SynTripP: 2-way 2-part Virtual Single Point Source Horn

He had some danley processor, supposedly danley amp but another brand and is the official sales guy of danley in my country. He said he did not have time to process the cabs and that it was somewhat purposely like that to show that they didn't need very much processing.

Whether he used pre-sets for the cabs I don't know.

Can you set-up/process the cabs in a way to make them feel like they radiate from a bigger surface/feel more neutral like regular speakers? It's hard to describe what I heard that I did not like, and also what was the reason for it, but it definately felt more psycho acoustic than frequency response related, or a bit of both if it makes sense.
 
I came there with very high expectations, and I've listened to enough systems to know that there should be no second thought about whether a speaker sound good or bad if it is a good speaker set-up properly. I love my keystones, t30's, DR280 and kling & Freitag t9 cabs I'm frequently working with. I simply refuse to think that this is the cutting edge sound technology advocated and designed by the persons who designed subwoofer cabinets I use and enjoy a lot, without it being a user failure or improper set-up.

However he has set them up other times and seem to be very technically knowledgeable, and there were another guy working with danley stuff there aswell who did not seem to Adress the issue I felt about it. Confusing.
 
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I came there with very high expectations, and I've listened to enough systems to know that there should be no second thought about whether a speaker sound good or bad if it is a good speaker set-up properly. I love my keystones, t30's, DR280 and kling & Freitag t9 cabs I'm frequently working with. I simply refuse to think that this is the cutting edge sound technology advocated and designed by the persons who designed subwoofer cabinets I use and enjoy a lot, without it being a user failure or improper set-up.

However he has set them up other times and seem to be very technically knowledgeable, and there were another guy working with danley stuff there aswell who did not seem to Adress the issue I felt about it. Confusing.
Osse,

Although xrk971 gives some possible explanations for your less than stellar impression of the DSL products you auditioned, I think your initial statement "I came there with very high expectations" probably is the primary reason for your displeasure. The Kling & Freitag T9 enclosures have good polar response and control, and you may find whatever "voicing" you have them dialed in to is more to your liking than whatever was loaded in the DSL products.

I have only actually heard DSL SH-100, they were voiced "flat" for a distance of 10 meters or so, in the near field they had a rising response above 10kHz that most would find "aggressive". I auditioned the cabinet for an amazing solo performer, Matthew Andre (buy his music!), who owned a pair of Mackie HD-1521. We level matched and EQed the HF of the SH-100 to match the HF rolloff of his HD-1521, then A/B tested the cabinets using various recorded material and Matthew singing and playing his guitar.
Although I was hoping to make a sale, three things were obvious from the demo:
1) Matthew's percussive style on the guitar makes for a lot of low frequency content well below the 70Hz LF cutoff of the SH-100, the HD-1521 simply went way deeper, providing plenty of "thump" lacking with the smaller SH-100. I had not expected so much content below the 81 Hz Low E on a six string guitar.
2) The HD-1521, thanks to "Gunness Focusing" using FIR filters, had much smoother frequency and phase response, it was capable of considerably more gain before feedback, and had a more "high-fidelity" sound.
3) The HD-1502 tighter pattern was more useful for the Matthew's typical use in small, acoustically live, venues, keeping more HF "spill" off the ceilings and floors.

The Kling & Freitag T9 share more in their design with the DSL's Synergy designs than the Mackie HD-1521, but processing makes a huge difference in sound.

I know from my experience with co-ax drivers, the Maltese system, and the SynTripP, that properly set up virtual single point source cabinets can sound excellent, and can eliminate some problems inherent in multiple point source cabinets. That said, I am not an "evangelist" for the cause- there are far too many great sounding cabinets using separate componant placement for me to proclaim them obsolete, or tell anyone that a virtual single point source is the only "cutting edge" that will spill our blood.

I have known very technically knowledgeable people (including myself) that have conducted speaker demos FUBAR. Without having seen any frequency or phase measurements from your demo, no way of telling what you heard, other than it was not up to your expectations.

Cheers,
Art
 
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Thank you Art and xrk971. I will check his music out! I'm trying to evaluate my SH experience a bit here.

How pronounced is the effect of the sound radiating from the size of a golf ball or tennis ball in the horn apex supposed to be? It made it very easy to locate the spatial position of the speaker in the room and made it sound like a much smaller speaker than it was.

My guess before the audition was that the way of manipulating the radiating surface would result in a larger-than-life experience making the speaker sounding bigger than its actual size aswell as hiding it's spatial position, two qualities I value a lot when choosing speakers.

The thing with the Kling & Freitag t9 speaker is that it comes with a processor without display so you can't see how it's processed (however there might be info on the web) and you can't change anything but the gain, not even to the separate drivers. It's a very big heavy speaker, but the smooth spl is worth it, especially paired with them Keystones. I like how such a big speaker has a supposedly -3 db of 130 hz making its priorities right when paired with a sub.
 
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How pronounced is the effect of the sound radiating from the size of a golf ball or tennis ball in the horn apex supposed to be? It made it very easy to locate the spatial position of the speaker in the room and made it sound like a much smaller speaker than it was.

My guess before the audition was that the way of manipulating the radiating surface would result in a larger-than-life experience making the speaker sounding bigger than its actual size aswell as hiding it's spatial position, two qualities I value a lot when choosing speakers.

The thing with the Kling & Freitag t9 speaker is that it comes with a processor without display so you can't see how it's processed (however there might be info on the web) and you can't change anything but the gain, not even to the separate drivers..
You could run the outputs of the Kling & Freitag T9 processor through an analyzer to see what corrections are done both to time/phase and EQ.

The virtual point source does appear small, though with a pair of speakers they will do a good job of making a "phantom" center image appear down the middle of the coverage area.

One may perceive a virtual single source as acoustically small, as it is quite compact. Since it has an obvious single point of origin, it is easily located, though with a recording with reverberation, the distance to the point source will mimic the recording distance quite well. The pattern control of the SynTripP extends down quite a bit lower than the smaller mouths of the more narrow patterns of the DSL SH-50 or 60 can support, pattern control that I only associate with a "large" speaker.

Although auditions in a room can be revealing of off-axis problems in a loudspeaker's polar response, I prefer to audition outdoors, where you can listen to the polar response directly from any angle. I also like to audition speakers using pink noise, it is easier to get a quick impression of the polar response than music, though music is needed to determine if the speaker "sounds good" or not. There are some speakers with excellent polar response that don't sound very good...

Art
 
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I know a lot of times the question "Can I build this design using [wildly different driver]?" is a waste of time, but how do you think this design would work using a pair of 12NDL76s in lieu of the 10s? I can imagine there might be a space issue as well as possible difficulty getting output up high enough through the bandpass. Just curious. I lucked into a pretty good deal on 4 of the 12NDL76s and I'm mulling options.

Also for a bit of a tangent, another idea I had, if it interests anybody, is to build one Peter Morris’ DIY Mid High design which prescribes the 12NDL76. It looks like a killer high-output box, but the thing is I can’t justify spending all that money on a pair of the hugely expensive BMS coax and horn. I had been turning the idea over in my head of replacing the center horn (which covers 600hz up) with a 90x50 or thereabouts synergy horn using some more affordable but stout 1” CDs and some mids like the Pyle PDMR5 which people seem to agree works surprisingly well as synergy mids. Maybe use a PRV WG35-25-B waveguide as the basis to simplify construction. I've kindof got this idea in my head that with some clever engineering, you could pretty nearly match the coverage, output, and maybe quality of the very expensive BMS coax with much more affordable parts in a synergy arrangement.
Was thinking about starting a discussion thread if the idea was feasible and not flawed from the start.

Just letting my thoughts out. I’m kindof chasing a high-output, high-portability, high-quality box that will maybe sate my addiction for needlessly acquiring further gear. :spin:
 
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I came there with very high expectations, and I've listened to enough systems to know that there should be no second thought about whether a speaker sound good or bad if it is a good speaker set-up properly. I love my keystones, t30's, DR280 and kling & Freitag t9 cabs I'm frequently working with. I simply refuse to think that this is the cutting edge sound technology advocated and designed by the persons who designed subwoofer cabinets I use and enjoy a lot, without it being a user failure or improper set-up.

However he has set them up other times and seem to be very technically knowledgeable, and there were another guy working with danley stuff there aswell who did not seem to Adress the issue I felt about it. Confusing.

One unique aspect of Synergy Horns is that the sound originates from three different depths:

1) the highs originate at the throat
2) the mid originate from a point that's about 10cm closer
3) the lows originate from a point that's about 30cm closer than the highs

I think the effect is fabulous; when you close your eyes it's hard to tell if the speaker is five feet away, or ten feet away.

But the effect takes some getting used to.
 
One unique aspect of Synergy Horns is that the sound originates from three different depths:



1) the highs originate at the throat

2) the mid originate from a point that's about 10cm closer

3) the lows originate from a point that's about 30cm closer than the highs



I think the effect is fabulous; when you close your eyes it's hard to tell if the speaker is five feet away, or ten feet away.



But the effect takes some getting used to.


Does this mean it's not time aligned?
 
It is, but with a twist.

There are lots of speakers with good phase response out there. For instance, the speakers from thiel, dunlavy, vandersteen, and dynaudio.

The danley speakers have good phase behavior, but the drivers all radiate from different depths.

This is fairly unique; I'd imagine that 99% of the world has never heard a speaker that produces a coherent wavefront from seven drivers radiating from seven different points in space!


Adjusting to this can take some time.

I have personally heard over ten synergy and unity horns, and the effect that I describe was most pronounced with the larger synergy horns. IE, it's more noticeable on an sh50 than a lambda unity horn. I'd speculate that this is because the DEPTH of the sh50 is twice as much as the lambda unity. (I've listened to both, in the same room.)
 
By the way, this is a really fun effect and I strongly encourage everyone to experiment with this. I do a lot of car audio, and taken to the extreme, you can produce a coherent soundstage in FRONT of you with midbasses BEHIND you along with midranges and tweeters in front of u.

Basically if you understand how our ears work, you'll realize the illusion of soundstage has more to do with phase than with the physical location of the loudspeakers themselves.

TLDR: try putting your mids and midbasses at different depths, and tell me what you think. The secret is time alignment and phase.
 
It is, but with a twist.



There are lots of speakers with good phase response out there. For instance, the speakers from thiel, dunlavy, vandersteen, and dynaudio.



The danley speakers have good phase behavior, but the drivers all radiate from different depths.



.)


I always thought you needed a DSP delay function to time align.




Skickat från min iPhone med Tapatalk
 
I always thought you needed a DSP delay function to time align.




Skickat från min iPhone med Tapatalk

unity28.jpg


In this pic, you can see that the midranges are about 12.5cm ahead of the tweeter. The crossover point is about 1350hz.

1,350hz is 25cm long. So that 12.5cm gap is one half wavelength at the xover frequency.


I hope all of that makes sense.

If it does, then you'll realize that no DSP is required if you can use a filter on those midranges that will delay them by about one half wavelength at the xover frequency.

If you want to learn more about how this works, read this:

http://www.melaudia.net/zdoc/jml_crossovers_etf04.pdf

It is not about Synergy horns, but the idea is the same.

This gets particularly fun when you realize that this is 'fractal' in nature, and there's nothing stopping you from using this approach in a three-way (like the SH50) or even a four way.
 
That makes sense. Will have to read up on how to create passive filters which can delay..

That's a very difficult thing to do. It takes a kind of all-pass filter, and isn't very practical for much delay of the tweeter , which is where you likely need it. You can play with all pass networks in Xsim, but they can be exasperating . The delay applied is frequency dependent.
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One thing PatrickBateman left out is that while Thiele, etc. can be linear phase (i.e., can reproduce waveforms like squarewaves, etc), they can do it only at a certain microphone or ear height. Synergy horns are almost unique in being capable, depending on design, of reproducing waveforms off- axis to their left or right or above or below within their coverage angles. The only other speakers I know of that can is the Quad 67 (and successors), or some fullrange drivers like Manger (which have other issues).

Whether that matters audibly is anothervdiscussion.
 
Originally Posted by MobileDJ
Will have to read up on how to create passive filters which can delay..
That's a very difficult thing to do.
Bwaslo,

Each "pole" of a passive crossover induces 90 degrees of phase shift/delay, since the speakers in a multiple driver virtual point source horn have the HF located further away from the horn mouth, the filter delay can "easily" compensate for the physical offset.

Art
 
I know a lot of times the question "Can I build this design using [wildly different driver]?" is a waste of time, but how do you think this design would work using a pair of 12NDL76s in lieu of the 10s? I can imagine there might be a space issue as well as possible difficulty getting output up high enough through the bandpass. Just curious. I lucked into a pretty good deal on 4 of the 12NDL76s and I'm mulling options.

Also for a bit of a tangent, another idea I had, if it interests anybody, is to build one Peter Morris’ DIY Mid High design which prescribes the 12NDL76. It looks like a killer high-output box, but the thing is I can’t justify spending all that money on a pair of the hugely expensive BMS coax and horn.
Zettairyouiki,

Obviously the 12" drivers won't fit in an 11.25" tall box, and they need a lot more cabinet volume than the 10" for the bass reflex portion of the design to work well. The larger woofers in a larger box would have more SPL, but would require a lower crossover point. To go 2 way at the level the 12" woofers are capable of would require either the "hugely expensive BMS coax" or a 4" diaphragm driver, which don't sound as good in the top end as a 3", or as good at the bottom as a 10".

If you want to use your 12NDL76 drivers in a cost effective virtual single source horn, use cone mid-range drivers and a 3" diaphragm HF driver.

I will be using a B&C DE14TN HF driver, two 4" B&C 4NDF34 for the mids, and 1) B&C 10CL51 woofer in the three-way SynTripP SSM© Stage/Studio Monitor/ PA enclosure.

As a guess, I'd say four of the 100 watt AES rated B&C 4NDF34 would be able to outrun a pair of 12NDL76 on a 90 x 40 conical horn.
Peter Morris' DIY box uses the 12" on a folded horn that is more sensitive than a conical horn, his boxes are louder than a scaled up 3 way SynTripP would be. You might think in terms of a 2-way virtual single source horn replacing the "hugely expensive BMS coax" in his same format.

Art