The quality of work is immense, just wow ...!
Thank you, Al, for the kind comments.
The quality of work is immense, just wow ...!
Scary stuff...your man obviously really believes in living life. Lord knows what he thinks of lazy audiophiles.Thanks Marc. Yes he was surprised how badly I was bitten by the bug. At one point I was sending him images of bowls and hollow forms on a daily basis during lockdown for critique and teaching. I made all sorts of mad things mainly for practice.
Yes as you correctly say - he is made like they aren’t made now. Seriously puts me to shame. He turns 89 in the autumn and he cycles minimum 15km per day at his age. He goes to the gym 4 days per week. He has been vegetarian for 20 years, which he seems to think helps his immunity etc. I would leave his workshop after a 10 hour day literally desperate for bed. He went off to play table tennis with his great grand children.
Some madness below - good for practice as much harder than horns.
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Scary stuff...your man obviously really believes in living life. Lord knows what he thinks of lazy audiophiles.
He is more of view of get them outside playing in the garden and doing stuff.
correction:
4001 and 4003 diaphragms are not the same
neither are the vc´s
I actually have 4003 and 2002, which replaced 4001 and 2001
Bill, congratulations on your endeavour, nothing matches making your own speakers in my experience. I have done many and still enjoy one as my main system.
There was a lot of talk about 4001 and 4003 differences. One of the main differences between TAD TD-4001 and TD-4003 is the throat size. TD-4001 has 49.2mm (2") throat whereas the TD-4003 has 39mm (1.5"). They both have 5 slits and afaik the same voice coil and diaphragm.
Smaller throat is definitely better for higher extension but I am a believer in adding upper mid and tweeter channels on top to get even dispersion with 2" compression drivers. This is a harder road for the diy enthusiast. A 2" driver may play up to 20khz but throat size creates problems and these are not possible to get rid of as they happen because of physical dimensions of the throat and its relation to wavelength reproduced.
So, with 2" cd I prefer to add more channels. This brings other problems like crossovers and most of the people are scared to hear even the word crossover. If you can successfully implement one they are not a problem but it is not as easy as getting a horn and strapping a cd behind it. If I had used 4003, I may have reduced one channel, the upper mid and directly used a suitable tweeter. The only problem then would be the matching of the dispersion in between those two.
As I am in the process of rolling out a very different approach, I wonder how horn enthusiasts will react to that solution
There is much more difference between 4001 and 4003
- As Leif said difference in voice coil and suspension
- Neodymium was used in 4002 and 4003
- Phase plugs are 5 in both, but changes were made to shape and material for 4003
- Direct speaker wire connection to the diaphragm
Regarding number of channels, the people with the most experience I chatted with were all for minimising number of channels where possible. Bill is right with his two way as the AER does not require a tweeter. The TAD 4003 might not, but one can always add a tweeter or a smaller compression driver like Leif has, or like with the Universum, and see if they prefer it. There is a very interesting journey by a guy named Murat who went all the way up to 8-way and came back down to 2 or 3. His is probably the best system that I will not get to hear now. Bass sub can be added actively below, as it does not reduce the responsiveness of the crossover.
Matching dispersion between the mid and upper driver is not an issue if you use a smaller compression driver on top, like Leif or Universum has done. But I probably hear the incoherence in Vox Olympian because he has used a Radial for mids using the Vitavox S2, a narrow trumpet like horn above that with TAD 2002, and a bullet TAD tweeter above that. If not for the gold plating, it is a total disaster. And a one woofer midbass because many mistakes counter cancel each other, and there is always the colour of Kondo to sugarcoat over the errors.
4001 is Alnico
4003 is Neodym
the vc´s I´m not sure
the dia on 4003 have different and softer suspension and also connection points
I am also very interested in your bass solution?I am very interested in your bass unit and how it measures - hopefully one day you will be able to reveal that
Just out of interest did you use ripole math or linkwitz calcs to get to your final position or base it on pass design and do prototypes and measuring
In the Pnoe, the AER runs full range to around (below?) 40 Hz iIrc so I though at least 80 Hz should be feasible without horn loadinga friend had the AER 3 in a BD horn to 150
I am also very interested in your bass solution?
It does play up to 200 Hz if I got this right?
Why so high up? Isn't the AER capable to play a LOT lower?