anyone built any of their own speakers?

[Black Stuart]

Hi Ian,
thanks for the link to those woofers, they look very interesting. I've had to put off building my own speakers until I get properly settled.

I found on the Canadian Solen site some very interesting Chinese made woofers. Very efficient 15" ranging from 98-101dB. The problem is having to pay as much or nearly so for shipping as the units cost.

The price of the 15" units at Bluearan is very good, I should need to visit their shop in Southampton to get a listen. If I like what I hear, with luck I can organise a pick-up with a Spanish/French trucker.

I'm surprised your sticking with passive x/overs - expensive to build, all sorts of problems. Most if not all of these problems don't exist with an active x/over, especially phase shift, excessive wasteful heat created etc.

I'm working my way through the technical side of converting my hybrid h/amp into a power amp. Removing the PSU and the mosfet o/put into seperate enclosures which makes it easy to introduce the active x/over after the pre-amp section.

I'm also surprised you are not looking at using either a s/hand ribbon AMT unit or one of the modern equivalents from Mundorf etc. So effectively you are creating a two-way speaker with seamless performance from mid to high frequencies. I don't know anyone who has heard quality ribbons that wants to use anything else afterwards.

[Grog]

these AMT's look great especially the horn loaded one.
http://profesional.beyma.com/ingles/pdf/TPL150H.pdf
http://profesional.beyma.com/ingles/pdf/TPL150.pdf

[jdunham]

Yes, a few pairs over the years. But these are the best so far:

http://www.bd-design.nl/contents/en-us/d146.html

I see there is some renewed interest in OB speakers, well these are a twist on that theme. A front horn for good directionality in the diffuse range and the open baffle operrating in the modal range.

The cross-over is used only on the bass system, set at around 200hz. And a slot tweeter (not in those pictures) rolling in at 10khz.

Kind regards to all,

Jonathan

[andrew ivimey]

By a quick look on the web, George, those Beymas are a pale imitation of the ESS AMT Grand Masters that Stuart talks of.

ESS Grand Masters are up there with the very best. They used to be a bargain (around £250 a pair). Now they seem to be getting RARE.

[Dave the bass]

Ian, we were talking the other day on't phone about speakers... these are the little Fonkens I was talking about...

http://www.planet10-hifi.com/fonken.html

I'm totally chuffed with them. Small driver/cab, BIG sound.

DTB

[Grog]

I can't seem to find anywhere where the ESS drivers are avaliable. they beyma's are about £250 each, so a bit much for me, i'm used to building my own drive units for nothing ;-)
I really should get round to trying my new 100mm unit as a small hi-fi speaker, fs 60-70Hz and smooth extension all the way to 10khz+ with no whizzer/sub-cone.

this might all go horribly wrong but i'll try and attach the frequency response



well i can see it, if you can't let me know.
that plot is anechoic half space at 2v rms, so sensitivity should read 90.5dB for 2.83v (which is usual for hi-fi)... and thats a proper average not the highest point on the graph via the marketing department for another 2dB added on for good measure!

[Grog]

the bottom end would be brought up nicely in a box ~3L ish, would be flat to <100Hz
actually looking at that i can get about another 2-3kHz extension to 13kHz, but i can only find a plot of that type with a stiff suspension (~110Hz)

[Baggy Trousers]

Originally Posted by The Shadow

I designed the Metronome tapered quadratic quarter wave loudspeaker enclosure and used them for three years. Scott helped out with the air mass loading for the original enclosures. After that Scott designed a number of larger Metronome enclosures for use with a wide range of drivers up to the Audio Nirvana 10 inch full ranger.

The "Mets" as the Americans tend to call them are a very successful design.

Steve

A gambit guaranteed to succeed if seeking to open a conversation in a New York bar, is to sidle up to a vacant stool, perch yourself thereupon and out of the corner of your mouth, enquire of the fellow whose **** is hanging over the sides of the adjacent stool, "How about them Mets, then?"

But don't expect to learn much about tapered quadratic quarter waves.

Might not "quadratic quarter" be a tautology?

It's all way over my head anyway. But I think I qualify in that a long time ago I built my own cabinets - front and back-loaded horns - but don't ask me about air mass loading; I just took Ronnie Rackham's word for it and nearly forty years on, I continue to be glad that I did.

Ancient Baggo.