Even though you asked Romy, let me add my informaton. B&C makes very good drivers, but they will run you more than $1000.

Good luck with the frequency response in your new experiment, though I have no doubt you will get great dynamics.

ML

CO wrote:

Ive been building and improving my own speakers the last few years and at this point i'm thinking a fully horn loaded setup ( 3 way + sub ) is the best route to take to get a speaker capable of  faithfully reproducing the electronic signal.

Actually the 4-ways horn-loaded installation is THE ONLY way to go.  If you look critically and with intellectual honesty at the currently exiting park of the best drivers then the 4-ways (5) ways design is very naturally flow… the only one thinks that I would like to suggest is do not treat the LF channels as subwoofer, even semantically, but rather approach the LF channels as an organic continuation of acoustic system optimized for reproduction of the lower octaves…

CO wrote:

Although i have no doubt your speaker setup is about as ideal as it gets i cannot do this with my buget. I have read you have tested many drivers before you found your ideal setup…

It is incorrect. There is nothing “ideal” in my setup as with many others it has own limitations and compromises.

CO wrote:

I was hoping you could give some pointers to lower cost drivers for a similar setup. I was thinking something in the line of Beyma or B&C or similar drivers. Have you tried these or alike?My listening is slowly starting to shift to clasical and acousical music (having never been exposed to it in my childhood) so At this point the some of the better Pro parts should be good enough for me. I will be building the (non square) horns myself and love to experiment to get the most out a speaker.I will be driving them actively with a variable crossover. My budget for drivers would preferably be around $1000,- or less for upper bass and mid/high driver. I can always add dedicated tweeter later.  I already have a sub that should integrate well. Any suggestions are welcome.

Well, the $1000 is not really a budget thing and you might get very good drivers. Do not forget that since you go for an upper bass horn then you will not stress the MF driver and most like will go for shorter MF horn. For budges but well performing MF driver I would not got for the Beyma or B&C of the similar. Those companies mostly use ceramic magnets that are devastating for the HF transient response and tonal identity. I would look for any Alnico magnets, aluminum cones and more or less civilized phase plugs. To be on a neutral, none-radical side and without diving into risky fanatically challenged projects I would go for something along the like with JBL 2440, 2445. They are concretive (aka JBL 375) drivers, slightly less mellow then Altecs and with good and stable tone. Also, they are very popular and you should be able to get them for ~$300 or so….

For the upper bass you should consider what enclosure you will be using and determine the size of the driver based upon that. For the upper bass I would go for ceramic/neodymium magnets with cellulose cone, cellulose/cloth suspension, lover Q and lover possible excursion. Target the size of the driver in order to have Fs juts slightly lower then the cut off of the horn mouth. Still, the driver that you will be looking will be within $200-$500, no more and you would have money left for tweeter or for your contribution to your local homeless Cats shelter….

CO wrote:

I dont need flat to 20K but dropping after 10K necesetates a tweeter.

And there is nothing wrong with it. No one 500Hz driver that said is doing to 20K in reality does it. In fact if a driver goes to 20K then the place for this driver is not in a playback system but is showrooms built specifically to impress the audio-fools and mosquitoes. A playback should acoustically up to 12.5-13kHz, no higher.

CO wrote:

I believe your using an altec 15" driver for upper bass? I couldnt really find it anywhere. You also mention the small mouth compared to traditional horn thinking. Are you using a phase plug here? The back chamber also seems very small for a large driver so you might be using something else?

Collin, I have said about it very many times on my site. When you have time spend some time to read it over. I juts do not want to go all over it again.

CO wrote:

Im wondering if i can get enough impact (at moderate levels) with upper bass using an 8" or do i really need a 10" or more?

It has nothing to do with the “enough impact”. I am saying again: do not worry about the upper bass driver but figure out what horn you will be building. THEN, the driver will derive form the horn’s design.

CO wrote:

Target lower frequency also around 100hz to still be able to cross to the subs. I said subs but yes you are very right about the "organic continuation of acoustic system". I have spent alot of time to get these up to speed with my mains.

If you want 100hz then you have the mouth size, not you need to figure out how long you would like to have it and form there you will have the throat diameter. The driver will be derive form that.

CO wrote:

I presume you also recommend a driver with shorting rings or even beter an underhung design?

Hmmm, I do not know. The shorting ring and underhunging are good but in context of upperbass horn it is really not the issues. A good driver even at 100H will not run further then a few mm not to mention the it will be severally damped, so…. The shorting ring is fine but the all have low sensitively. Will you put a 96dB sensitive driver into +6dB horn if you have 108dB coming from your MF channels? What will you do: go multiamping or burn the 6dB on a damn resistor?

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Collin, there is one more tip for you how you might bult a very inexpensive but very good performing MF channel, thought it might be slightly time-consuming…

It is not well-know but some, primary Japanese companies like JVC, Yamaha, Hitachi, Denon and so on, sometime used in thier cheap, consumers products, something the we call boom-boxes the remarkably good MF drivers. I mean really-really boom-boxes, soothing that cost $100-$300.  They were/are usually 4”-5”, with very low resonant frequency, low handling power, sloth/paper suspended, small ceramic driver, relatively high sensitivity and with small phase plug in place of dust cover. They used them as full-range and thy never were interestingly sounding driven by the boom-boxes electronics. However, if they high- and low-passed, properly driven and sit in open baffle (or even used as the open drivers) then some of them sound phenomenally good. This Japanese companies 9or whoever was their vendor) manufactured then by large number and it is possible to get them sometimes for very little money. I am very sorry that I did not get more of them and it would be fun to make array of them.

I was funny I picked one driver from garbage near my parking spot. Someone trashed a JVC boom-box, and presumably the toss it from the window and it was complexly dissected when it landed. That time I was experimented with my own horns prototyped and when I glance at the pile of the garbage with the JVC atop I thought why don’t I take this visible 4” driver and stick into my 4” horn. The driver did very badly in the horn but I was surprised that driven by ML2 as an open driver it performed very interesting. In a few years I meet a guy who was going out of fixing consumer electronic business who sold me a large box with speakers for $10. All of then were the pulls from different boom-boxes and some of them were more then useable. I did inquire about to get the pair for them and the supply shops were wiling to sell me the replacements for around $20-$30 per driver. So, they are available…  and sometimes if worth to buy the entire boom-box on ebay and then juts take the drives from there….

I know it sound too ridicules, but if you visit my room and if I supplement some of those boom-boxes pulls with complimentary LF section and if you listen it then you will not be laughing…

Rgs,
Romy the caT

CO wrote:

Ive conducted some test with the smaller drivers because i wanted to know if i could build a compact high quality setup to replace my current fairly large speakers. It doesnt look possible though, mainly because (as you say )the Upper Bass really NEEDS a horn in my opinion to get the lifelike sound i'm looking for. This will always be fairly large so you i can forget about aiming for a compact system.

Yes, any acoustic system starts from a combination of an upperbass channel, room and a complementary MF channel. Among three of them the upper bass channel (responsible for the “melody range”) handles the main responsibility for the sound in your room. Below is the allocation of the frequencies within a large 124-musicians orchestra playing  a peace from Richard Strauss’ tone poem (recorded a few days back). I think any commentaries which driver handles the most are no necessary.

CO wrote:

May i ask if you have ever played with the Le Cleach flares and how you find them? They were created to reduce reflections directly back into the horn. Only problem is they are very large because of this....

Nope. I never had them. The Le Cleach curve should work fine. I do not know how about the reflections directly back into the horn, I feel it is slightly bogus, but in way the Le Cleach curve is close to the tratrix and do not have the excessive “horn hanging” of the constantly explanation horn. It is very important for MF drivers.

CO wrote:

could you still comment on the sound difference between neodynium and ceramic based drivers.

Ceramic of ferrite magnets of compressions drivers are fine but ONLY if your driver do not do any MF or HF. At higher frequencies the Ceramic mangers are completely usable as they make a driver to sound very monochromic with reduced transient characteristics. Still for LF transducers, presumably none-compressive the ceramic mangers do perfectly fine. I have mode difficulties to say what happen with neodymium drivers. Unquestionably the neodymium is more superior magnet material and it dose work very nice with LF drivers (look the Aura’s Motors and the similar…) however I have no idea how neodymium “sounds” at HF. The only neodymium HF drivers that I had were TADs. TADs sound very idiosyncratic with their typical syntactic “caramelness”, however I do not think that it due to the neodymium but rather due to the moronic beryllium cone and wrong suspensions type. In other words I do not have any methodologically clear experience with neodymium at HF drivers. I presume the neodymium should be fine if everything else is properly done…  Still, in order to express my opinioned, full of myself, views I need to hear the neodymium compression driver under a condition that it was not made by TAD….

Rgs,
Romy

slowmotion wrote:

But his aproach to designing horns is interesting

Does his “interesting designing approach” include the designing the “interesting horns” and then to correct their problems with digital correction devised. Is he the very same guy who infected France with those moronic digital crossover and the room correction devises that meant to be used for DJ’s pleasure.

You see, if even to disregard the fundamental intrinsic problem of the digital equalization and DSP and for a second pretend that AD conversion, loosing the byte at stop-band, and consequential DA conversion are completely transparent and audible then still there is something else that all those digital minded kind do not get: each individual driver in each individual enclosure has own need that should be recognized, embraced and nurtured.

A person who corrects problem on digital domain has not feedback for the driver natural abilities and he does not embrace the reason but rather fix the consequences. It would be similar to a person who does fishing. This person, holding the fish-line in his hand, can detect how the fish each the bate fat the hooks and he could estimate the fish behavior. Contrary to this a person, who goes fishing with dynamite, might in fact to catch mode dead fish, but he is completely made himself clueless about the fish behavior and habit. Soon of later this person unavoidable begin to explode his dynamite at the places where fish does not live.

Anyhow, I personally could testify that I NEVER ever heard any playback installation where digital correctors used and where sound was even remotely interesting. In those DSPed rooms there is no Sound but just the present of phases and frequencies. This is why I do not take seriously absolutely nothing if it comes from the people who are in denial and who hide this awareness begin the digital condom. Not to mention that even without imposing any correction and juts in bypassing the signal most of those digital DJt oys are severally un-transparent.

Rgs,
The Cat