vasubandu

I still have my Jurassic Park Collection of Blu-Rays. Have not opened it yet because I still don't have a Blu-Ray player. But if I press it really hard to my forehead and squeeze my eyes shut, I get 13.4 sound out of it. Embarrassing to admit that I still have not watched a Blu-Ray.

Off-topic question (now there's a surprise), but I don't want to clutter the forum up with needless topics. Voilti Audio sells a replacement for the Fc260 and Fc280 horns that are described as "Built with a 2" throat and a known tractrix flare." What would one use to produce sound with these? Would it need to be a 2" driver of some kind? As Barbie would say, "Horns are hard." Just trying to understand a few things. I found this comment by @Al Klappenberger way back in 2010 There is simply no good reason to go to a 2-inch throat horn unless you are running levels approaching those needed for a movie theater. The pressure in the throat of a horn is a function of the volume level and the diameter. The higher the level and the smaller the diameter the more the pressure. The higher the pressure the more distortion is generated. At volume levels a normal person can even stand in a home environment is well below the level where distortion becomes noticeable in a 1-inch horn. At normal listening levels, a 2-inch horn boils down to spending $1200 for a $200 improvement! With a Khorn there is another factor however. Evan at normal listening levels there is no quality 1-inch driver available that can reproduce 400 Hz without distortion, which is the required crossover frequency for a Khorn. Only the stock K55 can handle it. It takes a 2-inch driver to actually improve on a K55, which is really not a bad driver at all. All this boils down to if you want to improve on the K55. If so, you MUST go 2-inch! By far, the best bang for the buck is moving from the stock K400 to a better 1-inch horn and keep the k55. The difference will knock your socks off! But then there was this from @greg928gts During my 20 year ownership of Khorns, I went through a long upgrade path, and I spent a great deal of money along the way. I don't regret any of it, that's the hobby - the never-ending process that is being an audiophile. I am currently enjoying the best sound I have ever had from my Khorns, and a big part of that comes from the larger format, 2" throat horn and 2" outlet midrange driver combination for the midrange. The K55 is a remarkably good midrange driver, considering the age of the design and the simplicity of the construction, but I found that I had to get away from that type of driver to really get the most from the midrange in my own system, and I'm really glad I did it. Decisions about any part of an audiophile's system are always driven by budget. My advice to you is to seek out and talk directly to at least a few people (not one or two) that have switched to the larger format. Many of those who have switched to the larger format had already upgraded to different midrange horns using the same smaller format K55 drivers in the past, and they can offer a particularly good perspective on the cost/benefit ratio. You are welcome to contact me directly and I can put you in touch with dozens of people who are extremely happy that they upgraded to the larger format midrange. Greg Now I am really confused, even for me. You know all those designs of the big speakers with 2 huge woofers top and bottom with the fat lips sticking out the middle? What are those lips and what is behind it? Just trying to put pieces together.

My wife and I met in 1984 when we were studying abroad in France, and that was my introduction to bottled water. The source for Evian was not far away, and it was preferred by the locals. As water goes, it is Champagne. It has a very distinctive taste without having a taste. When the water is that good, bottled water makes sense. And all of the bottled waters in Europe has specific sources. When we got back to the U.S> I tried to start a bottled water company that would secure a source somewhere high in the mountains in Colorado and call it Rocky Mountain Bottled Water. Everyone told me that I was nuts and that no one would ever pay for bottled water. I guess some things never change. These days, most bottled water is treated municipal water or the equivalent. People are buying tap water and not even good tap water. I think even Evian sells some U.S. source water here. Good bottled water is worth the trip.

The diffusion of the curved panels is proving to be an issue I had not expected. Who knew that tubes had rules? I have read about putting lots of stuff in them, but never itchy fiberglass before. I was thinking maybe one of the kids. And yes, this is fun, at least for me.

I was not sure so I ordered 2. Did not want to have wiring issues.

I have to say that he achieved the unobtrusive effect with putting it in the corner and the exterior finish. Would not work easily for me. The left front corner has a window all the way to the end, and the right from corner is another 100 feet away in a nook. I am really looking forward to his plans, and hope will comment on the round idea.

@SWL it has not arrived yet and i could return it. Any reason to upgrade. It was so cheap it really did not matter.

@SWL if you mean this https://www.minidsp.com/products/minidsp-in-a-box/minidsp-2x4, I have already ordered it. A guy names BassThatHz in AVS told me I needed one. I have come to trust his advice, so when he said to get one, I just did.

Thanks @SWL that certainly looks like a more developed idea for the tower concept than I could ever create. I ordered his plans and will have to see them. In a perfect world, they could be adapted to a round column. I sent him an email, so I hope he will answer.

I just ordered his plans and sent him an email asking for a little advice. Thanks. This looks like it might be a much better approach. If he responds, I will post what he has to say.

It is even harder to be all over the map. When I say something different, I mean different for me. Something that pushes my boundaries, not the boundaries of knowledge. But I certainly get it. I was going to pick up the plywood pieces today but pushed off to tomorrow. I know it is backwards in some senses, but the plywood is not exact, and I have not worked with it before. It will have to be strong enough and stable enough to hold up a 115 pound driver, and it seemed to make sense to have something physical to measure before spending $1,279 apiece on the drivers. I want to take the shell and do all the calculations to be sure it will work first. It seems like the drivers are a known, so I do not have to have them in hand to make sure that they will work. I have a lot of learning to do, both in general terms and in mastering the software. I want to be absolutely positive that things will fit, and that will take a little while. I have learned the hard way that rushing things never works.

Should I see if he will take $700 and take them to the airport for you? Hey you know what? Miami is good, not bad. Those two CF-4 shipped to Hamburg by boat. 3-4 weeks, $300 for both. This might be worth some work with with owner.

I really enjoyed your post. I am a baseball guy so the analogy worked. Of course the Oakland A's turned everything upside down with their moneyball theory, but after a few years, it seemed not to work anymore. So maybe it was a fluke. The thing is, I am not really trying to create something new, unique and mind blowing. All of those really concern the reaction that other people have. I don't care how people react to whatever I make or what they think about it except to the extent that I choose to care. This is not about proving something to anyone but myself. I do care what the people here think because I consider them friends or community for all of the help that they have given me, and because I respect their knowledge and experience. And I am trying to take all of that into account while still trying my project and testing my ideas for myself. I get how frustrating it must be so see someone on a collision course with a brick wall who won't listen to you telling them how to avoid it, but in my own world and for my own purposes, I don't mind running into that wall. I expect to learn a lot through the process, and almost all of it is reusable. I think that I have come across an some kind of know-it-all who thinks he is going to rewrite subwoofer history. I sometimes express myself that way even when I don't mean to. I really am just having fun and trying to compress a lot of learning and experience into a single project. With any luck, this project will give me some insights that will allow me to decide what I want to achieve in a subwoofer in a way that is based on reality instead of numbers.

And the sounds it elicited were definitely low and powerful.

Yo may be right. I have found precisely zero pricing information. Not even a mention in an article. Maybe it is crazy expensive. Would be a blast to somehow get a used one and see what it does.

When I started this, I really thought that my 2004 PB2 Plus was as good as current subs, just older. I thought that there were come improvements along the way, but the basic design was the same, and I expected that performance would be within fairly narrow parameters. Comments by @CECAA850 made me go do some serious research, and it showed that he is absolutely correct. Far more correct than I thought possible, and really more correct than he says. If I think back to a 2004 model car and compare it to one made today, the difference is night and day. Not just in terms of style, but performance, efficiency and quality. The difference in subwoofers over the same time seems to be vastly greater than the difference in cars. It was when I finally got what @CECAA850 was saying that I realized the stupidity of pursuing that 2000 B4 Plus. No matter how good it was at the time, a pair of good current 12-inch subs would run circles around it. I really don't see the same advances in other speakers. I guess subs just had more room for improvement. Anyway, I was dead wrong in going for 15-year old sub designs, and it really colored my perspective about what is possible with subwoofers today.

I would never throw in the towel until it was the last thing I had. And I have taken @wvu80 up on his offer, which present more an additional rather than different direction. I still do not see what is so deviant about my project. It is dual opposed HS-24 drivers in an enclosure with amount of space recommended by the designer. The space is all entirely open. It will have the appropriate number and type of ports as determined by calculations. It is true that I am starting with the enclosure and working backwards, but just about any series of calculations can be done starting with the variables or the result to reach the same answer. Your comment about the K-horns makes complete sense. In a perfect world, our speakers would cover the entire range adequately, and we would not need a secondary source. Like you, I really could not imagine listening to music with a subwoofer.

They have eliminated some kind of obstacle in what a lot of people are calling a breakthrough. I do not understand how it works or how it would affect enclosure volume. A few references I saw seemed to suggest that the required volume may be very high. It is very frustrating that detailed specs seem to be unavailable. I am trying to get hold of a La Vegas rep for one of the companies to see if I can get some more information. I obviously overstated the case when I called it the death of subwoofers as we know them, but it does seem like this technology will work its way down the food chain. As far as I can tell, the installations to date have not just been night clubs, but huge night clubs and things like the Superbowl halftime show. Have seen nothing about scaling the device down to a size for a room.

I am in the planning stage for a new subwoofer, so I decided to make sure it would not be obsolete before I finished it. That sounds like a silly concerns, but turns out that it isn't. In 1995, an Itialian compay called Powersoft Audio (http://www.powersoft-audio.com) developed Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technology that vastly improved the performance of audio amplifiers. As I understand it, this essentially became Class D amplifiers. Powersoft somehow leveraged this technology to create an entirely new kind of transducer. Insatead of a coil, it uses a moving magnet linear motor structure. It actually looks like this They unleashed it no the world as the M-Force. (http://mforce.powersoft.it/) A number of companies are now making them, but they are being used for things like very large clubs and the Superbowl show. https://www.pksound.ca/products/gravity-30 https://mag-cinema.com/mag-cinema-thor https://www.prosoundweb.com/channels/live-sound/atk_audiotek_unleashes_custom_subwoofers_driven_by_powersoft_m-force_transd/# http://www.auraaudio.fi/xd-series.html This is not something that is going to happen. It is happening, just has not trickled down to our level yet. It is a 30-inch unit, and I think the housing is large. Every single review I have read says that this is orders of magnitude better than what is in use now. Everyone seems to agree that this is happening around us. It appears to be a better technology. I am just going by what I have read. Anyone have thoughts?

Typical for my efforts. Yes, I have heard them, and I loved them. Big robust sound that wrapped its arms around me. I found a pair for $400 in South Dakota, but too far away. I'll find another some day I am sue. I did notice how many people jumped on the bandwagon. Not used to that.

Yeah that is exactly what I mean and why I think $1,600 is out of line. I have kind of moved on anyway. At this point, I am more intrigued with the JTR NOESIS 212HT, which has 2 12-inch drivers and a compression driver. http://jtrspeakers.com/noesis-212ht.html. Then again as long as I am dreaming, give me his three-way NOESIS 215RT with two 15” woofers and a coaxial compression driver. Failing that I could live with a pair of Rey Audio Kinoshita RM-6VC. They run about $30,000 a pair, but who is counting.

Nope. Just too expensive. The CF-4 is in a class of its own. The CF-1-3 are nice speakers but not something that can't be replaced. And the CF-3 is the end of the line with no parts. I don't have much of a basis for this other than my subjective opinions, but I would be more like $200 for a CF-3 or $400 a pair, and $800 a pair for the CF-4. I know they have sold for twice that , and I just mean what I would pay. South Dakota ruined me. Plus my attention is focused on my subwoofer project, as is my budget. And on top of that I have two people trying to sell me JTR speakers.

Some of the stuff I cam across invovled thing like vibrating thicker material - like half an inch thick, some stuff with various carbon substances, so nano particle stuff which made no sense to me, and something that generated a controlled shock wave. Some of this was in patent applications, which is supposed to mean that it can be shown to work. Our bidies make sound with vocal cords. why not something based on that? My impression so far is that sound generation has pretty much escaped the advance of technology. I don't count doing the same thing the same way better to be the advance of technology. We can digitize sound, but the end point is still analog. Sound waves are just inherently different from electricity and light. The only word I can come up with for sound is primitive.

Good point. I am going to cancel that air speaker order. Or maybe I will just send them back if they don't sound great. And actually, when something interests me, I try very hard to drill down to the original source. I read an article on the air speaker, but it did not give the company name,. Took me a while to find them, and then I wrote to the company for information. I am always surprised at how willing people are to share information if you ask them for it. But the air speaker is pretty much all smoke and mirrors. Its domain name was purchased from Godaddy.com in 2016, and its domain is held by domainsbyproxy.com. Not the sign of a substantial enterprise.

Thanks @Max2. I have been more careful than it may appear about costs. Most of it cane be easily recovered or reused. I could just make one or two new subs with the drivers, and the amp will power both however it is done. The wooden tube will run me $500, and if it does not work out, I will have to find some other purpose for it or burn it. Maybe I will keep the door on it and sell it to Seattle as a prototype for a green public restroom. I am guessing that I will have about $1,000 of nonrecoverable costs into it. That is not insignificant, but considering how many hours of fun I will have with it, not bad entertainment value. If I know nothing about subwoofers, my knowledge of horn loaded subwoofers goes into the negative. It is a very intriguing thought, and I need to check it out; Do they have similar sealed/vented and space issues, or are they just totally different? I have indeed thought about separating the spaces as you suggest. It will be designed with that in mind so that I can easily create the separation without removing a driver. With the door, I should be able to try all kinds of things with it, and my notion was to develop the ability to measure the effects and keep good records. Sort of more laboratory than subwoofer. That is what I have not explained very well to everyone. "Experimentation and something to mess around with" as you put it is about as good as it gets for me. And by the way you are dead right about the R&D. There are a lot of subwoofer patents in the works, and some of them have radically different ways of producing sound. I don't even understand a lot of them. The same it true of speakers. I am still stuck on the one that uses air to make sound. No kidding. This is their speaker. http://www.waveion.net/ I sent an email to the guy behind it, and he actually responded. Sometimes people will. This is what he said. Ionic loudspeaker, located in the upper part of the acoustic system provides the pulsation of the air column, thus generating axially symmetric sound waves propagating with one phase at 360 degrees. It also has a pronounced vertical orientation. The higher the emitter height, and the higher the signal frequency = the higher directivity. The sound pressure level of one loudspeaker is 40cm in height and at a distance of 1m at a frequency of 1kHz - 93dB. In some laboratory prototypes, we managed to develop the volume in 110 dB. The non-scalable parameter is the interelectrode distance in a few centimeters. A loudspeaker formed by a system of electrodes, can have any shape and accordingly radiation direction. Let me ask you, what is the reason for your interest, because our team does not have enough time to personal answers. With the information you are interested you can read on our website. Sincerely, Chief Engineer Maksym Chyzhov. And then there is the speaker with no moving parts. Researchers have combined speaker, amplifier and graphic equaliser into a chip the size of a thumbnail. http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_581068_en.html For that matter Apple's new speaker is behing hailed as audiophile quality. Reddit audiophiles test HomePod, say it sounds better than $1,000 speaker https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/02/reddit-audiophiles-test-homepod-say-it-sounds-better-than-1000-speaker/ Of course, anyone who knows anything will tell you that the tried and true methods are best, and that anyone who thinks outside the speakerbox is a fool and wasting their time.