If I wanted to splurge, could I just select the best B&C drivers I can find and stick them in there? (Of course the ones with the proper parameter / specifications). Would overdoing it on driver quality actually hurt in this instance because the design was built around more inexpensive ones? Please dont take that as snooty, but if I build one of those things I want to go all out considering the woodwork, and that it will need its own rack of amps / dsp. 
.....oh lord here we go again
.....oh lord here we go again
I see you got them done and some mains built as well. Awesome. I'm glad you like them. I think they sound great and that PL380 should be a solid match. In most places that aren't huge you will see a bit of lift below 35Hz that will help flatten the response down to 25Hz before the highpass. Most people in a club or venue have never heard the 25-35Hz range represented without loads of distortion and with equal strength as the rest of the bass range. Strong fundamentals in that range are rare in music but when they do show up the difference is huge.
You hit the nail on the head right there Josh. With those giant reflex boxes you can hear the drivers being over driven and hear the sound begin to falter when they go that low. That is not the case with the othorn. It just effortlessly sweeps down the lowest points of the audible spectrum. People just get this huge smile on their faces. To me, it serves as a bold and truly authentic reminder of how important quality is. Josh, the amount smiles and dancing and love you sparked by designing these things you may never truly know (its a wholllleee lot). Two of them just turned an entire huge open field into what sounded like a home theatre music cathedral. Ive heard tons of high end reflex boxes and horns but....nothing like this. Bass heaven. Thank you man
DSL has not released kits for Paraline or Synergy.
I am selling my Paraline small format line array for around the cost of the drivers, and could include templates so you could make more if you wanted, though the system remains coherent in the hot dry climate of New Mexico (the worst case for high frequency absorption) in excess of 400 feet.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/swap-meet/252064-complete-line-array-system-sale.html
The waveguides increase the low frequency output by around 3 dB, and lower the directivity control an octave.
Nice job on your Othhorns!
Art
Attachments
Seriously! most of the journey anywhere from Austin is just getting out of Texas. North Texas is just....thrilling....to drive through. It would be cool to organize a DIY audio show and tell. Does that exist already?
Hey yall, one other question. Im running the pair of othorns in 4 ohm stereo on the pl380. It struggles a bit in really getting them going, I can tell the driver want a little bit more. I looked in there and monitored them for hours and near full blast and they didnt show any signs of stress of damage, shoot....the travel of the cones seemed to be about half of what they "could" be capable of. The spider was only really moving on the innermost rings. I don't wanna blow a $700 driver, or burn a $2000 amp but.....Think its safe to re wire my patch bay and go 2 ohm?
PL380 Power Amplifier ? QSC
Can the amp handle that low of an impedance? Pardon my poor terminology.
It would be cool to organize a DIY audio show and tell. Does that exist already?Hey yall, one other question. Im running the pair of othorns in 4 ohm stereo on the pl380. It struggles a bit in really getting them going, I can tell the driver want a little bit more. I looked in there and monitored them for hours and near full blast and they didnt show any signs of stress of damage, shoot....the travel of the cones seemed to be about half of what they "could" be capable of. The spider was only really moving on the innermost rings. I don't wanna blow a $700 driver, or burn a $2000 amp but.....Think its safe to re wire my patch bay and go 2 ohm?
PL380 Power Amplifier ? QSC
Can the amp handle that low of an impedance? Pardon my poor terminology.
Ever since I decided to sell my system (and sold the van and trailer it had been stored in), my shop has been set up as a DIY audio show and tell :^).Hey yall, one other question. Im running the pair of othorns in 4 ohm stereo on the pl380.
Think its safe to re wire my patch bay and go 2 ohm?
Can the amp handle that low of an impedance? Pardon my poor terminology.
The PL380 amp can handle two ohm operation, though additional fans may be required to keep it from overheating when used for sub use.
That said, rewiring your patch bay does not change the speaker impedance, there is no way to get more power from the amp than your current use of one four ohm speaker per side, 2500 watts per driver. I'm hitting my 18SW115-4 with around that much peak power, and could use more, your 21SW152-4 could definitely use a lot more peak power than 2500 watts.
If you add a second PL 380, you could mono each into each 4 ohm Othorn and get around 8000 peak watts per driver, 5 dB more power than 2500 watts. A 5 dB increase at 20 Hz sounds twice as loud, though using that much power some would be lost to thermal compression (voice coil heating causes impedance to rise, amp delivers less power at higher impedance).
With 8000 watts per driver, you definitely have the potential for voice coil meltdown or mechanical failure, but you will hear what the 21SW152-4 are capable of
.If you decide to mono the PL 380, definitely use DSP capable of both peak and RMS limiting, as the long term RMS should be limited to only around 1500 watts.
Art
Attachments
Last edited:
Sounds like im safe and sound. They are very loud as is, I'm more nervous for the amp, gotta maintain self control. If it touches red for a second thats fine right as long as I bring it down? I find myself constantly bringing it down and then up from song to song to avoid the red. Ideally if the pl380 just had like....5-10 percent more it would be perfect for a pair of othorns on loud bass music.
10% more would only be an additional 250 watts over 2500, about 1/2 dB difference, not even audible.
A little clipping will not hurt the amp or the speakers. Long term average power in excess of the driver's rating is what roasts voice coils.
Clipping increases the average power delivered to the speaker, a hard clipped amp can put out as much as 3 dB (twice as much) more average power.
With 2500 watts available, you can still burn the voice coils without ever seeing the clip light illuminate.
The AES rating for the BC 21SW152 is 2000 watts, the AES compressed pink noise signal has 6 dB dynamic range, "normal" pink noise has 12 dB dynamic range. Used to be most music had more dynamic range than pink noise (which has only 1/4 the average power of the AES signal), but now some electronic dance music has as little as 3 dB dynamic range (same as a sine wave) below 100 Hz, so just 1000 watts of that type of music would be equivalent to the 2000 watt AES signal as far as average power.
If you are not going to set separate peak and RMS limiters, you probably should not think about getting more power
. And if you are playing EDM, you probably should not be running without conservatively set RMS limiters unless you don't mind replacing cones .Art
Last edited:
The amp needs to have a similar load to what will be used on it when adjusting limiters. To read voltage properly requires a sine wave, and most volt meters designed for USA operation will be most accurate at 60 Hz.
90 volt sine wave would be around 2000 watts into four ohms, probably enough to toast your drivers if they are subjected to that level for more than a short period of time. 90v is a rather low level for peak limiting for your drivers, but too high for RMS limiting if you play EDM or hit the limiter hard enough to heavily limit music with wider dynamic range.
See post # 32 for the explanation.
Last edited:
Alright Art...So tonight im gonna hunker down in front of the DR260 and figure this out (after my GF helps me unload the heavy rack its in). So...I want both an RMS limiter and a Peak limiter on the othorns.
What attack time should I start my experimentation with for the RMS? For the Peak?
On another note, on the F215ANs, I currently have the DE880TN on the ME90 highpass at 1.36k ....I realized this is too high. Bennett suggested bringing them down to 800hz and the 2 15s correspondingly. Is there any safety guidelines to follow when testing this? Maybe start a bit higher like 1k? The pair are in 8 ohm stereo on the pl325, Im a little worried about the diaphragms....
What attack time should I start my experimentation with for the RMS? For the Peak?
On another note, on the F215ANs, I currently have the DE880TN on the ME90 highpass at 1.36k ....I realized this is too high. Bennett suggested bringing them down to 800hz and the 2 15s correspondingly. Is there any safety guidelines to follow when testing this? Maybe start a bit higher like 1k? The pair are in 8 ohm stereo on the pl325, Im a little worried about the diaphragms....
Last edited:
1) Probably the longest available time, 200ms.
2) From what I read in the manual, it does not look like the "Peakstop +" has attack time variation.
3) At 800 Hz, the diaphragm will likely be excursion limited rather than power limited. When you hear the diaphragm hammering on the phase plug, it has run out of excursion
.IRCC, Bennett seems to like second order (12 dB per octave) mid range crossovers, which don't provide the excursion control of a fourth order (24 dB per octave) crossover.
I have always preferred fourth order mid range crossovers since my first experience of hearing diaphragms hammering the phase plug, then cleaning out bits of aluminum and replacing the shattered diaphragms, finding the show had been carried on only two JBL 2482 phenolic diaphragms, while six 2441 had bit the dust.
Fortunately, titanium holds up to hammering almost as well as phenolic, much better than aluminum...
I see. So very very carefully and gently lol . Ya bennet mentioned "being ok" with replacing diaphragms in this process. Sounds like Id better just go really gently and use my ears carefully. 800hz seems so low even for a "larger" horn like the me90. The 15NW76s seem pretty comfortable with whatever, I even played with them gently with the highpass "out" or off and they seemed fine, 63hz highpass sounded best, at least in this cabinet. Im excited to set the lowpass even lower. Ill prolly end up limiting everything once I figure out the functionality of the DBX. Here in Austin, they like alot of EDM, but its this sort of different more gentle "headier" sounding stuff, not your typical slamming dubstep, so I gotta get her sounding extra clean (thats the name of the game right?). Still havent heard the Othorns in a building yet. Im excited because they seem to, at least outdoors, keep the bass on the dancefloor and not like all crazy in the parking lot. I notice in alot of the clubs that have big reflex bin setups, it sounds louder like near a wall, or in the bathroom than it does right on the dancefloor? (this is referred to as "dispersion", correct?)
. Ya bennet mentioned "being ok" with replacing diaphragms in this process. Sounds like Id better just go really gently and use my ears carefully. 800hz seems so low even for a "larger" horn like the me90. The 15NW76s seem pretty comfortable with whatever, I even played with them gently with the highpass "out" or off and they seemed fine, 63hz highpass sounded best, at least in this cabinet. Im excited to set the lowpass even lower. Ill prolly end up limiting everything once I figure out the functionality of the DBX. Here in Austin, they like alot of EDM, but its this sort of different more gentle "headier" sounding stuff, not your typical slamming dubstep, so I gotta get her sounding extra clean (thats the name of the game right?). Still havent heard the Othorns in a building yet. Im excited because they seem to, at least outdoors, keep the bass on the dancefloor and not like all crazy in the parking lot. I notice in alot of the clubs that have big reflex bin setups, it sounds louder like near a wall, or in the bathroom than it does right on the dancefloor? (this is referred to as "dispersion", correct?)- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.