Mazama

[kipman725]

Thanks!

For the phase plug I was thinking a structure like the Berstis lens where the different parts of the cone have equal length 'straws' that end at the tap point. So the only change would be that the current woofer volume filler would be a larger 3D printed structure. Perhaps it wouldn't work if the mass of air in the tubes acted as one?

[Patrick Bateman]

Originally Posted by wonderfulaudio

Patrick, the roundover is not smooth where the flat surface meets the curved. That transition may need rework. Do you feel so?

Yeah I'm starting to get close to an acceptable solution.



Here's how things look with a 16" wide baffle and a 14" wide waveguide (like the QSC) mounted in the center. On each side of the baffle is a 57mm roundover. The side walls are swept inwards by 30 degrees.

These results aren't "night and day" better than the others, but they're pretty good. I could probably get even better results if I used a larger waveguide, but I want to make this project "turnkey" by using the QSC / B52 waveguide.

side note: this footprint is very similar to the EAW ANYA:

[kipman725]

Very interesting that the shape of the side/back of the cabinet is influencing directivity in this way.

The ANYA cab seems very interesting beyond its unusual shape been functional:

Each Anya module includes 14x 1-in exit / 35mm voice coil HF compression drivers loaded on a proprietary HF horn that expands to fill nearly the entire face of the enclosure. 6x 5-in MF cone transducers, arranged in two columns of three, use Radial Phase Plugs™ and Concentric Summation Array™ technology to enter the horn and sum coherently with the HF wavefront. Dual 15-in LF cone transducers use Offset Aperture™ loading to increase the spacing of the apparent acoustical centers, extending effective horizontal pattern control well into the LF range.

14 comps! per box. Also 22 amp/dsp channels per box. This must be very very expensive.

[sheeple]

This approach could be a solution to cross the woofer of an econowave a a lower frequency to the mids, the current minimum beeing around 1 kHz. Give this speaker a dedicated midrange, keeping the constant directivity approach. I'd like to see if the upper midrange SPL of the mazama can be bumped, either digitally or with a 3rd order crossover. If crossing over at, lets say 600 Hz, is an option then, this could become a winner.


Can one rebuild the QSC/PRV Audio waveguide from wood? I think there are no supplies left.

[Patrick Bateman]

I'm not too keen on wood waveguides, it's too easy to screw them up. At the throat of a waveguide, a difference of even 2-3mm makes a difference, and the difference impacts the response across the entire range.

IE, if you make the throat a little bit too narrow or a little bit too wide, the polar response and the frequency response across the entire range is impacted.

If I actually come up with a functional speaker here, I planned ahead, and bought an entire case of the waveguides

The idea was that I'd sell them as a DIY kit, similar to my 'unitized image control waveguide' project.

I also think that a waveguide of similar dimensions would probably work fine. For instance, there are some plastic clones of the 18Sound XT1086 out there which would probably work nearly as well. The 'real' XT1086 won't work because it's metal. (Unless you're prepared to figure out how to cut through the metal sidewalls!)

[Patrick Bateman]

Just checked, and found clones of the 18Sound XT1086 on Aliexpress. Wasn't able to find any QSC clones. For the XT1086, they didn't even bother to change the name, just search 'xt1086' and look for the ones made of plastic.