dan4510

I figure the costs for the boards, power supply, and upgraded op amps is about $270. The box was about $50. If you figure my time at a measly $25 an hour for wiring, box building, etc...that was about $500-$750. So, i could have bought one from marchand for that price. However, my feeling of ownership after doing the work is much more than just handing over money. Plus, I have a one of a kind box for the crossover to reside in. Also, since I have it up and running a while, its even better than I thought after giving the system some serious listening. The 24db/oct slopes seem to have given the system a much more focused sound stage. Listening to any type of music I can spot where each instrument is, movement of hands along guitars, and where each drum is as the drummer goes from one to another. Vocals are stunning. Real is the only word I can use. I have some really good recordings and its spooky, the music seems to be recreated in my room. The speakers recede and all that is left is music. The crossover points are 450 and 4500 and since I have extensive hearing damage, I thought I might not hear any highs. Not true, they seem to have reappeared and are real. In the last iteration of the setup I let the mid just poop out on its own and just used a capacitor to protect the tweeter which gave a 6db/oct slope. The highs were not there as much as now. So, Al K is correct in stating that extreme slope gives a much better integration between drivers. I would urge everyone to try higher slope orders, I bet you will be surprised. I am extremely pleased with how this crossover turned out and how much better it made my system sound. And I have to give cudos to Phil Marchand, I had a few problems getting everything up and running and he was kind enough to lend support to get me going. Dan

Have the crossover finished and installed. All I can say, its amazing what this has done for my system. The detail is superb, bass is superb and better controlled than before. Voices both male and female seem real. On a good recording the music seems to be live in the room. I got goose bumps listening to music I thought I was very familiar with. I have owned several very expensive sets of speakers and with the marchand crossover my belle clones beat them all! Dan

I keep coming back to this forum for one reason: all the good ideas being bandied about. It seems like this year may be the time to jump on some new technology or do the ultimate build I want. However, you guys keep inventing and tweaking and my ultimate keeps changing. Keep it up. Dan

I use gorilla glue. I have built two subwoofers and a belle clone. On each build I also screw and clamp all pieces. It takes extra time to drill pilot holes and get the screws right, but when i am done and the glue is dry,,,it seems the unit becomes one solid piece. If you use gorilla glue, wear gloves because it discolors skin. And make sure joined pieces are clean and damp. Dont use much or it squeezed out everywhere. But it is good stuff. Dan

Very beautiful build. If it sounds as good as it looks, you have a winner. Dan

Bill, I honestly don't know about any of your questions. I ran across the source forge crossover when doing another search. Right now am finishing up a marchand crossover and want to play with that before I go a software route. But looks very interesting. I would have to build another computer, buy a soundcard, and figure out amp and control. Dan

http://xover.sourceforge.net/ Text from the webpage describing this free software. It looks interesting, I am thinking of trying this. foo_dsp_xover is a software digital crossover implementation that I have been working on for a while in my spare time as a hobby. It is a foobar2000 audio player plugin that implements this digital crossover to achieve active multi-amplification. This software needs to run on a WinXP PC equipped with a multi-channel sound card (e.g. 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound card) feeding the various voices of a multi-amplifier and loudspeaker active configuration set-up. Opinions? Dan

Its a variation on the classic jensen/onken design. Dan

Front of box after stain.

Box Completed with four sides and stained.

More pics. Wiring done except for 110 supply to power up with. I am not the most organized with the wiring, but it goes where its supposed to and is soldered llike it should be. Now I just gotta finish the box. Gonna have a hinged lid so I either have it closed or open to look at. Dan

another picture Dan

more pics

More Progress. Wired the power supply side. Put rca ins and out on back board of box and pots on front part of box. Next step is wire up all the ins and outs to the crossover boards. Dan

Latest update on my crossover build. Mocked up how I am gonna place the boards in the box. Box is made of 1/4" thick red oak. Will finish building box, stain it, and put electronics back in wire it up. Hopefully in the next two weeks. Can't wait to complete it and hook it up. Dan

I bought the op amps from http://www.digikey.com, part number was OPA2134PA-ND Burr Brown cost about $4 each ************************************** The pots were from http://www.abra-electronics.com part number P2W10K, 2 Watt Linear Taper Potentiometers- 10K Ohms got knobs to fit also from them part number KN-1 I bought the linear taper since that was what marchand recommends. Dan

Sounds like quite a guy. Many people work and do not get credit for their contributions. You just tipped the balance in a little fairer direction on that one Al. Dan

Yeh, I am getting older. Turned 52 this month and have had a lot of health problems during the last 20 years. Its been several years since I tried close work like this and found out I lost a lot of steadyness, fine motor control, and up close detail on my eyes. Only thing that really bothers me about this is the implications for using a handgun for self defense...may have to move up to a pump shotgun to make sure I hit now...lol They say there is nothing louder in the dead of night than a pump shotgun racking in a shell. Oh, well, you live and learn. I got it done anyway and they look quite good, all the solider points are solid and I cant wait till i get the box done and everything wired up and see how it sounds. Dan

And to be honest, this was a job. I found out how much my hands shake, how blind I am and how hot the end of a soldering iron is, not once but several times. One last bit of advice, DON'T SOLDIER WHILE WEARING SHORTS! Dan, recovering from the pain....

Also bought the best pots I could find, were about $12 each, far beyond what comes on any manufacturere equipment. spent several hours researching this to make sure I had the right curves, values, etc. The pots are the round things at teh top of the photo lined up. Use two for midrange adjustment, two for tweeter adjustment. Midrange is 117d/meter/watt efficient, tweeter is 107d/m/watt efficient. Dan

Ok, here is as far as I have gone. Built the four boards. Now am gonna build a red oak box to put it in that is 3" tall, 12" deep, and 17" wide. Ordered the power supply already built. Also upgraded to almost the best opamps. After research it turns out that the opamps used can be a be determinate of the sound produced. So I researched them and the almost best was $4 an opamp opposed for the best at $9 an opamp. It seems that the difference between the two is not much. However, the difference between the opamps supplied with the kit and the $4 ones I bought is huge. Found out the opamps provided with the kit can be bought for less than 50cents each, so it was a worth while upgrade. Crossove points will be 450 and 4500 at 24db/octave. I bought other crossover modules to experiment with at 400, 500, 3000, 3500, 4000. My midrange is a JBL 2482 on a jbl 2380 horn. Frequency range is 300-5000. My tweeter is JBL 2404 with frequency range of 3000-20,000. I picked the 4500 point to try first to try and keep the most sound produced by the midrange and it starts pooping out at 4800 or so. Right now I have no crossover on the high point of the midrange, I just let the drive go out on its own and use a capacitor to block under about 4400 for the tweeter. It sounds great, but I think it will be even better with the electronic crossover at all crossover points. Dan

I built one using a partsexpress 15" high fidelity reference driver. Went to home depot bought mdf to make a 24" cube with some bracing. Used a free program to cut the right sizes to come up with the 24" cube. It does weight about 80lbs. Built the cube put in a 240 watt parts express amp, stuffed it with fill out out of two polyeaster pillowsand it rocks. I built it sealed and it will still vibrate the couch and punch your chest. You can put a bash 500 watt amp with it and do ports and it will really rock and go very low. I havent prettied mine up yet, but I do like the jet black driver and how it sounds. Only cost about $275 total and about 6 hours going slow. And I have the pride of having built it along with my Klipsch Belle Clones Dan

I can't speak to the klipsch brand of horns/drivers but can put my 2 cents in about 1" versus 2" drivers. I started out with a set of JBL l200 speakers. A 15 inch woofer and a 1 driver horn in one cabinet. It sounded honky so, I bought a jbl 2470 tractrix based set of horns and moved the driver to the top of the cabinet wired into the stock crossover. That was a tremendous improvement, everything sounded natural instead of honky. Next iteration was going to an active crossover 24db/octave at 800hz, same frequency as the jbl crossover. I was not pleased as the top end seemed to drop off, so I added a jbl 2404 tweeter with a passive crossover and it sounded excellent. But, when the music was loud the midrange seemed to not be as clear, so i had a chance to buy two older jbl 2482 drivers for a great price. 2 inch compression driver, with 4 inch phenolic diaphram. Also bought jbl 2380 tractrix based horns. Left all as was and simply plugged in the larger mid-horn combination and had the best sound ever out of that combination. About 2000 I discovered Klipsch again and found a set of plans for the belle. Built a clone of the belle woofer horn with bob crites woofer. Then went to a 350hz active crossover and used the jbl 2482 driver/2380 horn mid and 2404tweeter with the same passive crossover. The published range on the jbl 2482 is 300hz to 4500hz. This was the next step up, I did not have as much bass as the jbl ll200 setup, but with this setup and a good recording it seemed the speakers disappeared and the music was in the room, live! Only other mod has been a diy sub to fill in the bottom in, now I am in nirvana! For my 2 cents, going from a 1" driver to a 2" driver made a difference that was more than worth the mony, even if it cost a good bit for the extra amp, active crossover, and tweeters. My speakers can only be called "industrial" since I did not go beyond just making the bottom horn and staining it and using just piece of plywood to hand the midhorn and tweeter on. One day I will pretty it up, but thinking of a jubilee build first. All of the jbl stuff is at the extreme top end of quality and the only time I have heard anything better was a set of klipschorns setup in a correct room with $25,000 of mcintosh equipment driving them. For the total $ I havein the system I am extremely pleased. Dan

I wanted to experiment with tri amping for quite a while. Bought a kit from marchand with 24db slopes and cross at 450 hz and 4500 hz. Replaced the cheap opamps with high dollar ones and really looking forward to hooking this up. Am also building a custom wood box out of red oak to put it in. As I go along I will post pictures. Will give me incentive to finally stain all areas of the speakers so they look good. Dan

Great Build! Very interested in how this measures. Dan