Do you still have the crossovers that Leonidas sent? If so I'd give them a try. Might be a fool's errand, but it may also be that they know something about their drivers that your DIY guy didn't.
Single Driver Thoughts?
- Thread starter Republicoftexas69
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I might have them. I'm not sure. If I do I can try them without the tweeter. The entire speaker is going to need be rebuilt then. Certainly the baffle will. I can live with that but I don't know anyone local to do it since Bill told me he is not interested in speaker building any more. He develops CAD software as well though to the best of my knowledge he's been building and repairing speakers for at least a decade.
Well you don't have anything to lose. It just sounds a bit odd to me, crossovers being tricky things and all, that you got talked out of the crossovers sent by the company that makes the drivers and never tried them. Clearly the drivers are nice. I have trouble thinking that they would have sent you a crossover that didn't show them off. I've been wrong many many times and could be here too, but if it were me, yada yada...
I agree 100%. The 'this crossover is no good' was an issue I had. I got speakers from Michael Crites that Bill veneered (beautifully I might add), but when he put the speakers together he took issue with Crites x-over design and built me one of his own. That speaker turned out pretty well but cost me way more money than I could ever get for them. Crites wouldn't do any finish work on them at all, just sanded birch ply so I ahd them shipped to Ft. Lauderdale to have them finished like a piece of furniture. Once I upgraded Crites midrange driver the speaker honked less and sounds good now when I hook them up to a 211 or 845 amp.
I'm going to look to see if I still have the Leonidas crossovers somewhere. Thanks for all your insights.
*** EDIT *** I found the crossover Lii sent me. Maybe I will try to take another crack at this. I have someone that cut me the new baffle for the Silver 10 but he's not local. It shouldn't be much to ship though.
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The way I would approach something like this is to establish a baseline by running the C10 full range and see where baffle step starts to come in. Then there will be the working in the tradeoff of how much compensation to use on the FR vs augmentation with the 15. Obviously this is easiest done with Biamping. Too high of an XO or too shallow will upset the midrange but will give stronger bass. Too low will overdive the C10 and that will get harsh and not a well integrated bass either. I firmly believe in running the C10 with modest passive xo compensation and active bass XO getting its input from the amp speaker terminals that drive the FR for best integration. This gives the transfer function of the tube amp on the C10 for the SS woofer amp and to me gives a much more seamless integration. I borrowed this from the way Bert Doppleberg (BD Designs) does his horn hybrids.
I think experimentation is in order and easy if you have the right gear and implementation. I really do not believe that a single amp system will get you the best of what these systems can get.
Fair question. I do have speakers built by reputable U.S. / Canadian companies. I have a pair of Hansen Prince and Tri-Art Audio Open 5 (actually both Canadian companies) in addition to a pair of Crites Klipschorns. I just like trying new gear. I started down the rabbit hole on this thread by responding to a comment about the Lii SIlver-10. I bought the Lii drivers 7 months before I bought the LM speakers. I don't want to sink any more money into this than I have but since I already have the drivers and the original crossovers I should probably take a shot at seeing what they could sound like.
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You've got all these parts sitting around but don't like the sound, it seems to me like now is the time for you delve into your own DIY experience. Maybe buy a miniDSP, make a DIY audio account, hook up a couple amps, and start just playing with crossover values. I can see that you like to farm out the work, but honestly, you've basically got everything you need to move forward by yourself and start learning about speaker design. You said you wanted to do it and you seem to have the perfect platform. Hell, it would be disappointing monetarily, but even if you broke a driver it's not like you're losing a treasured speaker because you couldn't stay well enough away. Between this place and DIYaudio, you should be able to get quality guidance on every step of the journey.
I have to get rid of something the 10" is a bad choice for openbaffle with qts of ~ 0.5 that means it has ~-8db at fs(43hz). With your baffle width, the 70hz creates full sound pressure. That means I let work the 15" active bass work up to 70hz let min. decouple 12db/oct. let the lil 10" run without xover one your tube power amp is enough to listen loud maybe you need an RCL filter to achieve a clean straight frequency response with an amplifier without negative feedback.
P. S Qts 0.5 and lower is more for bassreflex or horn
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I like my Altec 755Cs — single 8” driver, no crossover, 96 dB efficiency – in a nice bamboo cabinet made by Gordon Rankin of Wavelength Audio. No low bass or extreme highs. In my book, that’s a feature, not a bug. Extreme highs just cause listening fatigue. Extreme lows makes for uncomfortable listening. Nice for capturing explosions in home theater, but of no musical value in my book. Can be driven by a small SET. Cost me $1000. What’s not to like?
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This only happens when accompanied by distortion. If the amplifier has benign distortion spectra then the highs will be just fine!
Unfortunately most metallic tweeters have huge resonances just above 20 KHZ, often by as much as +10 dB. This is often referred to as “oil can resonances”. There’s a myth that somehow reproducing ultrasonic frequencies that only bats and dogs can hear is necessary for high fidelity sound reproduction. If you do an FFT analysis of even high res recordings, there’s precious little above 15 KHZ, and it accounts for a vanishingly small part of our musical experience.
I've experienced that. But its not true of all tweeters. A lot has to do with design. For example if you have an Altec horn with the original aluminum diaphragm, the diaphragm makes breakups at higher volume levels that can be quite annoying. Some of this is due to the suspension, which is pressed of the same material as the diaphragm combined with the design of the crossover.
I heard (at CES, in 2005) what happens if that diaphragm is replaced by one of beryllium and employing a Kapton surround. No breakups- the same horn was instantly smoother and more detailed.
Nice! Looks like a woofer is being used. Hopefully the main driver is crossed over. A super tweeter will help with HF beaminess.
A single driver with no crossover has a very direct sound. The most important issue is frequency extremes. In my experience Cube Audio Nenuphar has no problem producing bass and treble. Very impressive. Kind of unique in this category or maybe it’s because my listening room is small.
Its the latter. As long as the sound pressure requirements are not great drivers like that can do fairly well. If you do push them though you'll find getting the bass excursion off of the driver will improve the mids and highs quite noticeably.
The drive units for our Jetstream horn system are made in conjunction with Cube audio. They sound great and cover the range 120Hz to 15KHz. We then supplement this with bass speakers for the lower frequency. There is something very special about a single drive unit covering most of the frequencies and no crossover between amp and drive unit.
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