No.4

Next. Should have checked here before dinner and cocktail hour!!

Absolutely! It’s amazing how much I actually get done around here when I am almost always home. I am allready done with a summers worth of chores! I do get about the same amount of listening time though sadly. For example, I downloaded new firmware for my Parks puffin on Friday, loaded it to my puffin yesterday, and am finally listening tonight. The scarcity makes each session special right? Or maybe the double stack heils do.....

A bunch of good people have a birthday today. Specifically, my oldest daughter, her 12th, my buddy from college and another buddies daughter. Her first. Happy birthday.

For $200 you can’t go wrong. I am thinking about getting another one to see if I can smooth out the response of my horn sub.

No it is not. However, if you can follow simple instructions you can be listening to music in minutes. I cannot speak for the other active crossovers, but I can say, the MiniDSP HD is user friendly.

So true. I’m still not sure if I should laugh or be terrified.

If you look closely at the picture you can see that the heils go in to the waveguides from the bottom. The heils are attached to the bow tie and they slide in as one piece, and mount to the bottom side of the wave guide. The wires are all connected and taped along the beveled edge of the heil. The beveled edge creates a small void for the wires to pass between the inside wall of the waveguide and the heil. I ran the wires through a small hole on the inside of the waveguide where the heil meets the waveguide. This passes through the void of the wings out to the binding posts. The wire is a little long so I could feed it into the void and pull it through slowly as I lower the heil assembly into the wave guide. The wires then attach to the binding posts and the post plates are screwed to the side of the wings. If I ever decide I want to hide the wires I can just swap the wing assemblies from one side to the other. I should have taken more pictures!

Thank you for all the kind words. My project would not have been possible though, without all of the valuable input from everyone who contributed to this thread especially @Chris A @Rudy81 and @Thaddeus Smith . Thank you guys!!!

I also made this so I could trace the edges closest to the heil without having to use the heil. I made more jigs for this project than most I have done in the past. Which I guess was one of my goals when I started this project. I wanted everything to be consistent and repeatable. For the most part it was a success, however, I definitely learned a lot for next time.

I laid out the design on a sacrificial piece of plywood first. This is also the board I made my glue/clamp jig out of so all the halves would be consistent. The main angles are 45 degrees and the face of the waveguides is 12 inches from the heil to the point. You should be able to get the measurements you need by drawing it up on a piece of paper. I’m sure many would be willing to help if you have questions.

Sure. The lighting is not the greatest. It’s been a little overcast here the last few days.

If you do decide to build these (and I highly recommend you do) do yourself a favor and make the design with as few complex angles as possible. Assuming you will want to finish these in some way, the fewer angles you will have to compete with the better. I made mine very complex, and while I am happy with the way they turned out, they were very time consuming and challenging to veneer. Luckily all my mistakes are on the back sides😉.

Breakfast this morning. I could not get to it before my wife cut a few pieces. Delicious!

After going through this thread I am freakin starving!

I like the rack for the Schitt components.

@Rudy81 glad to see you back at it!

Not necessarily, while it does require some set up it is not that difficult initially. As far as cost is concerned it depends on what you are comparing. A stock setup, yes. Aftermarket setup probably not. Before converting to the Heil/wings I was using ALK extreme slope networks, B&C DCM 50 midrange drivers, Eliptrac horns and Dayton AMT tweeters. I will let you do the math. To be fair I am using a MiniDSP HD which is inexpensive by comparison. I am very pleased so far with the MiniDSP HD. I am not experiencing any noise from the drivers at idle as some had reported with the non HD version. The daunting part of this for me is setting up the DSP. @Chris A was nice enough to offer his help to get me get beyond the basic setup. However getting the inputs and outputs assigned, and the basic crossover frequencies for each driver is very straightforward. This will get you listing to these in minutes. This will also allow you to get some baseline measurements. The drivers do break in so the initial settings will have to be revisited. That is where I am at now. I took the plunge and went through the instructions on how to generate PEQ settings in REW for the DSP plugin. It took me about 10 measurements to get a good response from the settings. I will post the curve below. I probably still need to tweak the time alignment a little. There is a good thread started by Chris that I will finish going through to make those adjustments soon. I am sure that there are many other tweaks I can make to my crossover file to further improve the sound, but at this moment it sounds nothing short of amazing. Much better than my previous set up. The best part of the DSP network is you can make adjustments, measure, make adjustments all in real time. I did not have to unplug anything or swap cables around to go from measuring, updating the network and listening to music. I think everyone on this forum has the ability to figure this out.

Great news! Now get home and crank up some tunes!

What size and quantity do you need?

If I can find some quiet time in the house today I am going to take a few measurements to see if there have been any changes to the response of AMTs after some use.

I would like to build on my above comments and talk about the imaging of this configuration. The more “critical” listening I do, the more soundstage really shines. My previous horn setup had very good left to right imaging. The soundstage had a little depth front to back but it was rather limited. The AMT and waveguides however, have excellent depth, left to right and floor to ceiling presentation. A good recording appears to be very three dimensional. This offers a much better live feel to the music. I did a little experimenting with the position of the AMTs in relation to the front edge of the bass bin to see or hear if it had any effect on the soundstage. Surprisingly I did not think there was a huge benefit in my room to have the AMTs all the way to the front edge. This was somewhat of a relief because now I would not have to have the waveguides hanging off the front edge. Positioning the AMTs closer to the middle of the cab I was getting great instrument placement much closer to the floor on some recordings that I never experienced with my previous horns. The depth is very welcoming on most recordings, I was listening to a Mozart recording I enjoy and it was definitely benefiting from the improved depth. With the lights off and the volume up you could trick yourself into thinking you were in the audience.

I see what you like about it. This album has a lot of classic genre influence, and it is recorded really well. It will give your system a good workout. Good bass and tons of imaging. Most of what I listen to is Indy, It’s good to find new. There is so much great new music out there.

The Michter’s bourbon is delicious, I would highly recommend it. The rye which which is what I am drinking now is also very good, unusual for a rye though.

Luckily my apocalypse reserves of the staples, Evan Williams and old Overholt are very strong at this point. However, I am down to one glass of Michter’s..... so yeah I will have to venture out. Maybe.