Help with new design [message #81315] |
Tue, 12 May 2015 17:19 |
SantinoSan
Messages: 5 Registered: May 2015 Location: United States
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Esquire |
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OK, here is what brings me here to the Pi forums. I am in process of making a 3 way, high efficiency speaker. It will be fully active and use a mid and high horn. I have decided for now to use a SEOS12 waveguide with the B&C 250 CD. The woofer is a B&C 15NDL76. The mid has not been decided yet.
My first choice was a SEOS 24 loaded with either a Radian 745 or 951. I have the 745 in my possession, but the RCF horn I am using is introducing too much ripple. I also found out over 12k it breaks up pretty badly. I have considered a beryllium diapgram to eliminate the beakup, but they are pricey. The Radian was a chance to go two way due to its low crossover of 500hz, but I still want a three way design. So, I could still go Radian and BIG SEOS 24 and cross around 500 hz...but then I started thinking about the Parham midhorn. It will load lower, has plenty of efficiency, is much cheaper...but, will it blend? Not sure of the voicing versus a large format horn. How will the directivity match the SEOS? What about distortion? It does have the bandwidth I need as I'll likely cross it around 1.2K due to vertical spacing.
So any opinion, ideas, criticisms. Just looking for educated opinions that may help guide the way.
Thanks,
SantinoSan
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Re: Help with new design [message #81318 is a reply to message #81317] |
Wed, 13 May 2015 09:10 |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18786 Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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The problem is you can't consider any horn or waveguide to be generic, because they all manifest specific characteristics and those must be accounted for in the crossover. The directivity, passsband, acoustic center and acoustic load are different for each device.
But to speak solely about the configuration - A constant directivity cornerhorn can be implemented as a two-way loudspeaker. I did that for a few years. Everything is an exercise in balancing priorities, of course. The midrange is best run pretty low, in my opinion, so it can be coupled to the boundaries at the low end and so it blends well with the bass bin. This tends to limit it on the high end, since all horns have bandpass characteristics. That's why I've usually run constant directivity cornerhorns as three-way systems like they are now.
About a comparison between compression drivers and cone midranges for large-format midhorns, each has specific advantages but I think a cone driver is clearly the best choice for the low midrange. It's a matter of displacement, something that the compression driver just doesn't have. The cone driver has larger surface area and more excursion capacity, both needed for lower frequencies.
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