Variac said:Well, one thing people mentioned was not to bother getting superhigh power amps, so thats useful information. Also, that the drivers you are interested in aren't easily available/or are unavailable. This is also usable info. Some of the other comments are opinion, and that's always a variable and shows that there isn't unaminity, so at least shows that maybe some more study is a good idea. Take your time on the design. That's also part of the fun- considering different ideas and thinking aboout them.
The rest is because of the feandil linknot too clever...
I just didn't really care... people who care about the link are too immature to help with my problem anyway...
the Lambdas I already have lined up ... already talked to john.... and unless the PR17 (madisound) is hard to find I don't see what's hard to get...
also I do understand the needlessness of the high power.... but when a QSC 2450 costs around $50 more than a 1450 on egay there's no reason to not pick one up
Audiophilenoob said:
why?????
Primarily because of size. A bass horn for a 15" driver takes up a lot of space. With say 8" drivers your cab can essentially be a stack of much smaller horns and get tremendous efficiency, the benefit of line array dispersion, impressive power handling, and economical drivers work because the workload is spread over many drivers. With extension needed only down to 35hz the array can be done in a very small footprint and with corner loading it can be very small spacewise.
johninCR said:
Yes... but a horn would give you no where near the midbass output of a 4 15's especially since each driver is already 98 db efficent... plus you would have to compromise with a crappier high Q driver for the horn... correct??
you could do a very wide dispersion horn but it wouldn't sound as clean as simple ported midbasses...
this is mostly for SQ purposes... I just like concert level SPL sometimes with uber SQ .... though I would only use the SPL occasionally
also the only thing I can think that would give promising "large sweet spot" results would be an array or ESL... I personally don't like the sound of ESL's... but am still considering it
Audiophilenoob said:
Who said anything about high Q drivers. 8 of these (93db, Qts .26 and only $22/ea) http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=290-063
in a corner horn array will get you a sensitivity of over 110db from 60-300hz and over 105db from 40-500hz. Your 4 15's are only going to get you 104db of sensitivity and done properly the dynamics and presence of the horn would blow away the ported box in a narrower less intrusive cab.
The only advantage the 15's would have is low end potential, but you wanted to tune to 35hz.
johninCR said:
hmmm yes I do see your point...
I was thinking about horn loading in the midbasses... but everyone has been telling me it will destroy the SQ....
High efficency is good... but SQ is far more important to me... it just happened to be that one of the best midranges and the best midbass were uber efficent
I wanted to tune to 35 or 55hz... if I go the cheaper route (dropping the lambdas) I would just get a few tumults
planet10 said:
unfortunately the ebay auction expired that I won...
I do remember when I had the model number being able to find a review of it but can't now... the preamp from N.E.W. was $4999 and I believe it was $5499 for the N.E.W amplifier... I paid $270 for it... $3000 was just me throwing out ridiculous MSRP's, I do believe the N.E.W I have was $5499 when it came out a couple years ago...
it's 2 channels... dual mono inside...
105 watts RMS bridged with 0.09% THD at 8 ohms...
maybe it's just me and I can't tell the difference between a 0.05% THD amp at full output and 0.1% THD amp at full output
not that the QSC would ever reach full output... so the true THD should be far lower... where I did have to push the Class A slightly...
the only downside to the N.E.W. thus far is it has a fixed gain
... not that it matters with an active setup... but still it sucks
planet10 said:
tubes are a possibilty... not that expensive really.... but you're talking like 16 watts RMS out of them...
I'm also scared to invest too much into tubes as I heard their distortion is astronomically high vs. a solid state... it's just some people like that distortion...
problem is that I think I would push those amps tooo far unless I went with beefier class A's and like mini-Aleph's... my guess is that distortion at 1/10th output out of a QSC PLX would be way less than a Class A at full output (simply a guess)...
planet10 said:
I've had great results with it so why not?
like i said I'm certianly unimpressed with class A's right now (well the one I have)....
I find it difficult to fathom that you are so willing to state that QSC's can not sound good when 99.9% of distortion is added via the speaker vs. the amp... especially when I'm in the process of comparing a $5000 Class A amp and a $400 QSC and haven't found any price justification for that N.E.W.
I AM interested in your advice and am interested in persuing chip amps some... possibly just for the highs and midranges
gainclones have my eye right now... and paralleling 2 of Brian's LM4780 for each of the midrange channels and also using 2 of them for the ribbons... it's fairly cheap option that should yield (if what you say is true) sonic perfection?
I'm certainly interested in these small robust amps that can be paralleled forever adding power ....
Audiophilenoob said:
Because i've heard them... even thou a speaker produces much more distrotion than an amp, they are most often the kind that your ear/brain finds natural.... many of an amps distortions are unnatural (particulariliy a highish feedback, Class B amp) and your brain can find offensive distortions a 1000(s) times less than the speaker -- one of the reasons why an SE tube amp with 1% distortion can blow off SS amps with mesured distortion with lots of zeros after the decimal and before the significant digit.
dave
I like Variac's idea, but I'd have to make a vertical array of the amps. A key advantage of going that route would be to enable variable power tapering. If I was going to the trouble of all those amps, I think I'd plop a nice efficient full range or coaxial driver in the middle of the array with it's own amp. Then you'd have a single set of speakers that could excel with any kind of music or listening situation.
Here is an idea that occured to me reading some of the comments about this project:
Disclaimer: I know nothing about lines sources
How about the CSS wr125 driver for the mids?
these guys sell 'em:
http://www.creativesound.ca/
EDIT: Whoops this page shows a line source at the bottom!!
They come in 8 and 16 ohm versions. The 16 ohm has the flange cut to make them stack efficiently. If you stacked them about 16 high, they would be about 7 feet tall. Seems like they were designed for the purpose.
They are small diameter so their dispersion would be wide.
they are about $60 each which is no too bad and I'm sure you could get a deal on 32 !! FLASH: price just lowered on volume purchases!
You could group them in 4 sets of 4, each set with a chip amp channel. That way you could adjust the power so more of it is coming from the middle drivers. I believe that I read somewhere that this is preferable. You could use a volume pot on each gainclone amp to adjust each group and see for yourself what is better. Maybe better:, you could use say a single gainclone channel for the uppermost and lowermost sets of drivers, and 2 clone channels for the central ones....Remember that you get 2 channels in a gainclone kit. The higher power chips would be preferred. Yes, my assumtion also is the amps would very distributed vertically, I guess I didn't make that clear. Also the whole group of amps could be powered from one transformer. You could probably run 4 channels from one power supply board.
OK, What I think is so great about the drivers is that they have LOTS of excursion yet low distortion. In fact, with some equalization maybe all you'd need are subwoofers. Now that would be a saving! and no crossovers in a very wide range. Of course you would still have the ribbon tweeter, but crossed over reasonably high. (powered by your class A amp)
The problem? no one I know has heard them. BUT I may get a report soon, these are new drivers and a lot of people are excited about them on paper, but of course how they sound is the important thing!
What do you "experts" think?
Here's some speakerKits that use them and a ribbon tweeter. If you need a second set of speakers, I'm sure that these would give you a real taste of what a linesource such as you are considering would sound like. The model is the RAW HT-2
http://www.rawacoustics.ca/
You have to select the "kit" versions.
Here's another speaker that uses them with a good picture
that shows the drivers well:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=57001
Disclaimer: I know nothing about lines sources
How about the CSS wr125 driver for the mids?
these guys sell 'em:
http://www.creativesound.ca/
EDIT: Whoops this page shows a line source at the bottom!!
They come in 8 and 16 ohm versions. The 16 ohm has the flange cut to make them stack efficiently. If you stacked them about 16 high, they would be about 7 feet tall. Seems like they were designed for the purpose.
They are small diameter so their dispersion would be wide.
they are about $60 each which is no too bad and I'm sure you could get a deal on 32 !! FLASH: price just lowered on volume purchases!
You could group them in 4 sets of 4, each set with a chip amp channel. That way you could adjust the power so more of it is coming from the middle drivers. I believe that I read somewhere that this is preferable. You could use a volume pot on each gainclone amp to adjust each group and see for yourself what is better. Maybe better:, you could use say a single gainclone channel for the uppermost and lowermost sets of drivers, and 2 clone channels for the central ones....Remember that you get 2 channels in a gainclone kit. The higher power chips would be preferred. Yes, my assumtion also is the amps would very distributed vertically, I guess I didn't make that clear. Also the whole group of amps could be powered from one transformer. You could probably run 4 channels from one power supply board.
OK, What I think is so great about the drivers is that they have LOTS of excursion yet low distortion. In fact, with some equalization maybe all you'd need are subwoofers. Now that would be a saving! and no crossovers in a very wide range. Of course you would still have the ribbon tweeter, but crossed over reasonably high. (powered by your class A amp)
The problem? no one I know has heard them. BUT I may get a report soon, these are new drivers and a lot of people are excited about them on paper, but of course how they sound is the important thing!
What do you "experts" think?
Here's some speakerKits that use them and a ribbon tweeter. If you need a second set of speakers, I'm sure that these would give you a real taste of what a linesource such as you are considering would sound like. The model is the RAW HT-2
http://www.rawacoustics.ca/
You have to select the "kit" versions.
Here's another speaker that uses them with a good picture
that shows the drivers well:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=57001
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