Heres a slightly better measurement I just did.. though phase seems to be odd to me the freq response is what I expected.
Used ARTA for the actual measurement with pink noise and a BehringerECM800 mic with a generic compensation applied.
Mic 1M from the Pyle612 horn with PDS221 comp driver
Although it says on the graph 33uF protection I just realised I actually used 15uF.. but the diff should be negligable.
In case anyone is following along at home, the 2.25 uf cap that I used to bypass the BSC left me feeling like there was a bit of a notch missing. I increased the cap to about 3.3 uf, and things sound better.
>>> I'm attempting some "econowave" style speakers (but I think I'll call them cheapowave? as the Pyle PDS221 is at a much cheaper pricepoint than the Selenium driver used in the econowave project, though I'm using a Pyle PH612 horn).
Great idea to call it 'Cheapowave' since it is rather cheap. I bought these Pyle PDS221 tweeters for the karate school as an inexpensive replacement. The stock tweeters kept blowing and cost $75 each to replace. We figured better to blow a cheaper tweeter. Unfortunately, the sound pressure levels produced at the school were too high for the Pyles to cope and they begin sounding compressed on their first day of use... i hope they did not blow yet because i am going to remove them and replace with stock again (LOL)... regardless, i hope to have two working Pyle tweeters in the days to come and since they are used i cannot return them... so now i have another excuse to build something new.
The Pyles are cute looking for sure and certainly inexpensive enough. Pairing them with the Dayton/Pyle econowave horn seems like a good idea because if things don't work out there's an upgrade path to the Selenium or other better drivers. These waveguides seem well liked and proven already as a solid performing item for home (and pro) use.
If the tweeters are not blown i am thinking of building an even cheaper pair of speakers using either an Alpha 10 or 12 or perhaps something even more obscure like this Studio Pro WH10 10" Woofer Accordian Surround | Parts-Express.com all sealed up in a box just big enough to fit everything, partner with a subwoofer and maybe get a decent sound for under $100. Perhaps better than decent? Maybe even pop a piezo tweeter to extend the Pyles response.
Zog, how do you rate the Pyles/Pioneer sound compared to the dome speakers you have beside them? Do the Pyles sound extended or do they sound like the chart suggests?
Zilla
Ps... maybe these will also work http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-912
or these http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-916
Great idea to call it 'Cheapowave' since it is rather cheap. I bought these Pyle PDS221 tweeters for the karate school as an inexpensive replacement. The stock tweeters kept blowing and cost $75 each to replace. We figured better to blow a cheaper tweeter. Unfortunately, the sound pressure levels produced at the school were too high for the Pyles to cope and they begin sounding compressed on their first day of use... i hope they did not blow yet because i am going to remove them and replace with stock again (LOL)... regardless, i hope to have two working Pyle tweeters in the days to come and since they are used i cannot return them... so now i have another excuse to build something new.
The Pyles are cute looking for sure and certainly inexpensive enough. Pairing them with the Dayton/Pyle econowave horn seems like a good idea because if things don't work out there's an upgrade path to the Selenium or other better drivers. These waveguides seem well liked and proven already as a solid performing item for home (and pro) use.
If the tweeters are not blown i am thinking of building an even cheaper pair of speakers using either an Alpha 10 or 12 or perhaps something even more obscure like this Studio Pro WH10 10" Woofer Accordian Surround | Parts-Express.com all sealed up in a box just big enough to fit everything, partner with a subwoofer and maybe get a decent sound for under $100. Perhaps better than decent? Maybe even pop a piezo tweeter to extend the Pyles response.
Zog, how do you rate the Pyles/Pioneer sound compared to the dome speakers you have beside them? Do the Pyles sound extended or do they sound like the chart suggests?
Zilla
Ps... maybe these will also work http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-912
or these http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-916
Last edited:
How big is your karate school? Where are the tweeters crossed? Bummer that they can't handle it. Mine have been quite satisfyingly loud, but that's for home use. What kind of wattage were you throwing at them?
I've been pretty happy with the Dayton waveguide. The small end is kinda rough, but I filed that under 'you get what you pay for'. I slapped some bondo on the back as was suggested earlier in this thread. I felt like it cleaned them up some. If I had it to do again I'd use more... mix up plenty. Or have a largish disposable palette ready. After I started trying to apply my hands, spreader, palette etc. got so messy that when I ran out I just quit. Or maybe use something that damps better.
From the posted response it looks like the tweeter response is a hump with little flat range. My listening bears that out. I took the high end roll-off to be an effect of the waveguide loading. Think that's right, or is it just a tweeter without much high-end? Happily, it was easy to bypass my BSC to get the HF back up. I haven't had any issues w/ the HF response after that.
Hope you find a woofer you like. Maybe a Goldwood? Goldwood GW-10PC-8 10" Heavy Duty Woofer 8 Ohm | Parts-Express.com
Or perhaps a Pyle woofer to mate with the CD.... Pyle Pro PPA10 10" PA Speaker | Parts-Express.com
I'll be interested to hear about what you do with them.
I've been pretty happy with the Dayton waveguide. The small end is kinda rough, but I filed that under 'you get what you pay for'. I slapped some bondo on the back as was suggested earlier in this thread. I felt like it cleaned them up some. If I had it to do again I'd use more... mix up plenty. Or have a largish disposable palette ready. After I started trying to apply my hands, spreader, palette etc. got so messy that when I ran out I just quit. Or maybe use something that damps better.
From the posted response it looks like the tweeter response is a hump with little flat range. My listening bears that out. I took the high end roll-off to be an effect of the waveguide loading. Think that's right, or is it just a tweeter without much high-end? Happily, it was easy to bypass my BSC to get the HF back up. I haven't had any issues w/ the HF response after that.
Hope you find a woofer you like. Maybe a Goldwood? Goldwood GW-10PC-8 10" Heavy Duty Woofer 8 Ohm | Parts-Express.com
Or perhaps a Pyle woofer to mate with the CD.... Pyle Pro PPA10 10" PA Speaker | Parts-Express.com
I'll be interested to hear about what you do with them.
One key part of the econowave crossover is a capacitor/resistor network that compensates for the roll-off at the high end so it makes the response essentially flat. IN THEORY the Pyle would work with this.. but the compensation needs a lot of head room (i.e. higher efficiency), which the Pyle at 102 dB just doesn't have compared to the Selenium @ 107 dB. With the fairly high efficiency PA woofers I couldn't get the econowave crossover implemented cleanly so the high end never sounded that great, and it seemed stupid to add LPADs to the woofers - so I ordered the Seleniums (which sound great!).
I still have the Pyles and most of the crossover parts on the shelf, If I see a pair of old, big low efficiency speakers with busted tweeters on ebay or trash&treasure market, I'll buy the $20 (AUD) waveguides @ Yd-l033 - Horn Abs Resin 162x303x107mm - Drivers/tweeters/x-overs | Dj City and have a bash out of curiosity.
The Selenium comp drivers sound better, than the Alesis Monitor ones dome tweeters that I keep on top for when I'm fiddling with the econowaves crossovers. The Alesis does not have some of the 2nd harmonic distortion peaks in the upper range (as measured by Holmimpulse) so _may_ be more accurate.. but I much prefer the sound of the econowaves (with Seleniums).
My econowave speakers have undergone a few rounds of upgrade-itus since I started with th Pyles.. they now have Selenium comp. drivers, Eminence 12LFA woofers and redesigned crossovers using Jantzen parts, with some damping (using blutak) applied to the compression driver casing to reduce resonances.. I'll document this once the current round of tweaks has settled.
PYLE PDS221
I have the PDS221 attached to a Pyle PH565 horn. With this combo, inserting a 0.33mH air core inductor in series with the PDS221 will flatten the response at the expense of some very high frequency roll-off.
More information at:
Pyle PDS221 Compression Driver by AmpsLab
Other Compression Drivers at:
Drivers Audition by AmpsLab
Regards
Mike
I have the PDS221 attached to a Pyle PH565 horn. With this combo, inserting a 0.33mH air core inductor in series with the PDS221 will flatten the response at the expense of some very high frequency roll-off.
More information at:
Pyle PDS221 Compression Driver by AmpsLab
Other Compression Drivers at:
Drivers Audition by AmpsLab
Regards
Mike
Attachments
Ancient thread, rise from your grave!!
I've had these speakers out in my garage for a long time now. I've learned a bunch since 2010. So during the pandemic I decided to measure these speakers and do up a new and improved crossover. Probably nobody cares, but I wanted to document the changes anyway.
I have a dayton USB mic, REW to take measurements, and XSim to model the crossover.
I measured each driver with no circuitry independently, and then the two driven at the same time (by separate channels) from my test amp (tweeter measurements above 700 Hz or something I forget exactly). Measurements are ground-plane, taken on the sidewalk out front of my house. Mic distance is 2 meters, centered between the two drivers. I managed to get measurements that are free from reflection to relatively low frequency. The axis of the speakers points along the sidewalk, but the bass port hangs off into the grass, so measurements don't show quite as much bass as I think the speaker has. I think it's flat to about 50 Hz and at -3 somewhere in the lower half of the 40's.
Importing the woofer and tweeter separately and wiring them both up in XSim, and then importing the measurement of both drivers playing together allowed me to tweak the delay of the tweeter until the sim of both drivers together matched the recorded reality. The tweeter is delayed 4.71 inches by the depth of the wave guide relative to the woofer.
I've had these speakers out in my garage for a long time now. I've learned a bunch since 2010. So during the pandemic I decided to measure these speakers and do up a new and improved crossover. Probably nobody cares, but I wanted to document the changes anyway.
I have a dayton USB mic, REW to take measurements, and XSim to model the crossover.
I measured each driver with no circuitry independently, and then the two driven at the same time (by separate channels) from my test amp (tweeter measurements above 700 Hz or something I forget exactly). Measurements are ground-plane, taken on the sidewalk out front of my house. Mic distance is 2 meters, centered between the two drivers. I managed to get measurements that are free from reflection to relatively low frequency. The axis of the speakers points along the sidewalk, but the bass port hangs off into the grass, so measurements don't show quite as much bass as I think the speaker has. I think it's flat to about 50 Hz and at -3 somewhere in the lower half of the 40's.
Importing the woofer and tweeter separately and wiring them both up in XSim, and then importing the measurement of both drivers playing together allowed me to tweak the delay of the tweeter until the sim of both drivers together matched the recorded reality. The tweeter is delayed 4.71 inches by the depth of the wave guide relative to the woofer.
Here is how the speakers measured as I had built them prior to this redesign.
Both drivers have elevated upper mids, the BSC circuit wasn't quite correct to fix it because BSC wasn't the issue. Bypassing the BSC helped, but wasn't perfect... An exciting result, as it means there were improvements available. =)
Both drivers have elevated upper mids, the BSC circuit wasn't quite correct to fix it because BSC wasn't the issue. Bypassing the BSC helped, but wasn't perfect... An exciting result, as it means there were improvements available. =)
Attachments
I did to a windowed measurement on a table to compare to my ground plane measurements to confirm they were about correct (shown here).
I also had a comparison of an early XO version, predicted vs. measurement to make sure my sims were what was really happening. That made it seem legit to me, but now I'm going to have to go back looking for that one...
I also had a comparison of an early XO version, predicted vs. measurement to make sure my sims were what was really happening. That made it seem legit to me, but now I'm going to have to go back looking for that one...
Attachments
😀 Didn't see this originally; these were the type bang/buck speakers I typically designed/built for most folks way back when, though often cheaper thanks to lots of free components available during the crossover to stereo, so always nice to see others enjoying 'cheap thrills'. 😉
Ah, let's see if I can throw the .frd and .zma files in here, on the off chance that someone wants to show me up... 😱
Alas, no! The forum didn't want to accept .frd or .zma files. I renamed them to .txt, but then it still didn't want them as my .frd's are 1.3 meg and the forum only wants .txt's smaller than 195 k.
I don't have any external file host stuff set up, but if anyone knows a trick to add them as an attachment I'd do it. Seems like having FR and impedance files available here would be kinda neat. Maybe would use up too much disk space tho.
- A
Alas, no! The forum didn't want to accept .frd or .zma files. I renamed them to .txt, but then it still didn't want them as my .frd's are 1.3 meg and the forum only wants .txt's smaller than 195 k.
I don't have any external file host stuff set up, but if anyone knows a trick to add them as an attachment I'd do it. Seems like having FR and impedance files available here would be kinda neat. Maybe would use up too much disk space tho.
- A