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KLF-510?


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1 hour ago, Emile said:

Absolutely AWESOME!  Had planned to build a similar setup, but got lazy and bought some CF-3's.  After seeing yours I regret my decision :( 

(Too late now ... sold my extra set of K-510/691's )

 

Yeah I know where your 510s ended up, and they went to a good home. Your planning thread helped me greatly so thanks for that.

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4 hours ago, Pete H said:

Really nice look!  How are you planning on finishing them?  Is this your first 2 way and what were you listening to before this?  How would you compare the reproduction of the upper frequencies from the 510 versus other speakers that you've owned?  Did you take build pictures and if so, can you post them?  

 

 

 

I’m going to paint them to match the fireplace and build some tan grills. Maybe use the Fender tweed fabric for a nice retro look.

 

I have a bunch of photos of the build need to compress down to post.

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2 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

eeping them in a sealed cabinet means you don't get the group delay involved in porting the box for extra bass, which is a trade-off vs. using more amplifier power via the EQ you are doing. But having so much cone area, it can handle it easily while giving you much more detailed MIDRANGE in the process. Let us know how they SOUND. I'd be curious to read your impressions to see if they track the science!

 

This is why I built the IcePower 125asx2 dual monoblocks. I get 4ohms in parallel on the Kappas, and the monoblocks are 400w each into 4ohms. 

 

The sound is overwhelmingly pristine. I had Forte2s for 15 years before moving to California. These crush Fortes. I went to Pilgrimage this year to get some comparisons. These are as good as everything I heard in Hope except for Jubes. As a disclaimer, I preferred the direct radiator bass of the CWs to the LaScalas and Khorns. I think the bass on these is even better without the ports. This is the advantage of fully active design, you don’t have to match the relative acoustic output of the drivers to avoid overpadding the crossovers and throwing away amp power and driver detail in the process.

 

I’d like to hear these side to side with 396s.

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2 minutes ago, MenloBob said:

 

This is why I built the IcePower 125asx2 dual monoblocks. I get 4ohms in parallel on the Kappas, and the monoblocks are 400w each into 4ohms. 

 

The sound is overwhelmingly pristine. I had Forte2s for 15 years before moving to California. These crush Fortes. I went to Pilgrimage this year to get some comparisons. These are as good as everything I heard in Hope except for Jubes. As a disclaimer, I preferred the direct radiator bass of the CWs to the LaScalas and Khorns. I think the bass on these is even better without the ports. This is the advantage of fully active design, you don’t have to match the relative acoustic output of the drivers to avoid overpadding the crossovers and throwing away amp power and driver detail in the process.

 

I’d like to hear these side to side with 396s.

From all indications, it appears that you have made some very WISE choices.

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23 minutes ago, CECAA850 said:

Very nice!  Now it's time to take the photoshop picture out of your avatar and replace it with the real thing.;)

 

Done. Great meeting you at Pilgrimage. Let me know if you’re ever in the Bay Area for a listen and a martini. I won’t make yours dirty..

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55 minutes ago, MenloBob said:

 

I bought the miniDSP for another project I never ended up doing with direct radiators. It does have a higher noise floor but I came up with a pretty novel solution to the quiescent noise problem: gain optimization. Since the horns are significantly more efficient, the need lower gain then the woofers. Instead of adjusting the relative gains in the dsp, I added a high quality stereo pot on the horn outputs of the dsp and attenuated the analog signal out of the dsp down until the quiescent noise is inaudible, except with my ear right next to the horn. This moves the noise floor down the volume scale, and uses more bits in the dsp channels since the dsp runs a hotter signal.  

 

Then I gain balanced the woofer levels to match for flat response. My homebrew IcePower 125asx2 based amps don’t have adjustable gains, those with gain adjustment on their amp channels could do the same without the attenuator pot.

 

I need to measure the pot and see how much attenuation I’m using on the analog signal.  I’m getting about 95db on the REW calibrated SPL meter at 50% volume adjustment. 60% drives me out of the room so I think I have ample headroom. 90w for each horn and 400w for each bass bin should be absolute overkill. I think this approach opens up the MiniDsp 2x4HD as a viable solution for those interested in experimenting in active without making the investment in a Xilica to start.

 

Thanks to @adamh’s help I flattened out the response last night: -3db at 27hz and -7db at 20. Won’t need a sub and the bass is extremely tight. Next up is optimizing phase, but I have a bunch of reading of your posts to figure out where to start there. I did do a timing measurement that showed the drivers are physically aligned to 0.4ms, which is below the miniDSp threshold to adjust. This is a complete accident, but I’ll take a lucky break when I get it.

 

 

 

Here’s the attenuator I’m using: $50ish on Amazon.

 

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I'm using one of those myself on the Hypex Monoblocs, since they don't have attenuation. My SH-50's are full range, but at 100db/1watt, all of my channels need attenuation to keep the Yamaha Pre Pro within reasonable range of volume control as well as Room EQ, since most electronics are designed to work with 88 db/1 watt speakers and NOT super efficient stuff like we have. I especially like the I/O cable conversion feature. Nice touch!

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18 minutes ago, MenloBob said:

 

Done. Great meeting you at Pilgrimage. Let me know if you’re ever in the Bay Area for a listen and a martini. I won’t make yours dirty..

Beggars can't be choosers.  I'll take it any way it's made.

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54 minutes ago, MenloBob said:

 

I had inadvertently left a 15kz low pass filter on the horns from initial testing. Honestly at 50 it’s hard for me to hear a difference. See the post above for the flattened response. I’m adjusting the gain stage so that max volume leaves some headroom on the bass without over excursion on the woofer.

LOL, now the first posted response makes a lot more sense.  Looks awesome now.  To me, that's a stellar response on the low frequencies, very nice and I'll bet they're sounding sweet as you get things fine tuned.  

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53 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

Hypex Monoblocs

If I had it all to do over again I'd use 2 of the Hypex Fusion 503 plate amps for a 2.5 way. 6 channels of nCore amplifiers,  4 for each Kappa at 500w and 2 100w for the 510s. Plus integrated DSP for not that much more than a Xilica 8 channel DSP. Filter out the mids from the bottom Kappa.

 

A pair of fusion 122s is the ideal choice for a new active setup on Jubes. 4x125 of super low distortion nCore amps with built in DSP for way less than a Xilica.

 

Hey there's always upgrades...

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1 hour ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

SH-50's are full range,

 

There was a pair here in the Bay Area for sale a couple a weeks ago that I went and had a listen to before starting the build. I was thinking I might just buy them and skip all the carpentry and sell off the K510s. But like 402s, they are huge in person and I'd never get them in the house.

 

I didn't listen to them for long but they sound great. But my KLF-510s weren't as expensive and are within 25% of the Danleys I'd say.

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4 hours ago, MenloBob said:

 

There was a pair here in the Bay Area for sale a couple a weeks ago that I went and had a listen to before starting the build. I was thinking I might just buy them and skip all the carpentry and sell off the K510s. But like 402s, they are huge in person and I'd never get them in the house.

 

I didn't listen to them for long but they sound great. But my KLF-510s weren't as expensive and are within 25% of the Danleys I'd say.

No matter the choice in that realm, we are above 99% of the rest of the world who are not Audiophiles, so it's more like splitting hairs at that point.

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14 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

No matter the choice in that realm, we are above 99% of the rest of the world who are not Audiophiles, so it's more like splitting hairs at that point.

 

An "unlearned" visitor would certainly appreciate the quality of sound, but I wouldn't be surprised by cartoon bubbles over their head which read "Wow, that really sounds great!" and "You invested what?!"

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2 hours ago, glens said:

 

An "unlearned" visitor would certainly appreciate the quality of sound, but I wouldn't be surprised by cartoon bubbles over their head which read "Wow, that really sounds great!" and "You invested what?!"

 

Speaker components: $2500 (let’s leave new tools out of the equation ;) )

IcePower amps build: $600

DSP and CCA: $400

 

$3500 has to be the new system bargain of the century for this sound... (Excepting used gear)

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8 hours ago, glens said:

 

An "unlearned" visitor would certainly appreciate the quality of sound, but I wouldn't be surprised by cartoon bubbles over their head which read "Wow, that really sounds great!" and "You invested what?!"

I doubt that they would use the term "invested" in their reactions. SPENT would be a more common term (wasted would be the term in their thoughts).

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Time for some build photos.

 

A couple of months ago I put together a couple of CAD designs for two different K510 builds. Initially I thought I might start with modifying a couple of 80s vintage H2 to be the bass bins. Based on Claude's advice to Emile on a different thread I also put together a version with dual twelves.

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In March I ordered the K904-HF bundle from Cory at @MetropolisLakeOutfitters. Once these arrived I set them up with a couple of old Paradigm Studio 60v1s I use as the bedroom system as the bass bins. The K510s sounded great even with the undersized Paradigms. Based on the sound of the K510s, I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with a single driver approach. The speakers have to fit right next to the fireplace on each side or there's nowhere else in the house they could go. One thing I knew I needed to do was to hear a bunch of the large Klipsch speakers, especially Jubes before getting underway. So of to Pilgrimage for the first time, where I got a lot of encouragement that I was headed in the right direction...

 

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My wife had a four day trip planned for Memorial Day weekend and my Dad's in town from Virginia so time to get going. I put together a plan on paper and then made a cut sheet with an app on my iPad. Three sheets of 5x5 3/4 Baltic Birch from a local mom and pop lumber yard (Bruce Bauer in Mt View for anyone in the Bay Area following along.) I chose them because they have a really nice, old table saw and staff that knows how to use it. They cut up the sheet goods to my plans and everything was dead on. About $300 for the plywood cut plus a bunch of 1x2 maple for brackets.

 

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I tried a few models in WinISD, but gave up and guestimated the design based on the small sealed volume suggested by Eminence for a single driver, doubled for two drivers with a little extra for fudge factor. One great advantage to active DSP with a sealed enclosure is the volumes don't have to be exactly tuned in the design phase.

The K510s are exactly 15" wide so I used this as the baffle width so the bass cabs and horn cabs would have matching width. Was kinda going for the look of how a Belle top sits on top of it's bass bin. I'm glad I made separate top and bottom enclosures, the tops are very heavy on their own with the giant K691 magnets. I measured my sitting ear position as 42" and used that as the center of the horn. The total height is just shy of 48" and fits perfectly under the mantle of the fireplace. Working down gave a bass bin height of 36", 34.5" baffle. Dividing the needed volume gave a depth of 11".

 

Next up, cabinet construction..

 

 

 

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On 5/30/2019 at 2:22 PM, MenloBob said:

If I had it all to do over again I'd use 2 of the Hypex Fusion 503 plate amps for a 2.5 way. 6 channels of nCore amplifiers,  4 for each Kappa at 500w and 2 100w for the 510s. Plus integrated DSP for not that much more than a Xilica 8 channel DSP. Filter out the mids from the bottom Kappa.

 

A pair of fusion 122s is the ideal choice for a new active setup on Jubes. 4x125 of super low distortion nCore amps with built in DSP for way less than a Xilica.

 

Hey there's always upgrades...

Those Hypex offerings are fairly new, so you are not that far behind on anything, really. Upgrades should only happen when there's a significant performance to dollar ratio. This also sounds like it would be good. Everything in life and AUDIO is "compared to what?!"

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13 hours ago, MenloBob said:

Next up, cabinet construction..

Yes, and when you paint them the same color as the fireplace, they will "dissappear" fom having very little contrast. I was going to suggest a light grille cloth, several posts ago, but I held back. Nice to see we think alike in the progressive nature of these types of projects. Kudos to you!

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