I just bought the waveguide and will be mating it with the Scanspeak D2608/913000. I am presuming that the faceplate of the tweeter is not 100% flat and it declines towards the centre plus there is a dip as well which will probably leave at least a 1mm gap depending on where the diameter of the waveguide throat ends up. I haven't got it yet but from analysing the diagrams its what I predict.
I do have the option of altering the the provided adapter to fit the tweeter without the faceplate. But I am considering the putty or modelling clay option. I just don't see the simplicity of using something sticky around the tweeter. What is the best option? Modeling clay? And if so does that harden up or is it meant to remain soft?
I could also use putty that hardens up but I am a little scared to try and use my finger to fill in the gap so close to the tweeter head.
What the general recomendation? And most importantly is the adapter a significatnly better option over using some type of clay?
I do have the option of altering the the provided adapter to fit the tweeter without the faceplate. But I am considering the putty or modelling clay option. I just don't see the simplicity of using something sticky around the tweeter. What is the best option? Modeling clay? And if so does that harden up or is it meant to remain soft?
I could also use putty that hardens up but I am a little scared to try and use my finger to fill in the gap so close to the tweeter head.
What the general recomendation? And most importantly is the adapter a significatnly better option over using some type of clay?
Hi, I think the most important thing is to remove the existing faceplate. With this still in place, the waveguide will be significantly further away from the membrane. Making it a bit more like a horn.
Choosing between an adaptor or putty/clay/silicon is less significant than removing the faceplate. There is probably not much difference in results - just what you find easier.
If you go with clay etc, you should mould it onto the back of the faceplate and get it pretty close before final fitting. For testing fit, you can cover the tweeter over loosely with saran wrap/cling film/food covering etc. Don't use your fingers in there - cut a bit of plastic with scissors to make a tool.
A good option I didn't try - would be to use silicone sealer. Mould this in place on the back of the waveguide - cover it with saran and place down on a table with spacers to get it the correct thickness. Then let it dry and trim accurately with a razor before fitting to the tweeter. You could get it to act like a compression gasket doing this.....
Another alternative is to cut some rubber sheet approx 3mm thick; but may be difficult to get a smooth internal cut in the rubber?
I did mine with some kind of plastic modelling stuff. It did dry a bit, but I added a bit more and now it's been good for 5 years +
Choosing between an adaptor or putty/clay/silicon is less significant than removing the faceplate. There is probably not much difference in results - just what you find easier.
If you go with clay etc, you should mould it onto the back of the faceplate and get it pretty close before final fitting. For testing fit, you can cover the tweeter over loosely with saran wrap/cling film/food covering etc. Don't use your fingers in there - cut a bit of plastic with scissors to make a tool.
A good option I didn't try - would be to use silicone sealer. Mould this in place on the back of the waveguide - cover it with saran and place down on a table with spacers to get it the correct thickness. Then let it dry and trim accurately with a razor before fitting to the tweeter. You could get it to act like a compression gasket doing this.....
Another alternative is to cut some rubber sheet approx 3mm thick; but may be difficult to get a smooth internal cut in the rubber?
I did mine with some kind of plastic modelling stuff. It did dry a bit, but I added a bit more and now it's been good for 5 years +
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Okay great than 100% I will attempt without faceplate.
Good to hear
So a tool needs to be used as a spatula rathern than fingers.
This is an option but i rather do this with putty, easy to clean while wet and dries in the colour you want plus will set relatively hard
Plastic modelling stuff. Can you eloborate or mention the stuf you used?
Sorry I can't remember it was a long time ago. It was just general modelling stuff from a hobbies/crafts place...
BTW you can get silicon in black too - at car parts places...
BTW you can get silicon in black too - at car parts places...
If you look at my prior post pictures, i used both methods, adapter and silicon to seal the small gaps. Removing the adapter is a must in my opinion. The final assembly was very nice
You mean removing the faceplate right?
Yes, I will definitely remove the faceplate. But if 3D printing the adapter is not necessery I will attempt the silicon or putty.
After visualizing it and learning from the advice above I think I will lay down the putty as close as possible to the diameter of exactly where the waveguides throat will land on the tweeter(without the faceplate). I will squash the waveguide on top of the putty, let it squeeze through without too much getting in on the inside of the waveguide that can potentially get on the tweeter. Then use a finger or some tool that can wipe off the putty around the throat on the inside of the waveguide and very carefully clean the excess putty that has been squeezed though. All this has to be done with the screws tightened in holding the waveguide to teh faceplate and once tightened I basically have one attempt(preferably) so it can dry out without me pulling it apart.
My opting for putty is purely based on the fact that it will dry out harder and easier to clean.
Probably not the answer you want to hear but I'd sell the D2608/913000 and buy SEAS 27TDFC instead. 27TDFC has a flat faceplate and works phenomenally well with the WG148R with no modifications required other than mounting holes.
I spent a lot of time trying to get the WG148R to work with the XT25 and Peerless HDS / Scan 9130 and never got any exceptional results with either. The main problem is that the combination of the waveguide and faceplate is too deep, like the dome is playing through a cylinder a few mm long before it gets to the waveguide which has the correct profile. If you machine down the waveguide to attempt to solve the problem, the mouth becomes too big. I don't recommend removing the faceplate unless you want to spend a lot of time dealing with voicecoil rub and buzz issues.
I spent a lot of time trying to get the WG148R to work with the XT25 and Peerless HDS / Scan 9130 and never got any exceptional results with either. The main problem is that the combination of the waveguide and faceplate is too deep, like the dome is playing through a cylinder a few mm long before it gets to the waveguide which has the correct profile. If you machine down the waveguide to attempt to solve the problem, the mouth becomes too big. I don't recommend removing the faceplate unless you want to spend a lot of time dealing with voicecoil rub and buzz issues.
Appreciate your response.
Unfortunately, it is for a centre speaker and the front right/left already uses the D2608 so I would like to match it. Funnily enough, I am not one of those believers that speakers all have to match for surround and centre duties because after DSP half the time you can't even tell them apart in blind tests. But as only the centre speaker will have the waveguide(not L/R) my train of thought was to minimise more change as the waveguide will already slighlty alter the sound.
But, as I am sucker for simplcity and not pedantic about centre tweeter being exactly the same I might opt for this option. Apparently, the Peerless D27TG35-06 also according to Sound Import website fits well except a <1mm gap. And it also mentions a <1mm gap for the SEAS 27TDFC as well.
What do you report on the gap from your experience? If it is the same as the Peerless than I would opt out for the peerless.
https://www.soundimports.eu/en/blogs/blog/wave-guiding-your-favorite-tweeter/
I am sure you guys have seen this list of tweeters and how they match up to the waveguide but it seems the Peerless and the Seas have similar results.
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<1mm, like so:
I didn't do anything about the gap, just bolted up and measured. I don't have the measurements at hand because it was a long time ago that I tried this - but I do recall it was incredibly close to Zaph's results on a similar waveguide: http://www.zaphaudio.com/hornconversion.html. I suspect that there is more to like about the 27TDFC for waveguide usage than just the faceplate fit up. I would guess that the dome radiates in a way that makes it better suited to waveguides than most other 1" domes.
D27TG is an ancient design, with a goofy frequency response about 8kHz. The amount of setback that the dome has from the faceplate also makes me skeptical of how well it would work in a waveguide. A good faceplate fit up is not conducive to good behavior in a waveguide (but certainly a bad fit up tends to perform badly)
By the way, what makes you want to waveguide the centre speaker when the L+R aren't? A waveguide is going to narrow the dispersion, which for a home theater will mean that listeners in side seating positions get no treble from the centre speaker.
I didn't do anything about the gap, just bolted up and measured. I don't have the measurements at hand because it was a long time ago that I tried this - but I do recall it was incredibly close to Zaph's results on a similar waveguide: http://www.zaphaudio.com/hornconversion.html. I suspect that there is more to like about the 27TDFC for waveguide usage than just the faceplate fit up. I would guess that the dome radiates in a way that makes it better suited to waveguides than most other 1" domes.
D27TG is an ancient design, with a goofy frequency response about 8kHz. The amount of setback that the dome has from the faceplate also makes me skeptical of how well it would work in a waveguide. A good faceplate fit up is not conducive to good behavior in a waveguide (but certainly a bad fit up tends to perform badly)
By the way, what makes you want to waveguide the centre speaker when the L+R aren't? A waveguide is going to narrow the dispersion, which for a home theater will mean that listeners in side seating positions get no treble from the centre speaker.
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Okay good to know that the SEAS might be a better option but if that gap will exist than I could opt out for the Peerless option which will offer the same sized gap.
Pitty Zaph does not have polar plots, I can only match directivity with polar plots that is my level of understanding, do not know how to use the other general measurements to directivity match. So far, I am reliant on Dcibel's Waveguide normalized polar map from the above post but I am sure that they will all have similar output.
Lastly, you mention that you didn't get exceptional results due to the gap so did you not try to add putty or modelling clay and just connected it with the faceplate? Why I ask is to see if the putty option might still be okay altough it is going to be hard to manouvre something like silicon or putty so close to the waveguide, I can try it if compared to your option covering the gap will provide an okay result.
Filling the gap with blutack or foam was certainly better than just leaving a huge gap, but the results were still not as good as the 27TDFC. Probably because this effectively extends the length of the throat of the waveguide and now the dome is situated too deep. Off axis response above 10kHz became chaotic.
Punchline thanks.
So the throat length from using other tweeters gave chaotic off axis response above 10khz so that gap regardless if we fill it or not was not what casued the problem per se. Rather it is the lenght of the throat. This technically means I can opt out for the cheaper option at least for know if it gives me the same throat length.
Thanks so much for chiming in and letting me know this.
TRDAT yes removing the faceplate. Using the adapter for the xt25 and in my case it was worth it and simple since a friend printed the part. The combination of of both methods, adapter and silicon was great. I had to remove with a toothpick the excess. if there is a 3d model for your speaker, that is the way to go. Many comments state in different posts that blue/black tack or some putty type substance is also great.
I did not consider the effect on the thickness of the adapter in the overall result of the assembly. It seems that the adapter is about the same thickness than the faceplate. Since I only mounted one of the tweeters, will try to mount and compare measurements with and without the adapter / faceplate.
This is my unit (red adapter, ring radiator) compared to TMM. If you zoom in you can see the silicon leftover and no gap. I decided to place the filler material after reading some posts with measurements about open gaps and how the damage the polar due to the importance of a smooth throat transaction (belive it was Patrick Bateman but I cannot find it, but I recall that it was adapting a softdome to a 14" horn. Tack was used there as gapping material). One thing I like visually about the adapter is that it extends smoothly the curvature of the waveguide with no protruding edges. Another side advantage of the silicone or tack is that it may reduce unwanted resonances as it closes the gap with a material with some dampening/ elasticity functionality and it make the whole assembly fell pretty solid.
The issue of sealing can be seen in this discussion in asr. The op bought set of the March Audio's Sointuva WG speaker and he was disappointed with the performance, so he run a very detailed investigation. The waveguide / tweeter assembly was similar to the ones discussed here. The speaker cabinet was a sealed unit, but it was discovered, among other issues, that unproperly sealing at the tweeter / waveguide assembly altered the sound. Very interesting read as it is one of the possible architectures, and the most appealing to me if you can find a matching radiator, to use with the waveguide tweeter assembly (softdome, sealed , 2 way with passive radiator).
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...and-reinforcements-with-klippel-device.35255/
I did not consider the effect on the thickness of the adapter in the overall result of the assembly. It seems that the adapter is about the same thickness than the faceplate. Since I only mounted one of the tweeters, will try to mount and compare measurements with and without the adapter / faceplate.
This is my unit (red adapter, ring radiator) compared to TMM. If you zoom in you can see the silicon leftover and no gap. I decided to place the filler material after reading some posts with measurements about open gaps and how the damage the polar due to the importance of a smooth throat transaction (belive it was Patrick Bateman but I cannot find it, but I recall that it was adapting a softdome to a 14" horn. Tack was used there as gapping material). One thing I like visually about the adapter is that it extends smoothly the curvature of the waveguide with no protruding edges. Another side advantage of the silicone or tack is that it may reduce unwanted resonances as it closes the gap with a material with some dampening/ elasticity functionality and it make the whole assembly fell pretty solid.
The issue of sealing can be seen in this discussion in asr. The op bought set of the March Audio's Sointuva WG speaker and he was disappointed with the performance, so he run a very detailed investigation. The waveguide / tweeter assembly was similar to the ones discussed here. The speaker cabinet was a sealed unit, but it was discovered, among other issues, that unproperly sealing at the tweeter / waveguide assembly altered the sound. Very interesting read as it is one of the possible architectures, and the most appealing to me if you can find a matching radiator, to use with the waveguide tweeter assembly (softdome, sealed , 2 way with passive radiator).
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...and-reinforcements-with-klippel-device.35255/
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It shouldn't be too difficult to get the adapter 3D printed. I have the adapter file plus a 3D model of the tweeter. The question is that does the faceplate come of in the CAD program so the specialist can design or refit the adapter to the tweeter without the faceplate? I am guessing this is possible
Measurements will be great. It would be awesome to see difference with and without the faceplate.
Okay so even with the adapter the gap needs to be sealed. Good to know.
Yes, I know about this thread it was fascinating and only now I put two and two together and realised the issue and how its connected here.
So basically I have two options get the SEAS tweeter fit it straight on and use some tack or silicon or 3D print and adapter and use some tack or silicon, both will provide me with decent results. I suppose it all depnds on the price of the 3D print vs a new tweeter.
So in my country its going to cost around $40 US dollars to 3D print that adapter and it includes drawing the CAD for the adapter slightly cheaper if he can chop and change a model that already exists. Not sure what that is in the larger scheme of things around the world price wise.
The only thing being is measuring up the tweeter and the waveguide by hand, I thought the 3D printing guy would be able to use the 3D model of the tweeter but it seems he needs the waveguide and tweeter to measure up, which isn't really a problem I just thought using 3D models was more accurate but im not an expert on CAD anyway.
My only question is that I know Axlson popped up a link for the adapter but it was in an STL file, does anyone have a 3DM file it might just make it easier for us to get it right and work on top of a model that just needs some cahnges to match my tweeter.
By the way, thanks guys my waveguide is coming lets hope I can manage the adapter and then it will be all easy till I get to configuring the Hypex amp DSP.
The only thing being is measuring up the tweeter and the waveguide by hand, I thought the 3D printing guy would be able to use the 3D model of the tweeter but it seems he needs the waveguide and tweeter to measure up, which isn't really a problem I just thought using 3D models was more accurate but im not an expert on CAD anyway.
My only question is that I know Axlson popped up a link for the adapter but it was in an STL file, does anyone have a 3DM file it might just make it easier for us to get it right and work on top of a model that just needs some cahnges to match my tweeter.
By the way, thanks guys my waveguide is coming lets hope I can manage the adapter and then it will be all easy till I get to configuring the Hypex amp DSP.
Hello Alexander,
The reading of your work made me bougth the Peereless BC25TG, which seems almost perfect in the Monacor w300. Did you tried it with the Visaton WG please ? Had you prefered the No Ferro Visaton WG over the Peereless Monacor WG combo (that has ferrofluid) at the end?
Thanks, and nice site and designs you have btw.
So I finally got the 3D printing done. The faceplate is off but the adapter is essentially the same size and thickness of the faceplate(same thing really) so depending on who advice from the above posts is correct I might have the problem of the throat being too long.
I did putty between adapter and the waveguide which sealed very good, the slight tint of brown colour you see. But, there was scaling on the 3D printing along the throat so I attempted to seal that with some type of thick substance(nail glue) and it didn't end very well getting some close to the tweeter. I can potentially use a tiny sand paper and try and clean it up a little. Not sure how much it will effect the sound.
After checking out Dcibel's normalized polar plot,(although uses a different tweeter) it seems very difficult to find the correct crossover point but somewhere around 2100 and 2200 would be the best bet.
Now, for testing and working the Hypex filters.
Thanks for everyones help.
