Bg Neo 10 and Neo 8

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As an adjunct to the previous message, The dipole Neo 3 sounds amazing for this top octave duty and compared to a good ribbon(With all due respect!), it's dirt cheap. The Neo 10 run in this configuration(Parametric eq'd with no low pass crossover filter) is easy to implement and sounds(to my ears) silky smooth, natural, and transparent.

Just to set the record straight, this is not my usual arrangement. I run my vertically aligned dipole Neo 10's and 3's at 1.4k with an 8th order LR. If I had a dedicated listening room with acoustic treatments and one exact listening spot, it would probably be the above quoted arrangement.
 
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I work in the pro business, for the most part. I have been designing custom-coverage waveguides for a P.A. contractor who usually gets the job of cleaning up after someone who thought a "flying junkyard" of horns and woofer boxes would work... I got acquainted with Mr. Graebner back in his Speakerlab days, and have watched as he went on the B.G. business in Nevada. I have finally given in to the temptation to see if there is a pro application for multiple Ne0 3's or '8's. I have one of the oldest LMS rigs out there and use it for my polar studies to verify and characterize my waveguides. I will continue to lurk and try to cross-pollinate the pro business with all the creativity I read and see on DIY!

Regards
In case of any confusion, David Graebener sold his stake in the company a while back and now owns Wisdom Audio (also located in Carson city). BG radia's line source transducers were designed by Graebener and the entire Neo line was designed by Igor Levitsky. Levitsky also designed all of Hi Vi's planars and most of their woofers in the late 90's and early 2000's before going to BG Corp.(They can't use the names of "Bohlender" or "Graebener" anymore).
 
One thing I'd like to point out is the bump in response at 5KHZ and the corresponding peak in distortion here for the Neo10. See Zaphs blog for charts. I can hear it for sure and this is why I recommend not running them any higher than 3.5KHz....not that you would want to anyway.

Greg
 
I AM curious...

Is that a wood frame around the Neo3/10 combo or foam?

1.4KHz for the neo3 is pretty low. Does it ever sound strained to you? Are you running the 8th order xover from the Behringer 2496?

Greg
Its t-6 aluminum channel covered with acoustic vinyl. 1.4k is just about as low as it can go. I can hear strain with 4th order but not 8th and yes I do have a deq and two dcx's.
Seth
 
One thing I'd like to point out is the bump in response at 5KHZ and the corresponding peak in distortion here for the Neo10. See Zaphs blog for charts. I can hear it for sure and this is why I recommend not running them any higher than 3.5KHz....not that you would want to anyway.

Greg
I thought it was audible too until I Flattened out the response with a mirror imaged parametric curve. If you look at Hobby HiFi's true anechoic measurements of the neo 10, You will see that the 2nd order distortion peak is not only extremely narrow, but does not exeed 1%. If you look at some of the highest quality 5 1/2" drivers in the world, you will see that they have relatively wide band 2nd order distortion peaks(within the optimal crossover band) in the range that the ear is way more sensitive to (Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) that also hits 1%. I could be wrong, but I think what you might be hearing is the(untamed?)6db rise at 5K and not the actual 2nd order distortion.
Seth
 
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One thing I'd like to point out is the bump in response at 5KHZ and the corresponding peak in distortion here for the Neo10. See Zaphs blog for charts. I can hear it for sure and this is why I recommend not running them any higher than 3.5KHz....not that you would want to anyway.

Greg

I thought it was audible too until I Flattened out the response with a mirror imaged parametric curve. If you look at Hobby HiFi's true anechoic measurements of the neo 10, You will see that the 2nd order distortion peak is not only extremely narrow, but does not exeed 1%. If you look at some of the highest quality 5 1/2" drivers in the world, you will see that they have relatively wide band 2nd order distortion peaks(within the optimal crossover band) in the range that the ear is way more sensitive to (Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) that also hits 1%. I could be wrong, but I think what you might be hearing is the(untamed?)6db rise at 5K and not the actual 2nd order distortion.
Seth

Another thing you might be hearing are frequency dependent peaks and nulls in the response from running two vertically arranged neo 10's at 5k. No matter how you slice it, subjective comments about a single transducer should probably not be made if someone is listening to 2 of them at 5k at the same time.
Seth
 
Another thing you might be hearing are frequency dependent peaks and nulls in the response from running two vertically arranged neo 10's at 5k. No matter how you slice it, subjective comments about a single transducer should probably not be made if someone is listening to 2 of them at 5k at the same time.
Seth

I agree with your assessment about using 2, but I began by listening to only one at a time. All on its own, both filtered and unfiltered. I auditioned all possible mid choices this way first, narrowed them down to ones that were acceptable to me and then ran them in a quick 3 way setup to choose a winner.

Its funny, but all of the metal drivers I auditioned(Zaph, several PE reference drivers, Tang Band titanium and some others) that had a large spike in response near 10KHz still seemed to have a signature to their sound even with 24dB/oct slope crossovers down around 3Khz. It was very enlightening to listen to drivers like this, separated from the system, to see what exactly they would contribute to the sound in a system.

Now, I'm not comparing the Neo10 peak in any way to the metal cone drivers peaks, but it came to my mind and I thought it might be interesting.

Greg
 
Bg Neo 10 and 3 anechoic measurements can be found here:
Proraum Vertriebs-GmbH | Startseite
At the end of the Hobby HiFi Pro 20d article download, there are raw anechoic driver measurements for dipole neo 10 and neo 3 under-laid on the speaker system driver measurements.
Another cause frequency response irregularities can come from cavity resonances on the rear of a dipole creating acoustic impedance interactions that reflect back into the driver, effecting the response.
Seth
 
Greg, Just completed reading all of your audio project posts on the Audio circle website. I am humbled by your intelligence and insight. You have a deep understanding of the many variables involved with designing, building, testing and listening to loudspeakers. I apologize for debating you on subjects that were already accounted for in your design process. All I had to do was dig a little bit...
Seth
 
Greg, Just completed reading all of your audio project posts on the Audio circle website. I am humbled by your intelligence and insight. You have a deep understanding of the many variables involved with designing, building, testing and listening to loudspeakers. I apologize for debating you on subjects that were already accounted for in your design process. All I had to do was dig a little bit...
Seth

Not a big deal at all. I appreciate your nice remarks and really I was glad you were posting some new sets of data on the drivers. I just noticed the pictures you posted of the aluminum channel for the mid/tweet. That is a great use of a "found" object. I'm assuming it is some type of building construction material?

Greg
 
Is that your test room?Seriously?With computer table between speakers, untreated window behind speakers, hard floor, untreated walls nowhere, glass table!

Well, to be fair many people have rooms that look like this, but yeah it must be a pretty "live" sound. Seth, you might want to experiment with some good absorption material like the Bonded Logic stuff placed directly behind the Neo10/3 combo. My house is all tile and when I first moved in and had no window treatment, area rugs or acoustical treatments on the walls, I almost cried the first night I had the system all set up. It was an echo, reverb nightmare.

Listen with some good quality open back headphones like AKG or Sennheisers and then compare the "room sound" you get from your system.

Greg
 
Is that your test room?Seriously?With computer table between speakers, untreated window behind speakers, hard floor, untreated walls nowhere, glass table!

Lenta, I agree with you completely. That's why we use drivers that only have raw anechoic(hobby Hifi and manufacture's) or at least raw quasi-anechoic (Zaph) data used along with active as apposed to passive electronics. If you don't have control of those variables, you are, for all intents and purposes, ******* in the wind. In fact, if you don't have this type of raw data at your disposal, it doesn't matter what type of room you have. If you still think I'm wrong, go to Sigfried Linkwitz's website and look at his testing room...At least I'm in good company.
 
Going dipole from 500 hz & up was a revelatory experience for me. For years, I listened to Dunlavy SC 3's with Conrad Johnson electronics. I hated the sound of my room. Hated it!! but I thought that, short of moving, there was nothing I could do about it. Then I came across the Linkwitz and Zaph websites. I saw Linkwitz' room, read his comments about speakers and room acoustics, and decided to give it a shot. Every single thing that I hated about my room's acoustics no longer existed ( They obviously exist, but are no longer being exited. For they first time ever, soundstaging is centered perfectly instead of pulling to the right. I can listen at relatively loud levels all day long without any listening fatigue. With my old system, a half an hour is all it took before it drove me crazy. For the first time in twenty years, my wife will actually turn the system up instead of off. How many guys can make that claim?
 
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