After settling on the little Peerless for the baby WoofT, the Peerless units are on the must check list. Reasonable prices, and they seem to get kudos from many. It doesn't hurt that the trimmed baskets have always appealed to me.
dave
Hi,
Just out of an extensive session of FAST experimentation with Banglacx. He had this idea of using the Foobar digital XO plugin for our project, and wow did that work.
In short, FAST works very well in adding that low end authority to the superb Alp 7.3s. Sound stage becomes bigger, taller and playing bass heavy music at much louder levels no longer remains a threat to the FR unit. We were at it for >5 hours and now need a break
. Will post details soon.
-Zia
p.s. The Mar-Ken 7.3s have left the building
Just out of an extensive session of FAST experimentation with Banglacx. He had this idea of using the Foobar digital XO plugin for our project, and wow did that work.
In short, FAST works very well in adding that low end authority to the superb Alp 7.3s. Sound stage becomes bigger, taller and playing bass heavy music at much louder levels no longer remains a threat to the FR unit. We were at it for >5 hours and now need a break
. Will post details soon.-Zia
p.s. The Mar-Ken 7.3s have left the building
*sneak preview*
By itself, the Mar-ken-7.3s can sound anything from a club grade unit armed with a subwoofer producing PHAT bass to something that'd make you want to assault Dave with a cutlass / violin fiddle / whatever comes handy. These speakers are very, very room / placement dependent. For anyone wanting to use them in a nearfield mini-monitor configuration with a lot of space between them and the wall - you're in for big trouble. Place them close to a wall and put some distance between you and the units... well, this is the best configuration you can get with the Alpair 7.3s. Trust me on this - me and zman01 has tried several design implementations.
As for the F.A.S.T. - zman01 will post the listening impressions with configuration details... and of course, pics. I'll chip in with my comments after he does.
By itself, the Mar-ken-7.3s can sound anything from a club grade unit armed with a subwoofer producing PHAT bass to something that'd make you want to assault Dave with a cutlass / violin fiddle / whatever comes handy. These speakers are very, very room / placement dependent. For anyone wanting to use them in a nearfield mini-monitor configuration with a lot of space between them and the wall - you're in for big trouble. Place them close to a wall and put some distance between you and the units... well, this is the best configuration you can get with the Alpair 7.3s. Trust me on this - me and zman01 has tried several design implementations.
As for the F.A.S.T. - zman01 will post the listening impressions with configuration details... and of course, pics. I'll chip in with my comments after he does.
Hi Banglacx,
Have you tried other rooms?
When I listened to Dave's Mar'Ken at Tony's place, I was pleasantly surprised by their performance in a high ceiling but narrow(ish) room environment when other systems haven't coped quite so well.
It maybe you have some particular or unique characteristics specific to your room thats impacting on the system.
Cheers
Mark.
I have listened to the 7's for a couple of weeks now in a 16' x 16' room that is open on one side. Pushed against the wall, the bass is pretty good if not respectable. Unfortunately, other facets suffer as a result. When pulled out into my room 3', about 7'-8' apart with me sitting 3' from the rear wall, the bass is pretty lacking. In this setup, however, the speakers sound phenomenal otherwise. I believe that yours and Zman's findings are in line with what i would expect and what i have found with this speaker in the MarKen enclosure. I believe the Pensil would help, but the best chance at bigger sound would come from one of Scottmoose' large enclosures. Any of these are setups i believe are really asking more from this size FR unit than it is IDEALLY suited to deliver. The MarKens and A7's deliver everything Dave and Mark said should be expected, and would probably be fine in a 10' x 10' room like Steven Z has, but we must not forget that this is a 4.5" driver and in a large room like mine, they are fighting an uphill battle. It is not a deficiency, but physics. Relieve it of its LF responsiblities at about 100-180Hz and listen to this angel sing. I had a chance to do this momentarily with a simple sub and could not have been more pleased. I will be working on FAST system as soon as I finish a couple of amps. If it performs as expected, this may be a stopiing point for me for quite some time. They are that good.
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Mark,
First of all, thank you for building the wonderful piece of driver that is the Alpair 7.3. A lot has been said about its hi / mid performance. I believe that in a proper cabinet this driver has very good bass as well. I have auditioned several designs, and I'd say that the mOnken design by Dave sounds the best. The trick is to set them in the right kind of room and place them properly.
You are right, I do have a room with strange dimensions and acoustic properties. I wanted them in a nearfield monitor configuration and the verdict is that it doesn't work. Let me show you what I planned.
Yes, I do have a pentagon shaped room. This didn't work out at all. Perhaps this isn't the right unit for the job. More suited probably would be studio monitors like Focal CMS / Dynaudio which were designed for this specific purpose.
However, what worked superbly was this.
This placement gave me all the brilliant sonic performance it is known for. Bass is very good and a sub is not required at all. In a regular rectangular room, the ken's perform excellent when they are placed close to the walls, and the listener is sitting close to the opposite wall. I would say that my findings are similar to buzzforb.
First of all, thank you for building the wonderful piece of driver that is the Alpair 7.3. A lot has been said about its hi / mid performance. I believe that in a proper cabinet this driver has very good bass as well. I have auditioned several designs, and I'd say that the mOnken design by Dave sounds the best. The trick is to set them in the right kind of room and place them properly.
You are right, I do have a room with strange dimensions and acoustic properties. I wanted them in a nearfield monitor configuration and the verdict is that it doesn't work. Let me show you what I planned.
Yes, I do have a pentagon shaped room. This didn't work out at all. Perhaps this isn't the right unit for the job. More suited probably would be studio monitors like Focal CMS / Dynaudio which were designed for this specific purpose.
However, what worked superbly was this.
This placement gave me all the brilliant sonic performance it is known for. Bass is very good and a sub is not required at all. In a regular rectangular room, the ken's perform excellent when they are placed close to the walls, and the listener is sitting close to the opposite wall. I would say that my findings are similar to buzzforb.
I have found that when a conventional setup is not possible, a corner setup is a good alternative. Basically that's what you have -- a corner. One thing that happens with a 90* corner is that early reflections are almost completely eliminated with no wall treatments necessary. Excited room modes will be different, maybe good, maybe bad. Of course you can adjust the bass boost by how far the speakers are from the wall. All in all, a corner placement has its advantages.
Bob
Bob
Thanx for the review... helps keep me sane, knowing others hear what i (we) hear... after all how could it only be a single 4" driver
Sounds like Zia's Speaker Emporium UnLtd needs to move out some old-stock to make way for some new projects... maybe the nT version
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
There will also be accompanying WoofTs with each one (to make an elegant FAST)... only one designed (not tested yet) is that for the uFonkenSET
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
dave
PS: imagining on stock drivers is much less 2D than most other drivers, but flat compared to a treated set
Dave,
Wouldnt putting two woofers in an enclosure like the one in the drawings create a null or dead zone towards the front and back of the enclsoure. I have been reading the Linkwitz site and thought this is why you cant put back to back side firing woofers wired in phase. The figure 8 pattern formed by the two drivers would be left to right vs front to back. FWIW, I am probably wrong, just trying to understand.
Only if you wired them wrong (out-of-phase, and then they would produce almost no bass anyway).
Linkwitz is talking about an OB. At the frequencies these will be used at (xo 100-300, depending on user), one driver is effectively omnidirection, 2 on opposite sides of the cabinet effectly a point source.
dave
think KEF Blade
KEF International - Showroom - Overview
actually, maybe don't? - while designing/build a "simple" enclosure for 4 woofers and a wideband coaxial mid/tweet doesn't sound that hard in theory, achieving something close to all the technologies in this statement design would be another matter for most of us here
Our FAST session
We've been talking and thinking about FAST a lot recently... with amps and speakers lying around at my place and with a digital XO idea from Banglacx, we thought let's give it a try.
I had a pair of old 3 way speakers with 12 inch woofers lying around - retired since I had moved to Full-range. Well given that those boxes packed plenty of low end thump, we disconnected the other drivers and the crossovers and had the woofers directly hooked up to the terminals.
But how to do active XO? Banglacx came up with the idea to use ASIO4all and Foobar XO plug-in. This worked very well for our project.
We started off with some 100% FR listening for some time before switching to FAST. We auditioned all 3 speakers - the Wessex MLTL with EL-70, the Lotus^2 with CHR-70.2en, and the Mar-Ken with Alp 7.3. We used Banglacx's ICEPower amp for this. Made some mental notes of the sound and the differences among the 3 systems. Then came FAST experimentation...
We selected the ICEPower for the FR unit and a Dayton Tripath 50 wpc amp for the woofers. XO was set at 200 Hz and used the Lotus^2 to start off as FR unit. Once we got a hang of things, switched to the Mar-Ken 7.3 seen sitting on top of the woof boxes.
Integration with the Alp 7.3 was better. At 200 Hz XO the sound carried significantly more bass weight, and the Alp 7.3s performed freely. My woofers have a kind of PA driver feel to them - the bass is hard and deep. the music sounded very "live", with a wide and surprisingly tall profile, and very dynamic too. SPL was no problem. Both of us are more comfortable with moderate (<80 dB) listening, and we tested up to 90+ dB dynamic peaks with general levels around ~80 dB. It was apparent that louder would also be doable quite easily. Majority of our listening ended up around mid 70s SPL - but the system sounded BIG, we did not feel the urge or need to crank up higher. After 200 Hz we experimented with higher and lower XO levels. With higher (400 Hz) we felt that some of the magic of the Alp 7.3 was missing. When we dropped to 150 Hz, we both felt it gave us great results - it was like the Mar-Ken 7.3s maintained their characteristic sound and texture, but added some bass authority which sounded "just right". Integration was very good and the system sounded very musical. In the beginning of our testing session we were having to adjust the woofer volume levels a lot, towards the end we found a sweet spot and the system required little/no adjustment over different albums and genres.
I personally found the standalone Alp 7.3 sound in the Mar-Ken engaging yet relaxing; the FAST with my big woofers is more live and dynamic. Though FAST gives real full range (with test tunes 30 Hz was very audible), for me a balanced FR would work most of the times (70-75 dB) for most of my music; when mood and genre demand something more, then FAST. To enjoy the best of both worlds, my recipe would be having a competent FR speaker (like Mar-Ken or FH Mk3) and helper woofers (for FAST) with the freedom of using them when I want to.
Once I have the MA Woof #6 units in hand would like to give it a shot with the smaller woofers.
-Zia
We've been talking and thinking about FAST a lot recently... with amps and speakers lying around at my place and with a digital XO idea from Banglacx, we thought let's give it a try.
I had a pair of old 3 way speakers with 12 inch woofers lying around - retired since I had moved to Full-range. Well given that those boxes packed plenty of low end thump, we disconnected the other drivers and the crossovers and had the woofers directly hooked up to the terminals.
But how to do active XO? Banglacx came up with the idea to use ASIO4all and Foobar XO plug-in. This worked very well for our project.
We started off with some 100% FR listening for some time before switching to FAST. We auditioned all 3 speakers - the Wessex MLTL with EL-70, the Lotus^2 with CHR-70.2en, and the Mar-Ken with Alp 7.3. We used Banglacx's ICEPower amp for this. Made some mental notes of the sound and the differences among the 3 systems. Then came FAST experimentation...
We selected the ICEPower for the FR unit and a Dayton Tripath 50 wpc amp for the woofers. XO was set at 200 Hz and used the Lotus^2 to start off as FR unit. Once we got a hang of things, switched to the Mar-Ken 7.3 seen sitting on top of the woof boxes.
Integration with the Alp 7.3 was better. At 200 Hz XO the sound carried significantly more bass weight, and the Alp 7.3s performed freely. My woofers have a kind of PA driver feel to them - the bass is hard and deep. the music sounded very "live", with a wide and surprisingly tall profile, and very dynamic too. SPL was no problem. Both of us are more comfortable with moderate (<80 dB) listening, and we tested up to 90+ dB dynamic peaks with general levels around ~80 dB. It was apparent that louder would also be doable quite easily. Majority of our listening ended up around mid 70s SPL - but the system sounded BIG, we did not feel the urge or need to crank up higher. After 200 Hz we experimented with higher and lower XO levels. With higher (400 Hz) we felt that some of the magic of the Alp 7.3 was missing. When we dropped to 150 Hz, we both felt it gave us great results - it was like the Mar-Ken 7.3s maintained their characteristic sound and texture, but added some bass authority which sounded "just right". Integration was very good and the system sounded very musical. In the beginning of our testing session we were having to adjust the woofer volume levels a lot, towards the end we found a sweet spot and the system required little/no adjustment over different albums and genres.
I personally found the standalone Alp 7.3 sound in the Mar-Ken engaging yet relaxing; the FAST with my big woofers is more live and dynamic. Though FAST gives real full range (with test tunes 30 Hz was very audible), for me a balanced FR would work most of the times (70-75 dB) for most of my music; when mood and genre demand something more, then FAST. To enjoy the best of both worlds, my recipe would be having a competent FR speaker (like Mar-Ken or FH Mk3) and helper woofers (for FAST) with the freedom of using them when I want to.
Once I have the MA Woof #6 units in hand would like to give it a shot with the smaller woofers.
-Zia
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