I see. So you have up to 16 outputs selectable via the software, plus a sub output, and you can choose using from 1 to 16 different enclosures.
Is it all sent in mono, or is there a panning function for stereo?
Understanding this, I fail to see why you need 8 enclosures for your living room.
Wouldn't a pair be enough?
Going with a pair, I recently simmed the TB W8-1722 woofer. It goes quite low in a transmission line, down to about 30Hz, and put a compression driver and horn on top for a killer system. Will need a crossover.
If you want the smallest footprint in your living room and the most huge sound, then line arrays mounted to the sides of your organ. Their footprint is about the size of an A4 paper, and will deliver the room filling sound you are looking for. Since you would be using a pair of subs, you'd be ok with 16 drivers per side. It will have the looks of organ pipes, and the sound to match. Bonus, no crossover needed, using the built in one in the organ, and EQ again from your organ.
Not exactly. For large instruments like I want to buy, I would have 8-16 channels of independent audio, and if I wanted to mix them down, I would have work to do. They are all independent channels of tone generation, not stereo, and not the same signals in any way.
I mentioned briefly earlier in this thread why mixing down to a pair of speakers is inadequate. Consider the example of two flute sounds being generated on two channels at nearly the same pitch. Combine them electrically, and if they're in phase, they reinforce each other. Combine them when they happen to be out of phase, and they cancel each other out completely. Play both of those sounds through two independent channels, and neither problem occurs.
The short answer is 8-16 channels are necessary. I can explain why in more detail if my terse example above isn't enough to make the problem clear. The problem is that I'm dealing with generated sounds, not a recording.
Pardon my inexperience with all these speaker design terms, but what is a 3rd order box? I've read about 2nd (sealed) and 4th (ported) order boxes, but not 3rd.
16 liters isn't very much, and I could see if there's a clever way to fit a port in. If a passive radiator is necessary, that certainly would affect the cost, but if that's in exchange for a much smaller box, it might be worth it. It's certainly worth considering!
a 3rd order box is a sealed box using a series capacitor. The box is usually chosen somewhat undersized. The combination of driver and capacitor reactance when chosen favorably, lowers the impedance and the driver pulls more power below the normal box resonant point. It works out to about 450uF for nominal 8 ohm drivers and 900uF for 4 ohm drivers, If a 3rd order box were attempted with say a zero feedback tube amplifier with relatively high output impedance, then I don't think the technique would work.
Look how a 650uF capacitor affects response - a real electrolytic may have some loss.
Are you going for theatre organ voices?
Look how a 650uF capacitor affects response - a real electrolytic may have some loss.
Are you going for theatre organ voices?
Interesting! So the tradeoff is the increased demands on the amplifier and the drop in efficiency? That's a fine tradeoff for my purposes.
Not really, but the Allen organs I am interested in do allow you to switch between classical and theatre-style tremulants, so I can approximate that style well enough for my mostly-classical purposes.
Correct. Why so many? Just how much efficiency/peak SPL @ 'x' frequency do you want? How acoustically big is the space? You've implied it's small.
GM
Consider an example of two flute stops that happen to be identical in waveform, and pretend that they're both playing the same note, at the same fundamental frequency. Assume I happen to hit the two keys at just the right time so that they start playing their samples perfectly out of phase. If I mix those two waveforms electronically, I'll get nothing, as they'll cancel each other out. If I mix those two waveforms in the air, acoustically, after letting them emanate from two separate speakers, I'll hear both sounds just fine at full volume.
While this is an extreme example for illustration purposes, the same effect happens even if you're playing two notes from the same stop out of the same audio channel. Many instruments split their stops into C and C# channels, so that every other note comes out of a different audio channel to avoid these kinds of cancellation effects. In short, the more channels, the better, up to the limit of what the manufacturer supports in their internal audio design.
My living room is about 14' x 15', so it's not huge. I don't know offhand how much volume I want, but I could measure my current instrument and see what I'm used to right now. It's not going to be any more than what a good home sound system will need to produce in total, and since there are more channels, we could drop the power on each one at least to some degree. No one channel is going to have to be as loud as any home stereo channel is asked to be. Only when you add all 8 or 16 channels together will you need the full volume.
as a midrange/treble unit with the MCM/Newark 55-2421 8" woofer, you might use the little Vifa/Tymphany unit. I think they are about $12ea in multiples: Peerless by Tymphany TC9FD18-08 3-1/2" Full Range Paper Cone Woofer
I don't know offhand how much back chamber volume they would require nor passive crossover as aren't at my regular pc. Someone at the multiway forum might simulate the pair for you.
There are other little fullrange - Faital Pro's 3 and 4 inch should be good and lively but are pretty expensive in neodymium form. Lavoce has one or two in the $20-$26 range which might be similar.
Here's a 3" Lavoce with rising on - axis response for $11.99 LaVoce FSF030.70 3" Ferrite Full-Range Woofer 8 Ohm
A 2nd order passive highpass crossover would keep the little driver from moving much at all which should help with clarity. I'm not experienced with crossover so can't suggest a good blend which could be done with someone experienced with "Xsim"
I don't know offhand how much back chamber volume they would require nor passive crossover as aren't at my regular pc. Someone at the multiway forum might simulate the pair for you.
There are other little fullrange - Faital Pro's 3 and 4 inch should be good and lively but are pretty expensive in neodymium form. Lavoce has one or two in the $20-$26 range which might be similar.
Here's a 3" Lavoce with rising on - axis response for $11.99 LaVoce FSF030.70 3" Ferrite Full-Range Woofer 8 Ohm
A 2nd order passive highpass crossover would keep the little driver from moving much at all which should help with clarity. I'm not experienced with crossover so can't suggest a good blend which could be done with someone experienced with "Xsim"
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for example if you put the TC9FD speaker mentioned above in a 0.2 liter enclosure with the highpass filter shown below in the sim, excursion would not be more (in theory and if it did not change parameters/burn up) than about half its xmax with 28.3 volts input.
The crossover would be around 300Hz:
The crossover would be around 300Hz:
Doh! I think I just figured out the answer to a question I had when I first started browsing these forums, namely, what does the "Full Range" forum talk about? I thought it was about speaker cabinets with multiple drivers which could cover the full range of audio frequencies. Your comments made me realize I think I got that wrong - you guys are trying to get one driver to cover the full range all by itself, right? I would be happy with that, but would not mind having a two-way or (less likely) three-way setup; I'm really only interested in the end result.
I probably need to start a new post over in the multi-way forum. I'm sorry if I bothered you guys with the wrong kind of questions, but your comments have been very helpful! That 8" MCM driver looks pretty promising, and I am going to have to investigate more about the various enclosures it might be happy in. I don't have nearly enough time right now to pursue this project, but I'm hoping the long weekend will give me some time to investigate these ideas. Thanks again!
That could be fun
.That would run into the waveform cancellation problem big time. Sorry, but that just won't work, although my family might appreciate not having to hear me practice hard pieces before they're ready to play publicly!
Feel free to explore the phase cancellation issues in electronic organ sound reproduction if you like; I've found it an interesting topic to learn about. But rest assured, there are real problems there which motivate high-end manufacturers to include a seemingly crazy number of audio channels. Check out Marshall & Ogletree's design for Cameron Carpenter's touring organ - 48 channels of independent audio! Their website includes more information and other pictures (Opus 8 - International Touring Organ | Marshall & Ogletree | Organbuilders | USA)
I've had little mobility for decades but did hear Virgil Fox and Allen Touring Organ which displayed "some" spatiality due to multiple speakers of quite varied nature. These days with heavier duty drivers and more amp power in less weight it might be done better on the low end (Are the speaker and amplifier specs online for Virgil's organ system? - how about those speakers in Cameron's video and the picture above ?)
for what little its worth I would use several Karlson cabinets - K-slotted pipe tweeter and tapped horn or tapped pipe subs for a small portable organ setup - although front loaded horns would be a good option for lower midrange and upper bass.
here's one of my "K10" next to an original Karlson 15 inch cabinet
I wonder how might Mr. Danley would tackle a touring organ speaker system.
There appear to be a lot of direct radiators employed int Cameron's setup. Perhaps
with that many channels it was the best option -- ???
The un-damped sheet metal horns are interesting.
for what little its worth I would use several Karlson cabinets - K-slotted pipe tweeter and tapped horn or tapped pipe subs for a small portable organ setup - although front loaded horns would be a good option for lower midrange and upper bass.
here's one of my "K10" next to an original Karlson 15 inch cabinet
I wonder how might Mr. Danley would tackle a touring organ speaker system.
There appear to be a lot of direct radiators employed int Cameron's setup. Perhaps
with that many channels it was the best option -- ???
The un-damped sheet metal horns are interesting.
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designing an organ speaker system to emulate pipes(voices) that are activated by partials to produce "tones" (and forgive my "organ speak" if i'm using terms incorrectly) is more problematic on the acoustic side of the equation when it comes to mixing signals then in the electronic side but if you have a link to that specifically i would be interested in it.
here's a Conn speaker which mixes "fullrange" car speakers and "pipes"
I used to have a set of those, and while they looked nice, the sound wasn't that great.
Knowing Cameron's personality, I wouldn't be surprised if those metal horns are there for looks and not for their sound quality. He also seems to like very buzzy reeds, so those probably help accentuate the buzzy harmonics.
That said, I'm sure that the audio design of that organ is top notch. Doug Marshall and David Ogletree are both excellent organists with very good ears for voicing.
Allen organs use sampling, not frequency synthesis, so all the partials are in the samples. You can pick different samples and filter and tune the ones you pick, but it all boils down to samples in the end.
I don't have a link offhand for the electronic mixing issue, but to understand it, just consider my example of the same sample played back out of phase on two channels vs. mixing those two signals electronically and then trying to play the sum back on one channel. With two channels, you get full volume. With one, you get zero. That should be sufficient to illustrate to problem.
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