Deang Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 This place is hopeless - this so much more interesting than you can imagine. Add to that a pair of drivers that I'm try to sell that should have been gone in less than 5 minutes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 This place is hopeless - this so much more interesting than you can imagine. wanna hear about my custom NAS + virtualized arcade system all crammed into a semi-restored neo-geo cabinet? 24TB of protected storage across 11 drives. Dual NIC's. Baremetal KVM support. and on and on. different strokes for different folks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 this so much more interesting than you can imagine. I agree however I don't have the knowledge of circuits to appreciate it. I can appreciate a difficult problem and the relief associated with the solution though. Glad it's fixed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 Sure Thad, that's what the technical section is for. You describe it, tell us how you did, and how it works. People ask questions and make comments - and you answer them. That way, people learn something - and feel like they did good by coming out here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max2 Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 I would like to thank Bob and Dean very much. I ended up with "tailor" fitted networks for the BMS and Beyma drivers in my K-horns. I believe its the most simple circuit you can pull off nixing the swamping topo and using top shelf Caps which in my mind was the last upgrade for my modded K's. When they showed up I knew something was off. Later that evening a few test tones showed that the everything but the bass were down 5-6 db from my crude measurements in comparison to the Super X network which was set at -12 db. Anyway, it was a great opportunity to meet Mr. Crites and see his many, many sets of Cornscalas AND his Jubilees. I learned a good bit of history on the Jubilee from Bob and finally got to hear a pair which confirmed that you either own a set of Jub's or you fall in line with the rest. Yes, they are that good. After chatting up speakers and muscle cars I parted ways with Bob after his refusing of my payment for his services......did I mention how cool of a cat Bob is??? On to the networks. Since I have had two sets of the Super X's from Dean, one pair was his "econo Super X" build which are actually anything but econo sounding and his upper Super X line with upgraded caps, inductors, etc. including names from Solen and Audio Cap Theta's. Both of these networks are worthy of anything out there IMO and as Dean has mentioned to me before, its like different flavors of ice cream and that pretty much nails the comparison to me. The econo X's were a great intro to replace my factory AK2's that I believe Klipsch had the mid knocked down 3db from its design. I like a little hotter mid. To me, dropping the mid makes things a little more liquid and smooth, but you lose that dynamic punch in vocals that I always have been accustomed to with all the Klipsch speakers I have owned. The econo X was also adjustable and I knew I would need this moving to V-trac horns from Greg and bigger 2" drivers which would come later on. A few months later on, I ordered the top of the line Super X's from Dean for my K-horn mains and moved the econos to my LaScalas which I use as rears. The Upper line Super X had more details and less grain and I was marveled at the delicates and hidden details they pulled out of the music content, I knew these were winners right out of the box. As time went on I just couldn't leave well enough alone and Dean had mentioned a custom network, with top of the line caps that the custom amp builders covet and doing away with the swamping circuit creating a custom attenuation for my mids. This would create a very simple path offering the purest sound that was basically modeled after the Klipsch AA circuit. How could I refuse? This "Super AA" is all that and none of what you don't want. Its not quite as wet sounding as the upper Super X with the Theta's which I really didn't need after going to bigger mid horns and BMS mids that create a much bigger sound stage. It is so smooth and has no treble glare which is somewhat of an achilles heel when running the Beyma tweeters. I love the lower end the Beyma's put out, but damn they can be spitty if not pulled back a few db. This build has zero overblown tones and notes and at first I thought they may be a little dark sounding, but a quick swap back to my "Econo X's" and I realized the Super AA's were not exaggerating things, I was just hearing what was in the content and nothing more. I sold the upper Super X's to fund these Super AA's in case you're wondering why my comparison is with the Econo X's. A lot less grain was involved and things sounded less compressed. The reed flutter in some of Coltranes tracks made my hair stand up. A little Steely Dan in Blu Ray audio may be the cleanest I have ever heard on my system. All in all it was just what I needed and added the final step in completing my hot-rodded K-horns. Now all I have to do is forget about the little audition Mr. Crites gave me with his Jubs, boy they are good. Once again, a huge thanks to Dean and Bob making these things happen. They were worth the wait and then some. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schu Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) I've never seen flatsides that color... can we get a picture of the faces please? Dean... would super AA's work with a standard equipped Klipschorn? Edited September 2, 2015 by Schu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max2 Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 (edited) I've never seen flatsides that color... can we get a picture of the faces please? Dean... would super AA's work with a standard equipped Klipschorn? Will get you another pic later tonight Schu Here you go. Edited September 3, 2015 by Max2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babadono Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 OK so one side of the 1.5uFD cap is 'input' side,the other is 'output'. You mistakenly tied the tweeter section to the output side therefore changing the impedance the cap is feeding. Does that pretty much sum it up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 3, 2015 Author Share Posted September 3, 2015 Yes. However, that's how a Type AA is wired, and if the primary cap would have been a 13uF in a normal large Heritage speaker, it would have worked fine. So something to remember, and I can't help but wonder if something about this explains in part why Hunter moved that connection to the other side in the AK series of networks. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wvu80 Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 (edited) This place is hopeless - this so much more interesting than you can imagine. I'm just going to keep reading this **** thread over and over again until I get it. Edited September 3, 2015 by wvu80 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest David H Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 (edited) Normally the input cap (13uF) is so large that you can ignore it as far as the tweeter circuit is concerned. But at some point, as you decrease that value, the cap would start acting as a part of the tweeter circuit. And at a value of 1.5uF, that makes a very strange tweeter circuit. Actually the strange tweeter circuit becomes an almost dead short somehow and drags down the midrange circuit That is wild, I never would have guessed. Looks like tweeter circuit formed a Zobel at the input to the autoformer. Good find. Dave Edited September 3, 2015 by GotHover Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 3, 2015 Author Share Posted September 3, 2015 Michael, the colors vary from batch to batch. Sometimes I get an order in, and they're all the same, and sometimes some are darker than some of the others. There isn't much of anything left, so it's a moot point really. Jay (Max) did a nice job of describing the differences. A cool addition to Muel's (Cameron) descriptions from several months ago. The longer I do this, the harder it is for me to hang on to my audiophile vocabulary. I know what I like, what I don't like, and stuff that leaves me cold doesn't get anything. I speak in generalities now, an I'm not quite sure how or why that happened. When Max (Jay) emailed me and mentioned the absence or lack of compression, I thought that was an interesting way of describing what I just call "effortless". When I think of "compression", I think of horns, drivers, and bad recordings. But his way of using it stuck with me throughout the day, and when I out it into a phrase I use for some other things, it fell into place. Yes, I think both the Jupiters and the Jensens have an "absence of compression artifacts". The sound is just clean, smooth and natural sounding. Jay is right about something else too, the simple filters are the perfect platform for these parts. I'm so unbelievably grateful to Bob, uh, Todd for figuring this out. I'll post the plots tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muel Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 I have so many questions I hardly know where to start! I think I understand that changing the 13uF value to 1.5 puts it in the range of filtering too high of frequencies that it affects the tweeter. Thus, you need to place the tweeter portion of the circuit before the 1.5 cap. Why does this affect the squawker? I'd like to compare and contrast this with the B2 network that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. I was asking about dropping the squawker down 3db and one way was described as halving the cap value (from 3 to 1.5) and drop the tap from 3 to 2. I know there is a difference between the AA and the B2 where the tweeter is connected via tap 4 on the B2 but why would the 1.5uF cap not cause a problem on the B2 but it DOES cause a problem on the AA? Does the autoformer somehow make this work OK on the B2? Also, what is the purpose of the .40mH coil to the squawker on the AA you built, Dean? And did you just eliminate the zeener diodes altogether? Hope my questions make sense... this is interesting stuff and it bugs me that there is so much I don't know. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 (edited) Yes. You have it. Your first paragraph sums it up nicely. The .40mH coil is inserted between the primary cap and the squawker - it creates a band pass for the midrange driver and adds a little bit of resistance. I had John Warren run some tests for this, which showed that the part really wasn't doing much. Funny that you should bring that up because I just ordered a pair for my Jupiter AA build -- and I'll be listening to that again to see what I think. Right; if you go down 3dB on the Autotransformer, you have to cut the capacitor value in half to keep the crossover point the same. The other way would be to add a 15 ohm resistor in parallel with the mid driver. This accomplishes the same thing, but you don't have to mess with the cap. Look at it like this: the reflected impedance back through the autotransformer is roughly between 60-64 ohms. How did that happen? Well, you have a 16 ohm driver, and with that driver on tap 4 (-3dB), the reflected impedance back through the autotransformer doubles, and it now sits at around 30-32 ohms. Drop another tap (-6dB), and it doubles again, 60-64 ohms. Down another (-9dB), and we are now hovering around 128 ohms. The capacitor value is based on the crossover point you want, along with the impedance value at the crossover point - they are locked together. If you use a 15 ohm resistor in parallel with the driver, it's basically an 8 ohm driver now, and you should be able to see how that impacts the impedance with the taps. As for your other questions, I'm still struggling with the results of the find myself. I mean, I understand conceptually what happened, but don't really understand it at the engineering level, which is where I have to be to adequately answer your question. Edited September 4, 2015 by Crankysoldermeister Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 Pics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 Expressing the network output in the acoustic domain does more to illustrate what the AA really does to the helpless K77M tube-era tweeter. Blue curve is the acoustic response of the K777M on the AA filter built with film and foil caps. It gets whacked pretty hard and drives the transducer to "bacon-fry" (distort). I'll discuss the green response sometime later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators dtel's wife Posted September 4, 2015 Moderators Share Posted September 4, 2015 This place is hopeless - this so much more interesting than you can imagine. I'm just going to keep reading this **** thread over and over again until I get it. I don't have a chance of ever "getting" it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 (edited) Hey, it's The Doctor - welcome back John. Before I agree with you, I want to know what the green curve is The Technical Section used to be "technical", and I was excited about posting my mistake, thinking it would stir up a whirlwind of activity. Bob and me were discussing a thread many years ago, where many were involved in a discussion regarding PK's decision to hang the tweeter section off of the input tap - the thread ran many pages, and John and Al buried everyone in plots and data. Bob said: "That thread, in the old days would have been 6 pages by now. ALK would have told me how stupid I was, and would have done the impedance vector analysis of exactly what had happened. John Warren would have politely disagreed with Al and me, and Al would have had a hissy fit or two by now." Yes, there was a lot of bickering, but at least it was interesting, and there was always something new to learn. Edited September 4, 2015 by Crankysoldermeister Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 I think the sleeper among the metallized types are the Dayton Audio caps - which I think might be rebranded Bennics. I think it might be because they actually measure poorly, but they sound very nice in that circuit - I still have to knock the midrange down 3dB to get what I would call a balanced sound - the stock settings just sound too damn hot. I realize that everyone is probably sick of hearing me complain about that - but that's what I hear. Capacitors which provide some form of internal damping like wax or oil seem to work just fine. I run those using the stock settings without any issues whatsoever. I realize that everyone is sick of hearing me say that too. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Warren Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 (edited) Hey, it's The Doctor - welcome back John. Before I agree with you, I want to know what the green curve is Greetings sir! The green plot is something I've been noodling here. The K77M can actually remarkably good at higher sound pressure levels "if" you use the green curve. To use the green curve however requires other changes to occur and that's where things get very interesting. it's possible however to take the Klipschorn to a much better place without having to take a second mortgage out on your house. More on that later. Edited September 4, 2015 by John Warren Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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