World's best midrange Blind Testing - Need your help.

Few testing today:

First, the center of the drivers will be exactly 107cm (42.1'') from the floor.
The distance from the center of the driver to the ear will probably be between 1.6m and 1.9m (63-75'') but i'll need to confirm the final distance later. Distance from the wall might change as well, it will depend of the measures, etc...
 
Ah, you have the BM2500.4, that's a different balance of strengths to the '251.3. The latter will work well up to 2 or 3kHz, but the directivity match wouldn't look great up there. If you're going for a 4-way system crossing at 500Hz or so to a mid you should be fine.
 
Well, i'm dealing with a 4-way reality and i'm not ready (don't want) to jump into the 5-way nightmare, nor do i want to go back to 3-way config... So once you analyzed the possibilites offered with a 4-way config, it's pretty clear that you'll have subwoofers and super-tweeters or ''semi-super'' tweeters (crossing points 3khz+).

Then you're left with 2 ways in-between and the battles begins.

A 4-way is the ultimate. still, very complex, and difficult to get right. If your search for the "World's best" mid range is part of your quest for the ultimate 4-way, you simply need to decide where your "center" crossover point is (?) By that, I mean where do you cross your mid-bass to mid range ?

18db/oct ANALOGUE active crossovers are the best here, provided you follow the one octave linear-overlap rule.
 
Guys, in case you missed it:

Here is the list of potential contenders:

Scan-speak 10F/8424G00

Voxativ AC-1.6

ATC SM75-150

Seas exotic F8

Fostex FF85wk

Vifa/Peerless TG9FD-10-8

Visaton Ti100

Visaton B200

Radian PB950 w/BE and short horn

Alpair 7.3eNc

Airborne FR151 paper cone version

Airborne FR151 wooden cone version

Any chance you can throw in some vintage drivers into the mix. My friend keeps claiming there is something magical about those drivers and I really want to know they really can be identify after EQ. Something like the Saba greencone, Diatone p610, Coral Holey Basket, etc...

BTW, looking at your setup. My comment is WOW.
 
will start later today with crossovers & EQ for the final set-up.

Fingers crossed, i hope i'll be able to make a solid 4 octaves.

Sounds great have fun and interesting research.

Because you announced steep stopband filter slopes and probably have plenty power full DSP engine consider some small test FIR verse IRR steep stopband filter slopes. Below two examples is IRR and then FIR domain of 0,5kHz-7kHz 8th order LR band-pass, and because those steep filters relative high time lag into IRR domain gives long decay tails in waterfall suggest such listening test IRR verse FIR if you happen run up in 8th order slope class, if you happen filter out with 4th order slopes or lower then forget above thoughts : )
 

Attachments

  • 5.png
    5.png
    966.8 KB · Views: 342
  • 15.png
    15.png
    740.7 KB · Views: 342
Record it and mix in a virtual tweeter and woofer and listen through headphones? That would make switching much easier, the blind test could be done online with a large listening panel, diy readers.
If the blind test is just the midrange itself on a baffle and in a room, its dispersion will affect its sound. The mids with wide dispersion like the ss 10f should sound more open as they will have a flatter power response in the passband.
 
First in-room measurement trial:

So far it's doing very well. I positionned the baffle as this:

1.2 meter from the wall behind (w/acoustic foam tiles)
2.7 meters from both sides
2.3 meters from the ceiling

When i place the mic +/- 1.3m distance from the driver and with 400-6500hz settings, there is little room interaction. At least nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that makes a huge impact on the EQ i have to apply. I'll continue testing the position of the kit, especially a greater distance from the wall behind, but it doesnt seem like a big concern so far, thanks to the large size of the room.
 
Made the first EQ attempt on the first driver. Got a very decent frequency response with only 3 bands EQ:

2000hz -3.8db Q0.6 (High-shelf)
1890hz -3.1db Q3.8 (peak)
4800hz -3.0db Q1.7 (peak)


That's an easy one, i'm expecting to struggle a little more with the others, but it's a good start.