Time to fess up, I've been reading and learning about the Danley originals and inspired clones for a good while now.
So much info and help here and online.
Very inspiring.
I decided to make one, to start with.
Lots of measuring what's online, drawing and scaling and plenty of thinking.
I took the plunge and decided to make a prototype.
As this is for a domestic room test, I decided to to go with one 12" woofer and two 5" MIDs + HF compression driver.
Flares on and rounding / smoothing started.
Primed to help see the imperfections.
I spend a lot of time ensuring a smooth throat transition from perfect 1" to 4 sided conical.
I've always found this to be critical on my other horn creations -
12 sided conicals, tractrix and Le Cléac'h diy horns.
Drivers from the top down:
HF; BMS 4550 - need to introduce this one🙂
MF; 2 X Celestion 5" sealed back.
Not the Misco ones I would have liked!
I did message Misco but didn't hear back.. yet.
LF; single Eminence Kappa 12A
These have served me very well in my mid bass 100Hz to 400Hz hyperbolic horns. No need to buy more either.
This was a trial fitting
I decided the conical to flares needed more smoothing..
Happier with that.
Having used cheap as chips chipboard, I decided to sheet them with some leftover sound deadening sheeting.
Result, pretty dead!
These won't be going very loud, so should be good.
Making the rear enclosure for the bass reflex part took time.
Overall quite compact and easy to carry the pieces up to my music loft room.
When compared to all the hardware of the other horns.
3 round horns and 1 tweeter replaced by 1 synergy!
I then did a quick dial in, very easy to do in Najda DSP.
Set up the X/Os, quick time / phase alignment to the tapped horn.
Dialed in the SPLs.
Notch PEQ on the BMS 4550 at 2200Hz
I will spend much time dialling in, trying different X/O slopes. Aiming for nice phase plot.
Quick setup plot from the listening position.
(Ignore the 25Hz bump, that's the tapped horn - it's the way I like it, gives huge scale and energy to church organ and electronica etc 🙂).
The trail off of HF really isn't noticeable from the chair! There's relatively speaking plenty of HF action, for me!
So, how did it compare?
Very interesting!
Listening in mono, one side to the other, the sound coverage of the room is amazing.
You get the pretty much the same sound no matter where you are!
Not so the old 5 way side! It's the listening chair, or nowhere!
I had to boost the mid bass SPL to get better balance and more drive, to my taste. The Crown amp and Kappa 12A are up to the job.
It's not a bad sound at all!
I could tell by how easy it was to dial in and how flat the individual drivers frequency responses were, that it would be promising from the off.
Funny how you can tell something will sound okay from hearing the frequency sweeps - when you've heard enough I guess🙂
Surprising balanced and detailed overall impression.
Mid bass is good, not slow or bloated, fast and nice timbre.
I guess the mid drivers are not run in?
They sound pretty good though. Not in your face, or too passive.
The HF driver, do compression drivers run in?
It actually competes with the 5 way side very well.
I would like to build a SM60F style next..
Even more hifi room friendly!
Just got to figure out an elegant way to channel HF / MF from the coaxial driver.
I will now spend time dialling and positioning, whist I plot/ plan the SM60 alike.
Questions: should the woofer sealed rear chamber volume be the same if you only use one driver?
What X/O slopes would sound best?
I started with 8th order LF high pass (matches the tapped horn),
4th order all else?
So much info and help here and online.
Very inspiring.
I decided to make one, to start with.
Lots of measuring what's online, drawing and scaling and plenty of thinking.
I took the plunge and decided to make a prototype.
As this is for a domestic room test, I decided to to go with one 12" woofer and two 5" MIDs + HF compression driver.
Flares on and rounding / smoothing started.
Primed to help see the imperfections.
I spend a lot of time ensuring a smooth throat transition from perfect 1" to 4 sided conical.
I've always found this to be critical on my other horn creations -
12 sided conicals, tractrix and Le Cléac'h diy horns.
Drivers from the top down:
HF; BMS 4550 - need to introduce this one🙂
MF; 2 X Celestion 5" sealed back.
Not the Misco ones I would have liked!
I did message Misco but didn't hear back.. yet.
LF; single Eminence Kappa 12A
These have served me very well in my mid bass 100Hz to 400Hz hyperbolic horns. No need to buy more either.
This was a trial fitting
I decided the conical to flares needed more smoothing..
Happier with that.
Having used cheap as chips chipboard, I decided to sheet them with some leftover sound deadening sheeting.
Result, pretty dead!
These won't be going very loud, so should be good.
Making the rear enclosure for the bass reflex part took time.
Overall quite compact and easy to carry the pieces up to my music loft room.
When compared to all the hardware of the other horns.
3 round horns and 1 tweeter replaced by 1 synergy!
I then did a quick dial in, very easy to do in Najda DSP.
Set up the X/Os, quick time / phase alignment to the tapped horn.
Dialed in the SPLs.
Notch PEQ on the BMS 4550 at 2200Hz
I will spend much time dialling in, trying different X/O slopes. Aiming for nice phase plot.
Quick setup plot from the listening position.
(Ignore the 25Hz bump, that's the tapped horn - it's the way I like it, gives huge scale and energy to church organ and electronica etc 🙂).
The trail off of HF really isn't noticeable from the chair! There's relatively speaking plenty of HF action, for me!
So, how did it compare?
Very interesting!
Listening in mono, one side to the other, the sound coverage of the room is amazing.
You get the pretty much the same sound no matter where you are!
Not so the old 5 way side! It's the listening chair, or nowhere!
I had to boost the mid bass SPL to get better balance and more drive, to my taste. The Crown amp and Kappa 12A are up to the job.
It's not a bad sound at all!
I could tell by how easy it was to dial in and how flat the individual drivers frequency responses were, that it would be promising from the off.
Funny how you can tell something will sound okay from hearing the frequency sweeps - when you've heard enough I guess🙂
Surprising balanced and detailed overall impression.
Mid bass is good, not slow or bloated, fast and nice timbre.
I guess the mid drivers are not run in?
They sound pretty good though. Not in your face, or too passive.
The HF driver, do compression drivers run in?
It actually competes with the 5 way side very well.
I would like to build a SM60F style next..
Even more hifi room friendly!
Just got to figure out an elegant way to channel HF / MF from the coaxial driver.
I will now spend time dialling and positioning, whist I plot/ plan the SM60 alike.
Questions: should the woofer sealed rear chamber volume be the same if you only use one driver?
What X/O slopes would sound best?
I started with 8th order LF high pass (matches the tapped horn),
4th order all else?
After an afternoon of playing, the new drivers are sounding better.
Lots of fun voicing the Synergy side to sound more how I like it, though it's a moving target as they break in.
No hi pass X/O on the LF (as I run on the 5 way mid bass horn) is definitely preferable. More tuneful oomph and character!
I will try shortish port extenders, just to see.
Not sure if the SH50 had them. The SM60 / ERS-1 has moulded ones.
The cheap as chips Celestion 5" closed back drivers are sounding better and can take more SPL cleanly.
LH old vs RH new is interesting!
I used some mono tracks for that.
Some things I prefer of the old.. Some things are wow on the new!
Will have different voicing no matter what, but it's getting closer.
Couple of weeks to break them in fully..?
The gap between old 5 way and Synergy SH50 has definitely closed.
Part of it is that I am so used to my systems old sound..
Then there's the confirmation bias that Vitavox S2s and JBL2482s on mid should beat BMS 4550s and 2 Celestion 5"ers😀
These things would be beasts with 4 X 5" MF and 2 X 12" woofs - in my room there's no way I need that - is there?😎
Lots of fun voicing the Synergy side to sound more how I like it, though it's a moving target as they break in.
No hi pass X/O on the LF (as I run on the 5 way mid bass horn) is definitely preferable. More tuneful oomph and character!
I will try shortish port extenders, just to see.
Not sure if the SH50 had them. The SM60 / ERS-1 has moulded ones.
The cheap as chips Celestion 5" closed back drivers are sounding better and can take more SPL cleanly.
LH old vs RH new is interesting!
I used some mono tracks for that.
Some things I prefer of the old.. Some things are wow on the new!
Will have different voicing no matter what, but it's getting closer.
Couple of weeks to break them in fully..?
The gap between old 5 way and Synergy SH50 has definitely closed.
Part of it is that I am so used to my systems old sound..
Then there's the confirmation bias that Vitavox S2s and JBL2482s on mid should beat BMS 4550s and 2 Celestion 5"ers😀
These things would be beasts with 4 X 5" MF and 2 X 12" woofs - in my room there's no way I need that - is there?😎
This is really nice! Do you have any pictures of the enclosing box?
My small two way MEHs surprised me today - they are still in tuning phase, since I am very slow at that - and I got some spooky imaging, sounds literally emerging from the air at various places.
The previous prototypes were with open backs and while pretty good, I begin to think that the open back is not really ideal, at least not in the cluttered work room. So the next one will be sealed from the beginning.
My small two way MEHs surprised me today - they are still in tuning phase, since I am very slow at that - and I got some spooky imaging, sounds literally emerging from the air at various places.
The previous prototypes were with open backs and while pretty good, I begin to think that the open back is not really ideal, at least not in the cluttered work room. So the next one will be sealed from the beginning.
I sorta rushed the back part so not even painted to match..
At the moment I've only enclosed half of the back!
It covers the over driver area and half way along the two sides, past where the reflex ports are, so they get the backloading. Can feel it on punchy tracks at volume, but can't hear any port noises.
I'm used to full horn loaded bass, so this is a bit difference for me.
This is what my SH50 alike is up against..
Old pic - now painted black..
Regarding the back cover.
I figured I only have one woofer so half the enclosed area would be required. That might be a wrong assumption? Easy enough to make another full cover, but the weight of the thing goes up!
Would you have reflex ports on your multi drive one, or cover them as a sealed box?
I sat in the listening spot a long time yesterday with Najda DSP X.O running live and listened old side to new, and tried all manner of X/Os and cross frequencies, also measuring each step - at or near the port tuning frequencies was best.
Still came back to 4th order X/Os.
Dialing in the SPL of the 3 driver stages, and I think that they are still running in made a huge difference.
I flicked back to my first measured only setup I started with - God it was awful in comparison
!I found that the plastic tops off spray cans push fitted into the reflex ports nicely.
I cut the ends out so they are tubes and was able to push them in to the ports so they protrude a couple of inches inside. Just a quick test without lifting the horn down and taking the cover off.
Def changed the bass sound, but not measured yet - was too late and tired.
Will do today.
Few;:
Looks great! Keep up the good work! Maybe I missed it, but what are the coverage angles you designed for?
This one has a 50 degree angle.
As long as a pair would cover the place I sit and one seat either side I'd be happy.
It's spooky how it sounds quite even almost anywhere in the room - stark contrast to the old side where all the horns are distances apart and are aligned to work at the listening spot.
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Very nice SpeedySteve....good woodworking skills and pragmatism...I likes!
I've come to abhor speaker systems/setups that demand sweet-spot, seated-listening. In fact with the unity/syns, some of my favorite listening comes from walking around, doing whatever, all around the house.
Yep, that is one of their best properties, and it inspires me to tune them as accurately as possible because i know the tuning holds up over large areas.
I've come to abhor speaker systems/setups that demand sweet-spot, seated-listening. In fact with the unity/syns, some of my favorite listening comes from walking around, doing whatever, all around the house.
...Quick setup plot from the listening position.
(Ignore the 25Hz bump, that's the tapped horn - it's the way I like it, gives huge scale and energy to church organ and electronica etc 🙂).
The trail off of HF really isn't noticeable from the chair! There's relatively speaking plenty of HF action, for me!...
That's a lot of downslope, even when measured at the LP.
I've found that measurements from the listening position (LP) always contaminate the phase response plots, and usually beyond recognition. So I place the microphone pretty much on-axis at 1m from the horn's mouth, and place plenty of temporary absorption material on top of anything acoustically reflective in-room that's within 2/3 m of the mouth. Suddenly, the phase plot gets much, much better, and I don't try to EQ any frequencies that have really non-flat excess group delay (indicating it's likely a room early reflection instead of a minimum-phase behavior from the loudspeaker itself).
Also, by measuring at 1m, you no longer have to use any downward-sloping "room curve" when measuring at 1m. Just EQ it to flat response at 1m, and by the time it gets to your LP, you have your room curve perfectly.
Measuring on-axis will get you an accurate reading of your high frequencies above 13.6 kHz (the frequency at which a half wavelength fits across the 1" horn throat diameter, and the frequency where the 1" horn/driver start to beam. It you don't try to boost those frequencies above 14 kHz due to measuring off axis above the beaming frequency, then you should hear a much more smooth sounding resulting balance.
I think most people are used to taking the measurements at the LP (like "room correction software" does) but fail to see what happens when they do this. That firmware usually screws up the 100-300 Hz band, attenuating it too much for fully horn-loaded loudspeakers having directivity control in this region.
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Also, I've found that the recordings themselves, depending on genre and year of mastering, will likely have a lot of clipping if they are popular music selections (esp. hard rock, metal, pop, electronica, etc.). They sound extremely harsh and grating on the transients--which most people oddly try to blame on the loudspeakers. I find that music track clipping by mastering guys is the real reason why people put such a steep downslope on the amplitude response curve above ~1 kHz.
Instead of the big downslope, just rip the music tracks locally and use Audacity's Clix Fix to reconstruct the shaved-off peaks, then use Normalize to bring the overall loudness of the tracks back down to just below clipping. Save those tracks and listen to them instead. All those artificially embedded odd-order harmonics on the music peaks will simply disappear. Your jaw will stop automatically stop clinching when listening to them.
The time spent doing this is usually just a couple of minutes per track. The resulting sound quality is usually not subtle--for popular music genres.
JMTC.
Chris
Definitely.
I think it was your thread (massive build and huge room), that first got me looking👀 🙂
The B&C dcx464 coax looks interesting.
How does it sound.
I might be looking for something warmer sounding than the BMS 4550.
How easy was it attach to the horn. Did you need taps and a tube to isolate the throat or does it help you with that.
The BMS Danley coaxial on the SM-60 (not sure what the ERS-1 uses), would need an elegant solution, I think, to split the two.
I put my SH50 alike right back in the corner. No issues with side wall interaction it seems.
I like it like this, sitting quite a bit further away. Bass kick is better, HF not so in my face😀
Really is pulling down to 50Hz now, with corner loading!
I tweaked some more, re time/phase aligned to the tapped horn.
Happier with the way it sounds.
It's a cleaner (sterile is too strong a word) HF than my Vitavox / Raals have. Not wrong, just a matter of taste
I think I'll build a second SH50 alike to match.
Then I can move them on as active units (esp if I load up with full driver complement, and do a full back box etc..).
That would be if I then made SM60f /ERS-1 top part alikes and I preferred them.
That's great advice.
Will re-read carefully later when I have more time, an go to it🙂
They will be definitely sealed on the next build if I use the woofers I used for the 9 sided conical, they are relatively low fs and high Qts. That might change if I buy different ones.
Well, I'm getting ready to talk out of both sides of my mouth........
One side says just get EQ right....that dials in warmth.....
The other side says the dcx464 is giving me the most realistic sound i've heard, but it's hard to control. A real Arabian stallion it seems....
So, I dunno haha...
My standard CD-to-horn mount is a plate of 1/8th inch alum, slight beveled to match CD exit. I simply can't measure or hear, all the CD/throat matching stuff folks go on about.
Fwiw, I have come to strongly believe a good quasi-anechoic tuning is much more important than a lot of the things we tend to put waay too much attention into.
Hi Speedysteve7
Looks good! Very interesting comparison of a Multi-horn-setup and a Multi-Entry-Horn-setup!
If it is easy to tune with your DSP you could also try Chris´s approach with his zeroth-order filters that seem to result in a better phase-behavior then X/O with higher orders! I haven´t come so far in my project yet, but will certainly try it. He has written about them here and there. I have this link:
https://community.klipsch.com/index...ar-phase-loudspeakers/page/4/#comment-2388972
Happy listening
Steffen
Looks good! Very interesting comparison of a Multi-horn-setup and a Multi-Entry-Horn-setup!
If it is easy to tune with your DSP you could also try Chris´s approach with his zeroth-order filters that seem to result in a better phase-behavior then X/O with higher orders! I haven´t come so far in my project yet, but will certainly try it. He has written about them here and there. I have this link:
https://community.klipsch.com/index...ar-phase-loudspeakers/page/4/#comment-2388972
Happy listening
Steffen
Thanks for the encouragement and advice. Always great to get different angles and takes on the problem solving.
Unfortunately, my Najda DSP is not powerful enough for lots of FIR taps.
Certainly not on the tapped horn frequencies, but maybe the higher frequency stuff in a Synergy? - I don't know.
Will try to find out from the Najda DSP folk on that thread.
I'm not a whiz with these things - slow and steady these days, wins the day😀
Getting a nice phase plot ala Tom Danley would be a goal and real achievement!
More listening and the drivers are getting better and better!
I'm liking the punch from the reflex bass. It's still nicely controlled and no port sounds, but I've not had bass like this with any of my big bass horn (15" in huge 12 sided conical, 15" in shorter Hyperbolic, 12" in long hyperbolic!).
The mix of horn and reflex is intriguing!
Off to buy more wood this afternoon for the LH side one🙂
Yes, it's very interesting comparing 5 way trad horns Vs 3 way + sub of the synergy.
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The good thing about MEHs is that a simple set of first order crossover filters--that uses the first cancellation (notch frequency) of the lower frequency drivers as the low pass crossover frequency--will always provide time-aligned settings that is a hallmark of the MEHs that Tom Danley promotes ("unity summation aperture").
First order MEH crossover settings produce a quasi-linear phase response (or should I say "minimum phase response" in the case of MEHs) of the lower frequency drivers mounted to the horn (midranges, woofers) without the creation of significant excess phase (all-pass) or large spikes and delay offsets in the excess group delay plot--all of which are audible. They actually need the 90 degrees of phase shift of a first order set of filters to time align the lower frequency drivers, which are closer to the listener, to the higher frequency driver.
Chris
First order MEH crossover settings produce a quasi-linear phase response (or should I say "minimum phase response" in the case of MEHs) of the lower frequency drivers mounted to the horn (midranges, woofers) without the creation of significant excess phase (all-pass) or large spikes and delay offsets in the excess group delay plot--all of which are audible. They actually need the 90 degrees of phase shift of a first order set of filters to time align the lower frequency drivers, which are closer to the listener, to the higher frequency driver.
Chris
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Slow and steady wins every day, in the long run i think
If you are planning on sticking with IIR xovers, I think Chris has the right advice in trying to keep electrical xovers low order, preferably first order.
Not sure exactly how that works with the mids-to-CD crossover, given the steep acoustic low pass the mids get from the notch reflection, but it appears a net 2nd order acoustical xover is very doable.
Likewise for low-to-mid crossover, and it should be easier with an inherently milder notch.
One very quick look at Najda made it appears to have about 1024 tap capability. If that is per channel and at 48 kHz I think it will handle 4th order linear phase xovers and moderate embedded IIR driver corrections just fine, down to say 250-300Hz. Iow handle the low-to-mid xover. 1024k taps will easily handle the mid-to-CD and all driver corrections etc.
You will still need to use regular IIR xover between subs and low, but that's not a bad idea anyway unless you're just loadded with taps and don't care at all about latency.
I'd definitely advise giving linear-phase xovers. Once you get the hang of achieving complementary acoustic xovers at any order, with zero penalty in terms of group delay or phase rotation...it makes xovers soooo much easier, and sure as heck makes for some sweet sound.
Whichever way you go, i think the bottom line is that xovers must be below acoustic notches, and then try to get acoustic phase rotations as low as possible.
The approach described in the link is only IIR, no FIR! As Chris allready has said he only uses first order filters AND a lot of PEQ's to get things right.
MEH's work differently (compared to traditional speakers or multiple horns) due to the tight spacing of the drivers and orientation in space, ie. not above each other but "behind" each other (away from the listener) in the same horn. That makes for at a new set of "rules"/options, that you don't hav with traditional speakers!
But ask Chris, he is the expert here. He is usually generous with his help.
MEH's work differently (compared to traditional speakers or multiple horns) due to the tight spacing of the drivers and orientation in space, ie. not above each other but "behind" each other (away from the listener) in the same horn. That makes for at a new set of "rules"/options, that you don't hav with traditional speakers!
But ask Chris, he is the expert here. He is usually generous with his help.
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The good thing about MEHs is that a simple set of first order crossover filters--that uses the first cancellation (notch frequency) of the lower frequency drivers as the low pass crossover frequency--will always provide time-aligned settings that is a hallmark of the MEHs that Tom Danley promotes ("unity summation aperture").
First order MEH crossover settings produce a quasi-linear phase response (or should I say "minimum phase response" in the case of MEHs) of the lower frequency drivers mounted to the horn (midranges, woofers) without the creation of significant excess phase (all-pass) or large spikes and delay offsets in the excess group delay plot--all of which are audible. They actually need the 90 degrees of phase shift of a first order set of filters to time align the lower frequency drivers, which are closer to the listener, to the higher frequency driver.
Thanks so much for this expert insight.
Will take me a while to process fully, if ever 🙂
I didn't have much time to play around today.
I changed all X/Os to BW 6dB and tried the tap frequencies of 325 and 954Hz as the points to cross at in Najda.
Removed all PEQs, set the driver SPLs more evenly to balance.
Then played around with the X/O points to smooth the phase a bit.
Then added some PEQs (not much really).
This gave the result below.
Can't seem to get that phase hump down..
Or get the bass phase to flatten out.
Not listening to a pair is getting slightly irritating 😒
I did cut the 4 pyramid sides for the 2nd horn this afternoon though😀