Another Worthwhile Upgrade....REALLY Worthwhile!

[Speedball]

I woke up this morning and what did I see ? OMG , it's a package from DeanG !!! Still trips me out to get mail on Sunday . []

Sunburn,

Did Santa say anything or leave a note about maybe coming over this way?

[sunburnwilly]

I woke up this morning and what did I see ? OMG , it's a package from DeanG !!! Still trips me out to get mail on Sunday . []

Sunburn,

Did Santa say anything or leave a note about maybe coming over this way?

Dean , uh I mean Santa , did not mention it , but you know that Santa guy is pretty mysterious . [G]

[NOSValves]

Now how would that be Craig??? md

Mark,

I was joking......

[tigerwoodKhorns]

If you are going the Monty Pyton route, they should be "The networks that until just recently said "AA--".

And to anyone who still insists on calling them "AA--", "I fart in your general direction, your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries." ... "Maybe if we built a large wooden badger..."

But the big question is what type of networks are they, "African or Euorpean?"

I think that I have the entire "Holy Grail" memorized.

Chris

PS -

Knight "I seek the grail, I cannot stop pursuing my quest"

Young Maiden, "We are but 20 lonely virgins between the age of 18 and 21. We spend our days dressing and undressing, and knitting exciting underwear."

Knight's response - "We'll, I could stay a little while."

[sunburnwilly]

If you are going the Monty Pyton route, they should be "The networks that until just recently said "AA--". I was really hoping for the networks that go " BING " .

[sunburnwilly]

Is it allright to post this photo in 2 channel ? [8-)]

[jt1stcav]

Jim, I build two networks for the original Cornwall -- a network similiar to the Super AA and the Cornwall ALK. You can see a picture of the Cornwall network in my audiogon ad: http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1138404437 With that filter you could move your Cornwalls back into your livingroom.

Thank you for clarifying this, Dean. I would love nothing better than to move my system to the livingroom and have refreshed Cornwalls play once again. In the meantime I have to wait until my dad can sell his residence pipe organ that's preventing me from relocating my system. Guess I can save up a little during the interim for your Cornwall ALKs (if they're the proper network for a 300B SET amp with zero feedback). I assume your AudiogoN price is for each (not a pair).

I wanna hear what Gary, Mark, Craig, and many others are hearin' with their new crossovers...[8]

[Deang]

"I assume your AudiogoN price is for each (not a pair)."

The one in the Audiogon ad is for the pair and includes shipping. The Cornwall ALK is about $100 more.

[PrestonTom]

I'm curious, why not use 4th order crossovers? IIRC, their expensive, but the best sounding because they keep everythin in phase while having a very smooth xover. But they do drain what, -3dB out of your output? I'm wondering why use the extreme slope over a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley filter. i'm not trying to bash deans design, but won't you get some really obvious modulation distortion from the tweeters resonance? Also, wouldn't having a first order xover make everything out of phase? so if your not in the "sweet spot" with each speaker equal distance from your ears, it'll sound lopsided and not evenly covered? -Joe

Joe,

This is an interesting point. A 4th order would get about 24 dB/octave (this is an approximation, of course), as you mentioned the phase shift is now comparable. With the correct CF and overlap, there would be many advantages and at a reasonable cost. As you point out the levels would need adjustment because of the insertion loss. This all seems very attractive.

Good Luck,

-Tom

[Deang]

Call me stupid -- but how do you retrieve what you lose (insertion losses)? The only way I know of is to turn the volume control up.

The Super AA is a constant impedance Type AA with a modified tweeter filter. It's 6dB/octave on the woofer, 6dB/octave on the squawker, and 18dB/octave on the tweeter -- it's the complete antithesis of the Extreme Slope concept, which is 120dB/octave between drivers.

I started out with AK-4 Klipsch networks, and have since built and/or listened with just about every network available for them. I've built most more than once using different parts, and have run them all with a good variety of amplification. To my ears at least, the sound produced by the simple filter is the most appealing. Al designed this filter for me because of my preference for that kind of sound. The design and sound is not his preference, and I'm very grateful that he was willing to put his ego aside and do it in spite of his bias.

Now, if anyone thinks they can come up with something better then by all means go for it -- I'll be first in line to give it a listen.

"Consideration of the electroacoustic behavior of common loudspeaker drivers leads to the general crossover network design requirement of constant total voltage transfer. Conventional passive networks satisfy this requirement only if the cutoff slopes are limited to 6 dB per octave. Active crossover networks with steeper cutoff slopes can also be designed to meet this requirement, but these networks do not provide a rapid transition between drivers. Regardless of the network chosen, the drivers used must have useful frequency ranges which overlap by about four octaves." -- Richard Small

Bruce Edgar: "...I started out using 6 dB crossovers because they were just the simplest to do, and they seemed to work. Klipsch had said in his early experiments that he had started with second-order crossovers during World War II. As his capacitors went bad and he couldn't get any new ones, he changed his crossover to a first order and found out they sounded better, so I started off with 6 dB crossovers. In the mid 80s, Bob Bullock, who is one of the editors of Speaker Builder, came up with a number of articles showing how to design all different order crossovers, and so I decided to try them. I built up some second-order crossovers and put them into the club system. I didn't hear a whole lot of comments about it, but when I switched back to first-order crossovers, everybody came up after the demo in the club meeting and said how good the system sounded. That told me right away that first-order crossovers sound better on horns.

I designed my horns so that the bass horn would roll off at the point where the midrange horn was turning on and the midrange horn rolled off where the tweeter was turning on. Those mechanical rolloffs complement each other, so when you put in a first-order crossover, it essentially acts as a traffic cop and keeps the impedances proper. But the mechanical rolloffs also have a rapid phase change. In the pass band, the horn response is minimum phase, like most loudspeakers, but at the point where they start rolling off, near the flare frequency or at the point where the mass is rolling off the response, the phase changes at those points are very fast. A first-order crossover doesn't mind, but a second-order crossover or any higher-order crossover can't handle all that phase change.

So, just by trial and error, we can essentially confirm what Klipsch found out earlier, but you have to be able to do those experiments to really find out what is the truth, because 90% of the horn literature is pure garbage. It's one author regurgitating what another author said. In fact, one of the amusing things I've found are errors in the mathematical terms that go through several different textbooks, being repeated because they assume that first guy did it right. The following authors just copied the equations and never really checked the math."

[JohnA]

I think you ought to call them Type AX and Type AAX, for extreme, of course. []

[Erukian]

okay so i get why you chose 1st order crossovers. With klipsch speakers you also don't really have to worry about damage from using a 1st order because the driver in the squaker doesnt do enough excursion like a dome tweet.

have you tried your extreme slope xover for the tweeter, and a 4th order for the bass like the Zu Definition in that other active thread?

Just curious.

-Joe

[garymd]

Dean - You have an email.

[Frzninvt]

So DeanO, when are you going to be up to reworking my three DHA2Xover's to change the tweeter filter to your new version. I also want you to rework the Bob C. boards in my Belle's for me.

I can send them out a pair at a time so I am only down one pair of speakers at a time.

Funny how folks are just now getting around to noticing the difference that the reworked DHA2Xover makes a tremendous difference over the original network. I have been enjoying it for quite sometimel, the special one you made for my center channel still amazes people with it's detail and clarity.

[Deang]

"...have you tried your extreme slope xover for the tweeter, and a 4th order for the bass like the Zu Definition in that other active thread?"

Ahrg. That was the whole point of my post -- I don't build Extreme Slope Filters. If you want one of those, or would like to learn what they are all about you have to go www.alkeng.com I did have a set loaded up in my Klipschorns for about a week: Imaging to die for and vanishing low distortion -- but at the expense of some dynamics.

Charles, shoot me your phone number again -- I can't find it.

[colterphoto1]

This is confusing. Will the various manufacturers out there please give the following specs.

Crossover points

Slope of each filter in the network

NO adjectives.

Thank you

Michael

[Deang]

Michael -- just think of what I build as a Klipsch Type AA with a bandpass on the squawker and an impedance that doesn't go any higher than 14 ohms. Woofer and squawker are 1st order, tweeter is a 3rd order. With a first order filter, crossover "point" is almost a misnomer. I suppose we could go with 480 and 5900.

[fini]

"This is confusing. Will the various manufacturers out there please give the following specs."

1.) Which one sounds best.

[maxg]

Fini,

These are audiophile devices - there is no actual sound difference (there is no spoon) - especially when used on their own.[]

[garymd]

Fini,

Good point. I leave the technical stuff to the technical guys and let my ears decide what sounds best. So far, these SuperDuper AA's do it for me. If I'm giving up any imaging, I sure can't tell. The dynamics are, well...........really dynamic!!

Dean,

You still have an email.[] I'm tired of bothering your family with phone calls.[A]