That can be done, but at a lower SPL…..in order to produce LF at higher output, the cone of the coax would need to travel farther……..and that is exactly what you don’t want from a coax as the cone is the waveguide. A moving waveguide relative to a stationary tweeter is a no…..it creates a terrible ripple in the HF response.
You can simulate this with most any box modelling software and pay attention to excursion in relation to frequency and SPL…..i’m pretty confident you’re already aware of this from your feedback in the compact sub thread.
One light fast flat FR speaker such as this Tang Band coupled to a woofer, crossed well below the voice band, is a match made in Heaven, best of both worlds.
This? https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.c...-kingro4y-mk-iii-active-loudspeaker-kit-pair/
Note the off axis graph is 2db increments, so its not too bad smoothness wise. Bit of a widening at 6k overall, but the positioning/toe in, seat and acoustics of room will impact the timbre coloration there. Bit pricey though.
I probably felt that way for most of my audio life.
But since I've learned how to achieve complementary linear phase acoustic crossovers, I feel I can put any number of crossovers anywhere without any sonic penalty.
Which let's the speaker be predominantly about it physical acoustic design.
I find It's a really wonderful freedom, for crossovers to be the easiest, least consequential, element in DIY speaker building.
A pair like that has been the FR drivers that I have been using for the past 15 odd years. Matched with dual stereo subs. When you say coupled, do you mean as coaxial? Looks like I can do that, I have to try this
No. He means assisted by (sub?) woofers. Seperate or in a woofer assisted fullrange "2 way"
Cheers!
Cheers!
Oh, my point is not the *crossovers" themselves, at all.
What bothers me is that a thick heavy sluggish cone responds in a very different way than a fast sharp lightweight cone or done, even more if the latter is inside a horn driver assembly.
It is not only a frequency response problem but of piston acceleration and damping.
Reproducing, 50% of a, say, 1500Hz wave through a sluggish cone, 50% through s fast tweeter cone or done at the same time, (supposing X-over frequency is,also 1500Hz), is painfully evident.
Again, even if acoustic level matches and phase is correct so they both add up.
Remember cone is reaching the end of it's acoustic response , and getting out of steam, tweeter is "just starting".
Besides frequency response, a narrow pulse will be reproduced different by both.
If anything, woofer cone will be "slow to start moving" but much worse, to stop moving.
Not claiming special hearing or anything of the kind, but my work with Guitar speakers makes me very aware of that, specially because Musicians themselves notice and complain about it.
No woofer is usable with Guitars, no matter how much you EQ it.
Musicians still prefer very thin light cones, very light voice coils, specially thin round wire, short winding, paper former ones over anything else, go figure.
Again: it is not a frequency response problem but probably a different "mechanical time delay" problem.
FR speakers or at least a midrange unit covering from, say, 500Hz to 2500Hz, the classic "voice band" , does not "solve" that problem, it simply avoids getting into it.
😀 So why not in a coaxial if it can be done? 😀
I want to attempt either a FR driver + woofer in a bridged coaxial or rebuild an existing woofer as a coaxial or make one from scratch. I think it will be a lot of fun as my targets are very high. Though I wonder how many would find it of interest to have me attempt one of these setups
No, not necessarily coaxial, just close enough.
Apparently coaxial adds its own mounting/physical blocking problem.
Nothing intrinsic to their working principle, in my book a Coaxial is a very close mounted 2 way speaker, nothing wrong with that.
Problem appears with physical construction, not its working principle.
😀 So why not in a coaxial if it can be done? 😀
Who says it can't? Not me.
😄
I do see mechanical/size/mounting problems though.
Probably minuscule NEO magnets can help with that.
I should import a few small Neo dome tweeters, say 1.5" overall diameter, which do exist, and build my own Coaxials.
Only problem to solve is that my woofers should easily reach, say, 3k or 3k5Hz so domes can smoothly take over above that.
Doubt a 1" dome can reach way below that.
Last edited:
I saw the B&C 12HCX76 over at parts express, while looking for something else. It's a 12" woofer with a giant circular horn going what appear to be all the way out to the suspension; hence completely obscuring any proximity effect of the woofer cone. Still pretty ragged response, for a $1000 list speaker.
I feel that I personally am able to address these problems. I value your opinion, how do you feel is the best way forward. Community DIY? Should I try to develop a commercial driver and loudspeaker and keep all work in-house? Working solo in the public eye is no fun
Musicians seem to prefer anything that's a reconstruction of what was stock / used in the 60s. Kinda like the Fender tone stack; any other topology you might as well close up shop if the 3 knobs dont behave that way, if it doesnt sound that way. Musicians are very particular.
The host / sound guy didnt show last open mic. He usually insists that everyone use his little Fender amp on their guitar, instead of the house system, no matter what. We just put anyone's guitar with a 1/4" jack through a channel on the Behringer house mixer - all of them sounded just fine to me, going through the modern-day EV self-powered house speakers. Next time, I just might insist on a mixer channel for my guitar. That way I can turn up the channel compressor too - which no one uses, I assume they dont know what it's for.
Not qualified for "universal" answers at all, only to suggest some focused points here and there.
Not sure I got your end goal ; is this Hobby level, which is the standard in any DIY forum or you want to pursue some commercial goal?
Fine with both, but in the second get ready to invest significant $$$, be able to stand up to, say, a year, before marketable results, and anticipate, say, 50-100 unit sales within a reasonable stretch of time, say 2-3 years after initial offers.
In house manufacturing independence is a tough goal, you need a heavy investment in machinery and acquire skills to handle it.
Practical path is to find and contact "friendly shops" which can do small runs of custom or semicustom parts for you.
Practical example: I always bought machinery I would use often, starting with a bench drill, and all kinds of hand power tools, that's "garage factory" equipment level, and then added bit by bit.
Eventually you will need a lathe, the big chunk of speaker building effort is not the "electroacoustical" side but a very "mechanical" metallurgical job.
Frames, plates, polepieces, voice coil winding forms, etc.
Maybe you can 3D print phase plugs and horns.
That said, ask for lathe jobs at a friendly lathe shop, sand cast frame blasting and parts painting at a friendly car body shop, etc.
I can never justify buying a 30-100 Ton hydraulic or mechanical press so I paid for stamping dies ($$$$$) but then always rented metallurgical shop time.
Ymmv.
Start "cheap" , it will cost $$$$ anyway.
Compression kills good music a.k.a. The Loudness War.
Plugging e guitar straight into pa is so wrong. A compressor probably makes it a little less harmful for people, but Im happy I was not there.
Cheers!
You are so far of. Musicians buy a lot of modern high tech stuff with loads of buttons, lamps and displays. Yes they tend to go back to 60ies 70ies solutions cause they were not from out of the blue. At that time all kinds of dead ends had been explored resulting in the electric guitar becoming a matured instrument. How much has grand pianos or cellos developed since the 60ies? Yes even more gain, features and digital effects has come along, but guitar amps sounded right at that period because trial and error tought the musicians and technicians the recipies for a good sounding guitar driver. My g100h is an example of "improving" the old green backs and similar with higher power handling, efficiency and wider response. They don't produce it anymore and its no coinsidence.
Plugging e guitar straight into pa is so wrong. A compressor probably makes it a little less harmful for people, but Im happy I was not there.
Cheers!
I have equipment and skills already on the mechanical side but lacking at the moment in acoustic engineering skills
To be honest, my commercial interests lay elsewhere with work on a marine recreational vehicle currently under prototyping. The equipment can do small runs for speakers but I would rather do it as fun non commercial open source thing
To be honest, my commercial interests lay elsewhere with work on a marine recreational vehicle currently under prototyping. The equipment can do small runs for speakers but I would rather do it as fun non commercial open source thing
Well in that case, would LXmini be considered quasi-coaxial?
Let me then throw into the ring my LXmidi and LXmaxi, respectively 8" and 12" upfiring over a barrel, each paired with a complementary 4" widerange facing forward -- baffle-less and crossover-less, relying on natural attenuation. The LXmidi used fiberglass honeycomb drivers of the same make and I could not hear "two" drivers.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/1-order-crossover-help.391332/post-7151405
Coaxial?????
And for a "bridge" coaxial, what if the woofer is mounted backwards? (Padded.)
Last edited:
Seemed to work fine. They were all acoustic, with some sort of internal pickup; sometimes mag in the soundhole, sometimes piezo in the bridge - I assume. No one cried or complained about the sound, no one was driven from the premises / didnt want to be there because of that one particular aspect of how all the guitar players were amplified.
Regarding loudness wars levels of compression; I agree. Regarding having that available on each channel in a mixer for live performance, I find it every bit as useful as EQ, pan, effects send...all the stock stuff you ordinarily get. I wouldnt buy a mixer without it, because if I did, I'd have to spend extra on it as an outboard effect. To me, indispensable.
The final thing seems to measure flat, I wonder if they are DSPing the hell out of it because the raw coax C18EN002/A sure isn't, the tweeter has a wacky response. Maybe that's the key, I read similar comments for a LaVoce PA coax.
Yet Genelec’s One series are quite smooth, as are recent KEFs. Not DIY, but they show that the problems can be overcome.
Way too much a shortcut, a bit like saying: a medicine/drug wrongly given to a patient killed him so all medicine is wrong.
It doesn't make sense. And compression is not responsible of Loudness war... musicians/producers/listeners are. Likewise without compression how electronic music, extreme metal, etc,etc, could be like they are today? And please don't tell me only Kraftwerk or Led Zeppelin are the only 'good music' on this genre ( don't take me wrong either as i'm a fan of both bands!).
Too much compression/limiting applied to acoustic music doesn't make sense we agree but please tell me what an electric guitar have to do with an acoustic instrument?
The sound come from the mic which then see an electronic circuit designed to distort and then is sent to a driver with a specific bandpass behavior ( in other word an eq) which is then close miced with very coloured mic ( unidirectional so prone to proximity effect and more often than not a dynamic mic which imply a kind of compression by nature), often angled to produce phase anomaly ( giving a certain sound through comb filtering...)... But it's off topic...
Sorry to say this Guerilla but... how can you judge something without having listening it in context?
I mean it might sound bad or not. You would be very surprised of what i've seen done in recording session: sure if you play blues or R&R better use an amp and mic but those are not the only style played in the world and sometimes, straigth into a DI into a chanel is what the doctor ordered... Last thing, do you consider a bass as a member of the guitar family of instruments? Cause 90% of bass you hear are tracked straigth into a di... into a chanel with an opto compressor (LA2A) into the insert. Classic chain for bass tracking. Amp/cabinets microphones are considered secondary tracks to bring 'character' to the DI.
I remember seeing an 'unplugged' session of 'The Eagles' playing 'hotel california' live on 'acoustic instrument' on Youtube. Many 'audiophile' praised the performance and sound of the band, blablablabla... but none of the comment mentioned there was NO MICROPHONE used on stage except for the voices and conga's... as an audio engineer i heard right away it was some piezzo on the guitars ( this kind of mics have a certain sound to them, easily identified if you listen to them regularly).
Electroacoustic guitars plugged straight into the console chanel. Such a joke for an unplugued session... but still it didn't made people run away, quite the opposite from what i've read!
It can be done. In fact it had been done many, many moons ago:
https://www.bluemoonhouse-sophos.com/tannoy-buckingham-professional-monitor/
https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/218354...r/amp/pin/218354281912857917/&_expand=true
( Nemo was Vangelis's 'home studio', Blade Runner, Chariots of Fire and other soundtracks were produced on Dreadnought...1x15" coax, 2x15" bass... killer system if you need high SPL in large room)
Last edited: