Large speakers (as in large)

[steve s]

I'm sold on big speakers.. but i was suprised how old fashioned corner speakers fitted in my room.. if you can get them a colour them to merge in, they really dont take up that much room.. the advantage of a corner position is in the bass and the way they fill the room..
the 12" axioms are very good... in a corner..

i now have design for a new pair of horns.. but like scottmoose's they are going to be tall.. but using the room as the side of the horn you can get a massive horn mouth.. without even seeing it..

like alot with hi fi.. go back to the 30's and 40's & 50's see what was the best designs.. and they probably still are today....

steve

[Scottmoose]

Bigger is Better. And with hybrid QWR / horn types, which most are, Longer is Stronger. We can optimise the traditional cabinets better nowadays as we have software like Martin's MathCad sheets which can model their behaviour accurately, but some of the basic designs are still very good indeed IMO. Your new enclosures sound very interesting Steve. What drivers will you be using in them? Can I be really cheeky and ask if there's any chance I could take a peek at the design? (Off the board if you don't want the world to see yet!)

[Ianm2]

15 and 18s are not hard to find at all, the p.a. market is awash with them, you can even have 24s!!

many of them not dear, there is fane, precision devices, electrovoice, celestion, beyma, jbl to name but a few, most if not all outperform cheap hifi speakers as they are far better built. and there are chinese and taiwanese which will be as good as most hifi speakers, as they are now making them all.
eg 2 celestion 18s would cost less than a top scanspeak tweeter.

I have a design perhaps brewing for either a 10 or 12" 2 way with 15" reinforcement, or perhaps a 15" or even 18", 10"/8", 3 way, probably for a lot less than a new pair of kls3s

maybe even horn loaded.

big enough for you?

[steve s]

Originally Posted by Scottmoose

Bigger is Better. And with hybrid QWR / horn types, which most are, Longer is Stronger. We can optimise the traditional cabinets better nowadays as we have software like Martin's MathCad sheets which can model their behaviour accurately, but some of the basic designs are still very good indeed IMO. Your new enclosures sound very interesting Steve. What drivers will you be using in them? Can I be really cheeky and ask if there's any chance I could take a peek at the design? (Off the board if you don't want the world to see yet!)

Hi scottmoose, my plan is for a 4.7 m exp. horn.. sort of on the lines of the big carfae horn, with a couple of extra bends and and not quite as tall..
and designed to go tight into a corner with a reflector on the back so the front edge of the speaker and the wall form the horn mouth..

i plan to knock one up in mdf and see how that sounds, hopefully before the year end.. the lowther ex4 will be the driver..

cheers steve

[Scottmoose]

Nice one Steve. 1/4 space loading should do the trick nicely. Bet that'll scare a few people when they're built.

Just finished a new compact double horn design for the Fostex FE126E in MathCad -it's only 61in tall. Dave Dlugos of Planet10 hifi is doing the CAD plans for it as my CAD skills are about 0. It's a new addition to the Frugelhorn open source project -we've provisionally named it the FrugelBEN in homage to Terry Cain's wonderful double horns which inspired it. I'll bring a pair to the next Eggfest, along with a pair of BIBs, providing I can fit all four enclosures into a Pug 106 of course...

Regards
Scott

[NickG]

And I will bring the Frugelhorn's that I have built as well, should be fun :-)

[simon2a3]

Sounds very interesting Steve.

Erm, have you mentioned them to Lesley yet? ;-)

[Scottmoose]

Speakers grow like mushrooms you know. You wake up one morning, and they have expanded. Honestly, dear.

[Cobblers]

Much like saucepan induced bumps on the back of your head...............

[G.Axiom]

...builded huge corner enclosurers couple years ago, after Ted Jordans original plan for axiom 80's.
Now I liked to say that it is IMHO exellent idea this corner box. It fills -as someone else also stated earlier in this thread- listening room with music in very natural way, which makes one to listen music, not to sound.
Earlier I listened PHY-HP:s in large baffles and different "bended baffles" or "open-back-boxes", a la Auditorium 23. Surprisingly suchs corner enclosures can give at least as impressive and open soundstage as large baffles, if that is what you are lookin for. Some ways I feel like they could possibly be even better to reproduce acoustics of original recording venue as baffles are.

Nowdays there is added 15-inch RCF L15P530-woofers. Axioms has 20-litres separate enclosures, inside the box. RCF:s are 100db sensitive, cloth surround and fR 40hz, so they actually are "high-power mid basses", as manufacturer states it. ( no, I am definitively not after any "flat20hz"-sound) Yes, large drivers makes things _easy_. They can play really loud and compeletely with no swet. Effortless, uncompressed sound of such monsters is pretty hard to describe, if you are not familiar with it. OTOH, dynamics, sensitivity and realism does not come for free. "There are no substitute for cubic inches". Once you have it, there is no lookin back.

So, Petercom and friends, go do something original and design 200-300-litres corner loudspeakers, as WD-kits statement- product
And let me suggest, all closed. NO-one -well, or most of us, really dont want to build _that_ big horns. Box with such humungous measures is hard enough to live with and build even as closed.
And, add something new and make it two- or three way, with one wideband driver+woofer and option for an open-air tweeter, if needed. There are a lot good units out there capable for decent 100-10khz reproduction, with reasonable sesitivity and power handling. Also, perhaps a kit for an active XO included?
I Think you guys have it right, people is beginning to get that this dead sound -if you occasionally want to listen with almost-real-life-volumes- of too small boxes and drivers with too large cone excursions is only because it is commercially sucidial idea to try sell and distribute around the world loudspeakers with appropriate dimensions

" like alot with hi fi.. go back to the 30's and 40's & 50's see what was the best designs.. and they probably still are today....", thanks, Steve.