Bigun - for a mid-woofer "not much larger than the full-range" we've been happy with the 830870 - but have only used those in pairs or quads per enclosure - in the side mount bi-pole arrangements mentioned above. For a teeny standmouter / desktop in a "smallish" space, a single with A5.2, A6.3 or FF85WK could work well enough - just don't expect a helluva lot below, maybe 80? Hz.
Other recommendations to follow, no doubt.
Other recommendations to follow, no doubt.
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I 1st looked at the 830870 for the standmount MTM. But the W14 went lower in the available space. And costs on the order of half.
I am currently doing a custom design for a desktop FAST. Gross volume of just over 10 litre when built with 12mm panels. Uses FF85wk + TB W3-2108. There is another TB that does into an even smaller volume at the sacrifice of about 10 Hz LF extension.
The client is buying us the woofers so that we can confirm performance with a test build.
dave
I am currently doing a custom design for a desktop FAST. Gross volume of just over 10 litre when built with 12mm panels. Uses FF85wk + TB W3-2108. There is another TB that does into an even smaller volume at the sacrifice of about 10 Hz LF extension.
The client is buying us the woofers so that we can confirm performance with a test build.
dave
Utter Canadian cold outside => better stay indoors and build stuff.
Depends on your location - Canada, she's not so tiny a place, eh - on the we(s)t coast we love to brag to our friends and relatives back east about golfing during the Christmas - New Years break.
Of course, from time to time we do get some of that precip in a crystalline flake form
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Three Snow-Buried Cars
Centre One Is Volkswagen Beetle, Right One Is (photographer's)
December 30, 1996
Of course, it's almost always a good season to build stuff - recent maximum high in my shop's second floor mezzanine was 38C
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It seems to me.......................that.............
Bipole and omnidirectional speakers are a good choice for listening spaces where people just randomly "sit around" or "walk around". Resturant, gym, open patio, clothes store. Everyone gets "respectable" sound. I can imagine a high fashion boutique with a pair of Dueval Bella Luna Omni-directional speakers spaced at 1/4 and 3/4 down the center aisle with expensive clothes in the 1/2 center area.
----------------
With the help of 90H * 40V waveguides I have built speakers with a smooth controlled directivity function from (almost) 20Khz down to (about)the 200Hz baffle step shift to 360 degrees. From my selected listening positon, I like this sound stage, especially with 2-mike recordings.
BUT after listening two 8-foot tall bass line arrays of 18" woofers in room corners, and listening to a swarm of four 18" subwoofers spaced around a room, I grasp one of Duke LeJeune's goals:
" But perhaps the most elusive aspect is image density - that is, the perception that the sound-source images we hear in space have body and weight to them. "
Which to me says don't dump 1,000W of (<200Hz) low frequency 4Pi power just to the front stereo speaker pair, spread it around the room for the THUNDER - you feel but can't tell where it came from. Spread a modest amount of ~200Hz 4Pi power, spread most of the <60Hz power around the room.
Bipole and omnidirectional speakers are a good choice for listening spaces where people just randomly "sit around" or "walk around". Resturant, gym, open patio, clothes store. Everyone gets "respectable" sound. I can imagine a high fashion boutique with a pair of Dueval Bella Luna Omni-directional speakers spaced at 1/4 and 3/4 down the center aisle with expensive clothes in the 1/2 center area.
----------------
With the help of 90H * 40V waveguides I have built speakers with a smooth controlled directivity function from (almost) 20Khz down to (about)the 200Hz baffle step shift to 360 degrees. From my selected listening positon, I like this sound stage, especially with 2-mike recordings.
BUT after listening two 8-foot tall bass line arrays of 18" woofers in room corners, and listening to a swarm of four 18" subwoofers spaced around a room, I grasp one of Duke LeJeune's goals:
" But perhaps the most elusive aspect is image density - that is, the perception that the sound-source images we hear in space have body and weight to them. "
Which to me says don't dump 1,000W of (<200Hz) low frequency 4Pi power just to the front stereo speaker pair, spread it around the room for the THUNDER - you feel but can't tell where it came from. Spread a modest amount of ~200Hz 4Pi power, spread most of the <60Hz power around the room.
Cheeky!
Yep, she's bigger than people think.
Must work on isolation indoors (or alternate energy), otherwise we'll get some harrowing bills again.
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Joined 2009
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We're not talking a room full of 18" woofers here, a sub-woofer could be added later if needed but I'm looking for what can be achieved with more modest sized speakers.
If you're going active with DSP, I'd seriously consider a mini-subwoofer. You can run them into the hundreds of Hz just fine, and the amount of air that can be moved will surprise you.
A number of years back I designed (someone else built, way better than I ever could) a standmount FAST. It had a Fostex FE126eN and a Tang Band W6-1139SG (the 6.5" mini-sub). I don't really get on with the Fostex driver for the music I like to play sometimes (loud Bon Jovi, etc), but it does have its place.
The TB mini-subs are, IMO, fantastic at doing what they do. Every time I use them I'm impressed. They do need a rocket up them (seriously). I stuck a Behringer NU6000 on mine and got up to the -6dB light, which means ~500w peaks (though only on the kick drum). Plenty of output at those power levels, but its worth bearing in mind that a mini class D amp isn't gonna cut it for anything more than putting the speakers on your desk.
All that said, xrk's recommendation sounds like excellent value for money.
Chris
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With bipole we'd be talking 48L which is too big, I want a smaller box than that.
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Joined 2009
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Did you find this driver had enough x-max ?
That's a unique looking driver, seems to be some kind of compound unit. Maybe not a worry in reality but designing for this driver would likely mean you'd never find a replacement if they stop production as there's nothing remotely equivalent to it on the market.
Any thoughts on the slightly smaller brother, it requires substantially less box volume (Vas is 0.11 instead of 0.42)
Tang Band W5-1138SM 5-1/4" Neodymium Subwoofer
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Haven't used it, but if its made of the same stuff the 6.5"ers are made from, its decent in my book. The Parts Express fora seem to like them.
Chris
Now I have to do another
Hello all. No measurements, I just kept going over design ideas on this while hospitalized. Now almost 5 months later I finished one cabinet.
It's started life as a side firing bipolar tower, about 1.75ft3, with an Alpair 12P to the centre of the room, and an Alpair 12PW towards the nearer sidewall. No permanently installed tweeter as yet, just perching one stop the cabinet forward facing for tryouts.
The sealed cabinets are actively crossed to a subwoofer at 80 hertz 4th order.
The tweeter is very nearly not needed, unexpectedly. The forward baffle is about 7.2 inches wide, and I thought to cross the tweeters a at between 1200 and 2000 Hz for the billowy effect I'm after, but so far it's more like 7500 Hz.
Coming from dipole+horn hybrids, I wanted the spaciousness along with imaging in a much smaller speaker. I seem to have gotten that on the first try. No special tricks needed to cross a tweeter below its rated lower limit, so I'll be moving along to better ones soon, although I still quite like this Dynavox marketed inexpensive phenolic cone tweeter.
Hello all. No measurements, I just kept going over design ideas on this while hospitalized. Now almost 5 months later I finished one cabinet.
It's started life as a side firing bipolar tower, about 1.75ft3, with an Alpair 12P to the centre of the room, and an Alpair 12PW towards the nearer sidewall. No permanently installed tweeter as yet, just perching one stop the cabinet forward facing for tryouts.
The sealed cabinets are actively crossed to a subwoofer at 80 hertz 4th order.
The tweeter is very nearly not needed, unexpectedly. The forward baffle is about 7.2 inches wide, and I thought to cross the tweeters a at between 1200 and 2000 Hz for the billowy effect I'm after, but so far it's more like 7500 Hz.
Coming from dipole+horn hybrids, I wanted the spaciousness along with imaging in a much smaller speaker. I seem to have gotten that on the first try. No special tricks needed to cross a tweeter below its rated lower limit, so I'll be moving along to better ones soon, although I still quite like this Dynavox marketed inexpensive phenolic cone tweeter.
Attachments
I still have enough drivers to match if I want to. I'm counting on the different sensitivity to tune speaker placement in a normal sized living room. Mine in particular.
Just now I'm running them full range, about 3 feet off the front wall, the 12PW closest to it, 12P facing me without a tweeter. No filters used.
No separate enclosures.
I wanted a slightly warmer sounding enclosure than my last probably over braced ported cabinet. This one only braces the small baffles in Phi sequence. I use a digital graphic equalizer between the source and DAC to apply a shallow wide dip centred on 400 hertz.
I'm sure I'm not getting everything a purist build might out of them, but I think trading off the active analog crossovers, and a tacked on tweeter with a cap on it is a decent tradeoff as opposed to a traditional multiway.
There's enough bass that I'm in no rush to add a sub.
Parts are here from Dayton and Scanspeak to do so, but I don't really crave the bottom octave, when these produce enough harmonics for a good impression of deep deep bass.
A12P +A12PW +2604/832002
Back to the original sidefiring full range drivers.
A slightly less efficient than the summer full ranger output from a limited edition pair of Scanspeak fabric dome tweeters Butterworth filter helpers coming in at -3db 12,000 Hz is only audible to me by their comparative ommission, and seem as coherent as just a 12P alone, but in this enclosure with more heft down low, and a larger soundfield, yet focussed due to the tweeter.
I'll give it more time, but this is the best tweeter and cap value I've tried , and will likely make it permanent.
Back to the original sidefiring full range drivers.
A slightly less efficient than the summer full ranger output from a limited edition pair of Scanspeak fabric dome tweeters Butterworth filter helpers coming in at -3db 12,000 Hz is only audible to me by their comparative ommission, and seem as coherent as just a 12P alone, but in this enclosure with more heft down low, and a larger soundfield, yet focussed due to the tweeter.
I'll give it more time, but this is the best tweeter and cap value I've tried , and will likely make it permanent.
I have built a prototype pair of bipolar speakers with two 5.25" doped mid bass run full range and four 20mm fabric dome tweeters firing forwards, up and to each side in their own little spherical pod which sits on top of the mid bass enclosure. I came to this from a semi omni design with up firing mid bass so the logical thing to do was double the box volume and have the two firing up and down.
Extremely happy with how it turned out. I can even place them close to the wall although I have them currently placed across the corner of a room. I have the down firing MB 40cm from the carpeted floor. I just need to do a final build and then that's it for me, these will do for the rest of my days (hopefully another 30-40 years).
Enjoy your bipolar speakers
Extremely happy with how it turned out. I can even place them close to the wall although I have them currently placed across the corner of a room. I have the down firing MB 40cm from the carpeted floor. I just need to do a final build and then that's it for me, these will do for the rest of my days (hopefully another 30-40 years).
Enjoy your bipolar speakers