodd+system
My new setup is similar below. I too am using the TAD 1601a’s in ported boxes.
Beautiful setup. Are you happy with it? Here a link to some pics of my old system.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4840&highlight=rodd+system
My new setup is similar below. I too am using the TAD 1601a’s in ported boxes.
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Yep, with EQ and leaded bells I thought they better than tweaked/EQ'd 811s.
Yep, if you mean the 4430/4435. Never auditioned the 4435, but way back when, I had a buddy order the 4430s shortly after they came out. According to my notes we wound up adding some lead to damp the bells some more, braced/damped the cab and woofer, lowered the XO point and added some foam to limit vertical dispersion. Faired into the top corners of his room and retuned a bit they were outstanding for the day and probably would still be a 1%er.
Since the 4435 has more efficiency it can only be better. 😉
GM
Someone I know used the 4435 in his recording studio though they were far too large for his control room. He ran them active. His son used to listen to Yello on these regularly 
I still have some two-way speakers using these 2344 horns although with a 2426 driver (older ones are considered beeing better than these but I don't bother, not having had the opportunity to compare !). I don't listen to them regularly anymore, since I have two Manger systems which are much less obtrusive, but I still like the silky mids and highs these can produce. I intend to keep them and if it is just as a collectors item.
Regards
Charles
I still have some two-way speakers using these 2344 horns although with a 2426 driver (older ones are considered beeing better than these but I don't bother, not having had the opportunity to compare !). I don't listen to them regularly anymore, since I have two Manger systems which are much less obtrusive, but I still like the silky mids and highs these can produce. I intend to keep them and if it is just as a collectors item.
Regards
Charles
Rodd...thanks for the link...nice system 😱
Well...I just finished the speakers a couple weeks ago...so I may still be in the honeymoon phase 😉 They do sound pretty good tho...I wasn't sure how the 1601a's were going to match up with the horn mid/tweets...but they do pretty well. I was more concerned with matching with the mids than producing the lower Freq. If I could ever get myself to stop listening to music I plan on trying to tweak the system a bit...but it's tough. I do want to try a few more cross-over points...but right now...I'm just enjoying them 🙂
take care>>>>>>>>>>
Well...I just finished the speakers a couple weeks ago...so I may still be in the honeymoon phase 😉 They do sound pretty good tho...I wasn't sure how the 1601a's were going to match up with the horn mid/tweets...but they do pretty well. I was more concerned with matching with the mids than producing the lower Freq. If I could ever get myself to stop listening to music I plan on trying to tweak the system a bit...but it's tough. I do want to try a few more cross-over points...but right now...I'm just enjoying them 🙂
take care>>>>>>>>>>
GeorgeJ said:
I suggest get your system like you want it first, and take the wall out last -
my room is basically 9x14x23.5 - the length used to be 28. I took 4' 8" from one end and made that part of the entranceway. I gained quite a bit more in sound quality than I gave up in space.
YMMV
Later
Ken L.
phase_accurate said:Someone I know used the 4435 in his recording studio though they were far too large for his control room. He ran them active. His son used to listen to Yello on these regularly
I used to listen to Yello many years ago when I had a system that could taket it
I'm working on it, I'm working on it!Wow, from JBL horns to Mangers! Mellowing out, are we?😉
Regards
GeorgeJ
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