KeithR's "Dream Speaker" Search

Duke LeJeune

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For me the pearl and surprise was the room of our very own member Duke LeJeune and his AudioKinesis speakers.

Thank you very much Steve! I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by our room a couple of times, and then Ron and Keith and at least one other WBF forum member also stopped by. It's an honor to be among the rooms you guys took the time to visit.

Also don't miss Jonathan Tinn's room with his new speakers that he has shown before and yesterday the sound was off the chart.

OH YEAH!! Incredible system, incredible speakers... "off the chart" sounds right to me. As an ex-transmission line speaker designer (well over sixty different original transmission line designs back during my amateur years), I totally tip my virtual hat to Evolution Acoustics. I have a suspicion about one of the things they did, and it is a brilliantly elegant solution to an imo significant issue that many transmission lines have. The sound would have blown me away had the cabinets been four times the size; given their tiny footprint it was... yeah, off the chart. Wish I could have stayed longer, but I was on a short leash.

* * * *

If I may offer a few thoughts on the Tune Audio Animas... imo they did not get a fair chance to show what they can do.

The Animas were on the long wall of a room that was ballpark 18 feet wide by 13 feet deep, with listening chairs along the opposite long wall. Neither the wall behind the Animas nor the wall just behind the listeners' ears had any absorption or diffusion, or at least none that I remember (there may have been a padded headboard-on-the-wall where the bed had been). As a result there was a strong very early reflection off the wall right behind the listeners' ears, degrading the imaging and depth (which were imo arguably excellent given that handicap) and emphasized the upper part of the spectrum. The front-and-back-wall situation may not have been too far removed from "slap-echo". Imo given a deeper room and/or appropriate room treatment, they would have sounded much more relaxing. Their dynamics were superb.

In contrast the Ocean Way room (same size, same long-wall setup) had both the front and rear walls aggressively treated by an extremely experienced professional, Allen Sides. This was imo an excellent sounding room, the presentation was extremely vivid and with natural timbre (especially from the big ones) without being the slightest bit fatiguing. I would not be surprised if the Animas were quite capable of this as well, while taking advantage of the benefits of low-powered, zero-global-feedback specialty tube amps.

Regarding the low end of the Animas, is there any reason not to augment it with subs?
 

bonzo75

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That's because they try to make horn bass (which is just cone bass, unless they have an actual enormous horn) higher sensitivity to match. At least that's common, and it won't produce the kind of deep thunder you can get from more excursion. It's fairly simple physics.

How is horn bass cone bass? If you have two 18 inch drivers front loaded, open, vs 10 inch driver enclosed in a cone? Where the 18 inch is more sensitive?
 

Folsom

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I'm not sure what you're saying. My point was most horn speaker setups have the bass driver playing as a simple cone driver. Even if it's partial horn, it isn't in the bass frequency hardly ever.

Horn's allow higher sensitivity to be used, they don't really create it. Anyways if you've got tweeters and mids in horns, and they're 100db sensitivity, you need the bass driver to match that. There aren't any bass drivers near 100db that have high excursion. They're all paper cone with limited excursion.
 

bonzo75

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I'm not sure what you're saying. My point was most horn speaker setups have the bass driver playing as a simple cone driver. Even if it's partial horn, it isn't in the bass frequency hardly ever.

Horn's allow higher sensitivity to be used, they don't really create it. Anyways if you've got tweeters and mids in horns, and they're 100db sensitivity, you need the bass driver to match that. There aren't any bass drivers near 100db that have high excursion. They're all paper cone with limited excursion.

Ok understand what you are saying. When a horn allows bass to be played as a cone, it sounds pretty awful imo
 

Folsom

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Ok understand what you are saying. When a horn allows bass to be played as a cone, it sounds pretty awful imo

That's like, nearly all horn speaker setups. 45hz needs a 6ft throat. You can use the calc here, and divide by 4 to get the required throat length for a horn. Just make sure you set it for sound in air and hz not mhz or light waves.
 

bonzo75

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That's like, nearly all horn speaker setups. 45hz needs a 6ft throat. You can use the calc here, and divide by 4 to get the required throat length for a horn. Just make sure you set it for sound in air and hz not mhz or light waves.

One of my favorite DIYs has two 18 inch drivers per speaker. The bass/midbass enclosure is front loaded, open on the front, 5 foot high, 1m wide, 1m deep. Runs great on 20 watts and up
 

bonzo75

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You can also use the style of bass that western electric used this Munich. I put that up in my write up. That works 100 and below
 

morricab

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I'm not sure what you're saying. My point was most horn speaker setups have the bass driver playing as a simple cone driver. Even if it's partial horn, it isn't in the bass frequency hardly ever.

Horn's allow higher sensitivity to be used, they don't really create it. Anyways if you've got tweeters and mids in horns, and they're 100db sensitivity, you need the bass driver to match that. There aren't any bass drivers near 100db that have high excursion. They're all paper cone with limited excursion.
Horns provide gain, Folsom and depending on the compression ratio it can be a lot or a little. There is a big advantage as well for distortion at a given level. When there is nearly no driver excursion distortion is much lower than a big box driver pumping away.
 
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the sound of Tao

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You can also use the style of bass that western electric used this Munich. I put that up in my write up. That works 100 and below
Ked, is it possible to characterise at all the difference between the twin DIY 18 inch horn bass versus the big OB bass that WE did especially in terms of coherence with the horns.

I’m just thinking now whether to go with a pair of twin isobaric loaded 15 inch in vented boxes for sub to match in with the PAP horns or the twin isobaric 15 inchers in an OB crossed in a 2.5 way at sub 100hz.
 

bonzo75

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Ked, is it possible to characterise at all the difference between the twin 18 inch horn bass versus the big OB bass that WE did especially in terms of coherence with the horns.

I’m just thinking now whether to go with twin isobaric loaded 15 inch in a vented boxes for sub or the twin isobaric in an OB crossed in a 2.5 way at sub 100hz.

Not really, I can't say what the difference is but the latter, JC Morrison said it was not expensive and easy to do. For the 18 inchers he had researched his own drivers.
 
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the sound of Tao

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Thanks
 

Ron Resnick

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. . . I find cone bass is better than horns on rock and club music. . . .

I agree! I would like to cite this post as another exhibit in my brief in support of my proposition that musical genre preference significantly drives loudspeaker preference.

For rock and thunderous symphonic classical music I like cones to move air.
 

bonzo75

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Hi Tao now that I think about it I have more to add. The western electric sub at Munich came in at 40 Hz and below, though JC said you can start at 100 or 120. So below 40 I did not get to hear much as I am much more sensitive in the weight region, and that waa being run through their western electric horn.

The 18 inchers started much higher, I forget where more, but also brought midbass into play, and were my favorite implementations. The piano, cello, double bass, weight, was really articulate and flowing with weight to the music.

There is also another DIY on my site that had a 2m long straight horn that started from 800 Hz and went straight down to 80. At 80 it crossed over actively to boxed subs. Also in the libertango video posted by Zavalinka you see a straight long bass horn with AER BD4 drivers

There are various solutions. Just avoid the cone ones like duos. Anyone who requires that kind of bass for their music should stick to cones. Tannoys too
 

the sound of Tao

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That’s great thanks Ked, the woofers in the Paps cross up fairly high... guessing at the 300hz mark or thereabouts. If I get the woofers in and can just try both implementations I suppose. Was thinking an OB sub would likely be a closer match to the horns as they are. I’m not chasing much additional bass so keeping it as coherent as poss is my aim. Thanks for the extra thoughts... I also much like the diy horn with the 18 inchers. Very sexy looking beast.
 
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Folsom

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Horns provide gain, Folsom and depending on the compression ratio it can be a lot or a little. There is a big advantage as well for distortion at a given level. When there is nearly no driver excursion distortion is much lower than a big box driver pumping away.

Not when they’re too short.
 

bonzo75

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I agree! I would like to cite this post as another exhibit in my brief in support of my proposition that musical genre preference significantly drives loudspeaker preference.

For rock and thunderous symphonic classical music I like cones to move air.

There is nothing like a system for thunderous classical music. All the loud parts of Mahler, for example, have a lot of quiet parts between them. Tympani and bass drum bass are best done in space, rather than from an enclosed woofer. For rock, I agree. Overall, the best all round speaker if one has high percentage of rock music in his diet alongside classical, imo, are the big apogees. And maybe these new planars like GT which I haven't heard yet.

To play loud thumps on a cone hiding away the nuances of the other sections of the orchestra is not the right way to play thunderous classical music.
 

bonzo75

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The guy who put the two 18 inches in open baffle actually thought through this process. He knew that cone based bass is for the 90 percent forum population that Steve already described :) He knew that same size driver in OB would lead to teeny weeny bass. So he had to put two 18 inchers in either speaker. OMA puts two 15 inchers in both. And these woofers lie in the vertical plane, so quickly push air forward in short moves in a vertical and wide plane rather than struggling slowly at the bottom to keep up with a quicker and very different driver above
 
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microstrip

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Horns provide gain, Folsom and depending on the compression ratio it can be a lot or a little. There is a big advantage as well for distortion at a given level. When there is nearly no driver excursion distortion is much lower than a big box driver pumping away.

Gain is relative to an isotropic radiator. Do you have values of gain of our currently debated horns?
Typically an high gain means high directivity. Is this a good thing?
 

microstrip

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(...) Tympani and bass drum bass are best done in space, rather than from an enclosed woofer. (...)

I happily disagree. I have experienced that in some rooms with suitable amplifiers some recordings manage to energize to room in the tympani and some bass drum sections range fairly well, but in large or treated rooms enclosed woofers are much more realistic. And we do not need the WAMM's with subs to show it. ...

Did you experience better tympani and bass drum bass with panels or open dipoles than with Mike Lavigne system?
 
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