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Elliptrac horn


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On 6/24/2021 at 4:41 AM, Ol_mcdonald said:

Sorry , I left that out, KLIPSCHORNS! I’ll take a look at those drivers. Thanks!

Just curious as to why you did not just buy the 462? I know the adaptor gives you some other options, anything else?

 

Buy the way, I have a basically brand new pair of the DCX -462 2" Co-ax that I will be posting in Garage Sale .I was going to do three three projects with the DCX -462 but now I am only doing two. So, one pair available. GREAT drivers.

 

I have been using Daves Elliptrac 400 and ONLY his Elliptrac 400 in various projects like my custom 3-way Jube Clones and Modified La Scalas since he first offered the 400. Have never found a horn I like better. But, I am still a passive guy and have never tried the 402. I even paired them with a beautiful, perfect pair of TAD TD-4001 drivers in the Jube Clones. Not even the mighty BMS 4592N-Mid stands a chance against the TAD. I know there exists at least one in the Kilpsch Forum that talks a lot about the 4002 but I believe the 4001romps on everything else. Wish I had never sold them. Never heard anything else even close to it. I will attach some photos only showing a couple iterations and various stages of experimentation..

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51 minutes ago, Deang said:

Nice. Keeping it simple.

 

Curious why no one is trying the Radians with Be diaphragms.

I was going to Deano but I stumbled onto a great deal on the TAD's. I know how good Be can be.

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2 hours ago, Deang said:

I don’t have room for big horns anymore, but I can do Cornwall size cabinets - and with all the great choices in drivers, I keep gravitating back to the Be loaded Radians. 


I spent a few hours with Radian 950be on K402/JubLF of a friends and after some tuning of the system I was very impressed with the performance of the system.  Would definitely like to spend more time checking them out.  
 

miketn

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3 hours ago, jorjen said:

J

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 Now those are some stylish Jubilee clones.  Beautiful.  I keep thinking the new ones being offered by Klipch are going to tank because they are not pretty or stylish in any manner.  Someone paying $35K wants their speaker to look like yours.  Job well done. 

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8 hours ago, jorjen said:

Just curious as to why you did not just buy the 462? I know the adaptor gives you some other options, anything else?

 

Buy the way, I have a basically brand new pair of the DCX -462 2" Co-ax that I will be posting in Garage Sale .I was going to do three three projects with the DCX -462 but now I am only doing two. So, one pair available. GREAT drivers.

 

I have been using Daves Elliptrac 400 and ONLY his Elliptrac 400 in various projects like my custom 3-way Jube Clones and Modified La Scalas since he first offered the 400. Have never found a horn I like better. But, I am still a passive guy and have never tried the 402. I even paired them with a beautiful, perfect pair of TAD TD-4001 drivers in the Jube Clones. Not even the mighty BMS 4592N-Mid stands a chance against the TAD. I know there exists at least one in the Kilpsch Forum that talks a lot about the 4002 but I believe the 4001romps on everything else. Wish I had never sold them. Never heard anything else even close to it. I will attach some photos only showing a couple iterations and various stages of experimentation..

 

DSCN2199.JPG

 

I love the Jube clones, they are beautiful!

Cost is primarily the reason for passing on the 462's, now if you plan to yard sale that extra pair of yours, I'll give it more consideration!  I had originally planned to go three way using my smahl's by Dave A mounted above the elliptrac 400 and a MF driver TBD, I do not like the appearance alone of tweeter beside the MF horn. I am now leaning toward the Faital HF 200, active two way. That or the 462 will require less work than a 3 way with smahls so there are some time/material savings there.

 

 

 

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On 6/23/2021 at 8:05 PM, Deang said:

DCM50 or BMS 4592-mid. There are a lot of BMS users out there. 

I used the BSM 4592 mid with Dave Harris Horn, love it.  I had a pair of DCM 50’s which are great, but to me the 4592’s are a little smoother and less “edgy”

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On 6/25/2021 at 11:27 AM, Langston said:

It's my guess that you can remove the 1.4 to 2 inch adapter built into the DCX462 to fit a 1.4 inch horn such as the ME464. I love to hear from someone that's done this successfully.

I believe you will find you cannot. I have been down this exact path. From a marketing concept alone, why would B & C design this capability into the DCX462 when they had already introduced the DCX464 to market for this exact purpose? If one could use the DCX462 in this manner B & C would never sell any 464's.

 

I know, let's use a 1.4"- 2" adapter to make the DCX462 compatible with the ME464.  😀

 

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On 7/1/2021 at 11:27 AM, avguytx said:

Standard Cornscala B stock components with modified JWC design and Harris mid horns.

Another image from the build and some other details. Soldered the woofer connections, did some internal cabinet bracing and used GR Research NoRez (ordered and used most of 4 24x27 sheets). Mostly Kreg joinery and cabinets feel very solid. 3/4 inch Baltic Birch ply bought last year before it went up in cost. The mid horn build was not too bad but sanding by hand was tedious. These are very heavy, had to go up 2 flights of stairs from my basement/shop to my listening room. Did this with a helper and moving straps. 

Listening to them with Bottlehead Smash preamp, alternating between 5W/side Pass Amp Camp monos (old style) and 35W/channel Van Altstine Ultravalve. All combinations of the above work well with these. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/26/2021 at 6:29 AM, Langston said:

With my Khorns the raw response drops above 500Hz (pink trace). This is an outdoor reflection-free measurement using a false wall per Dope From Hope. The green trace is an acoustic 6th order LR low pass, down 6dB at 400Hz. Though the DE750/Tractrix is comfortable with a mirror alignment at 400Hz, I chose 500Hz because I'm running the HF passband about 7dB lower than the bass per my taste.

 

Langston, I know what a 6th order LR low pass is (36db Linkwitz-Riley) but what do you mean by "acoustic" 6th order LR low pass ?

 

Also, "running the the HF passband about 7dB lower than the bass per my taste" - doesn't that make the music too bass heavy ?

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42 minutes ago, Wirrunna said:

but what do you mean by "acoustic" 6th order LR low pass ?

 

That is SUCH A GOOD question! : )

 

With loudspeakers ALL THAT MATTERS is acoustic output. Then there is the electrical output in the lovely and pristine world of active crossovers, but reality is the COMBINED acoustic response of the raw driver in its cabinet or horn WITH the electrical filter that produces the output from the loudspeaker that we hear, for better or for worse. Sorry for the "shouting", but I think the capitalized words might be helpful to some.

 

All that cool research that went on in the 70's onward and documented in AES papers, largely initiated by the Aussie genius Neville Thiele, completely changed the loudspeaker world from the Stone Age into what we have now.

 

I ended up using 2nd order electrical crossovers of different slope functions (Linkwitz Riley and Butterworth) combined with EQ along with the natural rolloffs of the drivers in their horns to achieve an actual Linkwitz Riley 6th order acoustic crossover very near 400Hz. I use software that allows me to combine the electrical and acoustic domains into a single result to figure out what is likely to sound the best prior to actually implementing it. Not rocket-science any more. : )

 

One more thing - 6th order is too steep for good time domain performance, but in my case I'm able to get away with it because I use an overall FIR filter to effectively turn the multiple drivers into a single impulse. It's taken years, but I've found that you need to do things as correctly as possible without FIR filters, and then use them for polish after you've done everything you can through classical (minimum phase) methods. The Klipschorn bass with the DE750 required very little "polish". I'm still looking forward to giving the DCX464/Tractrix my best effort.

 

42 minutes ago, Wirrunna said:

Also, "running the the HF passband about 7dB lower than the bass per my taste" - doesn't that make the music too bass heavy ?

 

Ugh! Thank you for pointing that out. That was an error that I'm going to fix. The ACOUSTIC "hay stack" as they call the low end rise in the concert production world, is only 2dB in my case with the Klipschorns in my home. 7dB was the electrical reduction of the highs that enabled the acoustic 2dB hay stack. I'm a newbie to the genius of the Klipschorn bass and am now only about 1dB higher in the bass than the highs. 2dB muddied the female vocal just a tad.

 

In concert production I generally had a 6dB acoustic hay stack for the subs and ran the passbands above that as flat as possible. Not that it matters, but I figure that anecdotes from my time in pro audio might be fun. : )

 

God bless you and your precious family - Langston

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  • 2 weeks later...

Langston, thank you for explaining "acoustic" crossover. That is remarkably similar to Chris A's advice but his was in the context of phase growth.  I decided to try an "acoustic crossover" between bass and mid.
Got to love DSP, with REW and rePhase I can build a config and load it into the miniDSP, measure it, tweak it, listen to some music and if it sounds awful just start again. I've hardly fired up my soldering iron since I got this little device.
Here is the DCX464 SPL in an Eliptrac horn, brown is raw, green is after EQ, showing natural rolloff (rollup ??) of the driver.

 

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The EQ Target Level is 86db, the 3db down is at 314 - who would have thought ?
Well, the Eliptrac is a 320Hz cut off horn and the DCX464 goes down past 300hz.
So if I want to use an "acoustic crossover" I leave the mid hi-pass out, although I will configure a hi-pass filter at 200Hz to protect the driver where it won't affect the response of the driver.
Also, I remember reading that the crossover in a horn should be at least half an octave from the cut off frequency. What happens with no xo, just rely on the cut off ?

 

The Bass Low Pass should be at 314, but what slope and shape ?

Trial and error showed a bass crossover LR at 24db looked good and measured well.

 

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Bass Green, Mid Red, Blue is the full system with levels adjusted and input PEQs applied.


Last is the K-Horn SPL and Phase with IR Delay adjusted to 0.

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Mic at 1m in front and 1.18m high, in other words on the Eliptrac centre axis, 1/6 smoothing.


Limited listening at this stage, but sounds very clear. Mary Chapin Carpenter: One Night Lonely sounds like she is sitting on the wood heater between the speakers.

 

 

 

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