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Post by svart on Nov 9, 2015 20:52:12 GMT -6
Auditioned the speakers again tonight with a wide range of music. I really think these are a winner. I wish folks lived around here so they could check them out.
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Post by svart on Nov 9, 2015 20:55:19 GMT -6
I don't necessarily want to build these, but I think people should have access to the design. At this point I'm sure if I posted the crossover design online I'd see clones popping up all over the place in no time once folks heard these.. LOL
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Post by svart on Dec 7, 2015 8:28:42 GMT -6
So what do you folks think? Should I do crossover PCBs, or what? I really feel like this design should be out there.
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Post by jcoutu1 on Dec 7, 2015 8:35:07 GMT -6
$1500/pair is too rich for my blood for something like this. I can get a pretty killer set of used speakers for $1500 that are a "tried and true" design.
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Post by svart on Dec 7, 2015 9:26:35 GMT -6
$1500/pair is too rich for my blood for something like this. I can get a pretty killer set of used speakers for $1500 that are a "tried and true" design. Unfortunately to even make it worth building the cabinets and purchasing the parts, etc, that's the price of admission until some kind of mass production could happen. Hand making cabinets takes forever. Even my cabinets that I made are pretty plain and took days to build. To build something worthy of selling would take even more time and care. People are willing to shell out 1500$ a piece for Amphions sight-unseen(or hearing-unheard?) based on internet buzz alone.. Figured some folks would like the handmade-small-production aspect.. but then again I don't really want to make speakers either. Maybe I'll just design PCBs and sell the crossovers or something, but I know that shortly thereafter I'd find the design in a "name brand" speaker.. |
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Post by jcoutu1 on Dec 7, 2015 9:41:47 GMT -6
Yep. I'm not saying that your price is bad, and I get that they're expensive to produce. It's just that the speaker market is so big that's it's hard to find a place at that price, IMO obviously.
The Amphion speakers have a full line of home audiophile speakers that get nice reviews and have been around for a few years. They've already built up a bit of a track record and seem to hold value on the used market. At $1500, I can get close to a pair of used B&W Nautilus 805's (tried and true, big name, etc).
You were in a better position with the converters because the only competition at your price was RM, and we know how he's doing.
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Post by svart on Feb 13, 2017 22:18:37 GMT -6
So I decided to revisit listening to these again, and I'm extremely surprised, yet again, at how good they turned out. I think I listened and changed things so often when I was tuning them that I forgot how great they sounded when I just listened to them.
Amphion slayers indeed.
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Post by mdmitch2 on Feb 13, 2017 23:39:51 GMT -6
Maybe you mentioned it already, but what are the dimensions of the box? I have access to a CNC mill with 4th axis. It might simplify that aspect of the build.
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Post by svart on Feb 14, 2017 13:09:58 GMT -6
Maybe you mentioned it already, but what are the dimensions of the box? I have access to a CNC mill with 4th axis. It might simplify that aspect of the build. They are roughly 12x10x8 inches I believe. Something around .75cuft iirc. |
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Post by mdmitch2 on Feb 14, 2017 14:10:07 GMT -6
Maybe you mentioned it already, but what are the dimensions of the box? I have access to a CNC mill with 4th axis. It might simplify that aspect of the build. They are roughly 12x10x8 inches I believe. Something around .75cuft iirc. That's doable... |
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Post by duke on Jun 1, 2017 23:10:15 GMT -6
So here's the expected response of the new crossover. I still found the top end to be a slight bit "hot", so I added a 2R series resistor to the tweeter to knock it down a couple dB. Here's the old one for reference: Good grief, the response with that "new crossover" is just a hair over plus or minus 1 dB from 100 Hz to about 16 kHz! I realize it's not the final version - doesn't matter, that is still very impressive work. Is that the actual measured response, or the response predicted by a modeling program, presumably using measurements you input? |
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Post by winetree on Jun 1, 2017 23:22:42 GMT -6
How about a P.S.B., a parts list, and blue prints for us DIYers.
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Post by svart on Jun 2, 2017 8:20:54 GMT -6
So here's the expected response of the new crossover. I still found the top end to be a slight bit "hot", so I added a 2R series resistor to the tweeter to knock it down a couple dB. Here's the old one for reference: Good grief, the response with that "new crossover" is just a hair over plus or minus 1 dB from 100 Hz to about 16 kHz! I realize it's not the final version - doesn't matter, that is still very impressive work. Is that the actual measured response, or the response predicted by a modeling program, presumably using measurements you input? This was a simulation based on the actual ZMA data. I have not done actual sweeps yet, just listening tests and I find that the speaker is as good or better than Amphions, but still not quite right to my ears. I found Amphion to be much too bright for my liking. These speakers are less bright, and really, really bring out the best in classical music or older recordings. I haven't really had time to mess with the speakers in a while since I've been really pushing to get the studio going again after a few months off for renovations. The 2-way speakers in this thread sound good, but there is still something in the sound that I want to adjust, but I was having a hard time figuring out what it was, so that's where I stopped last time. When I worked on the metal coned 3-way speakers, I heard a similar sound and found it's coming from the tweeter. In order to feel better about these speakers, I'd like to figure out what the thing I hear is, and see if I can change it. It's obviously from the metal-domed tweeter across multiple speakers, so it's inherent to the tweeter design. I've also talked with folks about taking over the design once I finished tweaking the speaker, so I don't know if I'd necessarily release it as DIY just yet. At one point I thought about selling pre-made crossovers for 1cuft boxes, but there didn't seem to be a market for DIY speaker builders in pro-audio. |
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Post by duke on Jun 2, 2017 18:59:54 GMT -6
Good grief, the response with that "new crossover" is just a hair over plus or minus 1 dB from 100 Hz to about 16 kHz! I realize it's not the final version - doesn't matter, that is still very impressive work. Is that the actual measured response, or the response predicted by a modeling program, presumably using measurements you input? This was a simulation based on the actual ZMA data. I have not done actual sweeps yet, just listening tests and I find that the speaker is as good or better than Amphions, but still not quite right to my ears. I found Amphion to be much too bright for my liking. These speakers are less bright, and really, really bring out the best in classical music or older recordings. I haven't really had time to mess with the speakers in a while since I've been really pushing to get the studio going again after a few months off for renovations. The 2-way speakers in this thread sound good, but there is still something in the sound that I want to adjust, but I was having a hard time figuring out what it was, so that's where I stopped last time. When I worked on the metal coned 3-way speakers, I heard a similar sound and found it's coming from the tweeter. In order to feel better about these speakers, I'd like to figure out what the thing I hear is, and see if I can change it. It's obviously from the metal-domed tweeter across multiple speakers, so it's inherent to the tweeter design. I've also talked with folks about taking over the design once I finished tweaking the speaker, so I don't know if I'd necessarily release it as DIY just yet. At one point I thought about selling pre-made crossovers for 1cuft boxes, but there didn't seem to be a market for DIY speaker builders in pro-audio. Very impressive job of hitting the target with that crossover design. Obviously you have mastered the stage of "being able to hit the target"... the next higher up stage is "figuring out where the target really is," because you can nail what you thought was the target, and then it turns out, it still doesn't sound quite right.
And kudos for being honest enough with yourself to be able to listen critically to your own creation... well, I suppose that sorta comes with the territory around here.
I have found that there is virtually always enough discrepancy between my modeled response and my subsequent measured response to call for a bit of crossover tweakage. Be sure to measure carefully - bad data is worse than no data - and then adjust your sights, so to speak, before you tweak the crossover, so that your actual measured response is what hits the target. Even if you haven't yet figured out "where the target really is", at a minimum you need good measurements to tell you where your design really is.
You mentioned something not right that is coming from the tweeter. I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions - feel free to ignore them!
Does the tweeter on your two-way have a flat faceplate? How about the tweeter on your 3-way? What are the ballpark crossover frequencies between midwoof and tweet on the two-way, and between mid and tweet on the three-way, if you don't mind? Any significant dips in your impedance curve?
Thanks!
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Jun 14, 2017 21:46:46 GMT -6
Hey Svart,
I have been reading this thread with some interest. I have been involved with the groupdiy community for some years now but I have not found too much information in the DIY studio monitors department.
If you get a chance would you be able to provide some thoughts on crossover design and speaker time alignment as well as the design considerations in your speaker choice.
Cheers
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Post by svart on Jun 16, 2017 13:05:40 GMT -6
Hey Svart, I have been reading this thread with some interest. I have been involved with the groupdiy community for some years now but I have not found too much information in the DIY studio monitors department. If you get a chance would you be able to provide some thoughts on crossover design and speaker time alignment as well as the design considerations in your speaker choice. Cheers Most of the DIY speaker information on the internet centers around handy audiophiles who'd rather build than buy. I can't say that any single one of them has all the answers, but for me the answers come as bits of information from all sources. If you read enough and play around enough with the sims and actually building speakers, then these bits start making sense together. However, you still have to sift through the technobabble and egotism that a lot of audiophiles have in order to find what works. I haven't found that it's nearly as big of a problem with the DIY speaker crowd as it is with the folks who just buy stuff, probably because you have to have a realistic scientific approach to building speakers.. For crossovers, you have a lot of variables to play with that can affect your design. You can go low-order with the filters but you'll have drivers that might be strained, or you can go high order and end up with group-delay issues and/or impedance problems. I don't prescribe to doing anything terribly outlandish in my designs. I just do what's necessary to get the outcome I want. For the drivers on this project I aimed to work with metal cones/domes to approximate the Amphion speakers, nothing more. The metal cones have interesting qualities like low distortion, but also have bad qualities like very bad breakup nodes that need to be tamed. I've also come to recognize the sound of the cones as they do have a distinct sound once you notice it. it's most prevalent in the tweeter, which I might try replacing with silk domes to get some of the tone to settle down. |
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Post by ericn on Jun 16, 2017 17:58:56 GMT -6
Hey Svart, I have been reading this thread with some interest. I have been involved with the groupdiy community for some years now but I have not found too much information in the DIY studio monitors department. If you get a chance would you be able to provide some thoughts on crossover design and speaker time alignment as well as the design considerations in your speaker choice. Cheers From a design point this is where a digital drive rack and a bunch of Amps come in handy, while passive act differently it's a nice place to start! |
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Jun 17, 2017 2:33:01 GMT -6
Hey Svart, I have been reading this thread with some interest. I have been involved with the groupdiy community for some years now but I have not found too much information in the DIY studio monitors department. If you get a chance would you be able to provide some thoughts on crossover design and speaker time alignment as well as the design considerations in your speaker choice. Cheers Most of the DIY speaker information on the internet centers around handy audiophiles who'd rather build than buy. I can't say that any single one of them has all the answers, but for me the answers come as bits of information from all sources. If you read enough and play around enough with the sims and actually building speakers, then these bits start making sense together. However, you still have to sift through the technobabble and egotism that a lot of audiophiles have in order to find what works. I haven't found that it's nearly as big of a problem with the DIY speaker crowd as it is with the folks who just buy stuff, probably because you have to have a realistic scientific approach to building speakers.. For crossovers, you have a lot of variables to play with that can affect your design. You can go low-order with the filters but you'll have drivers that might be strained, or you can go high order and end up with group-delay issues and/or impedance problems. I don't prescribe to doing anything terribly outlandish in my designs. I just do what's necessary to get the outcome I want. For the drivers on this project I aimed to work with metal cones/domes to approximate the Amphion speakers, nothing more. The metal cones have interesting qualities like low distortion, but also have bad qualities like very bad breakup nodes that need to be tamed. I've also come to recognize the sound of the cones as they do have a distinct sound once you notice it. it's most prevalent in the tweeter, which I might try replacing with silk domes to get some of the tone to settle down. Awesome, I keep an eye on the speaker section on diyaudio forum. Once I have got these microphone builds off my bench I will have a more of a look into building speakers. I was interested in how you choose the drivers as bringing them into NZ can get expensive as we do not have a supplier of quality drivers that i know of. This thread is very interesting as it is studio focused with the additional ability to hear about your comparisons to other studio monitors/Amphion. So hopefully we continue to hear how these evolve.  |
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