[Ric Schultz]

Details: all neo drivers felted around them on both sides and on side of inside wings.  Wings on midrange side only.  2.25 inch thick baffles.....alternate layers of highly refined MDF and 16 ply plywood with green glue in between.  Danny's servo woofs mounted on open baffle so they are all firing directly at you and physically aligned with planars.   All hardwired with Neotech 14 and 20 gauge litz wire.  Xover ordinary right now till he tweaks it for best response.  Obviously, he needs room treatment and I feel the speakers are way to far apart.  This would give seriously too wide of imaging on small scale recordings.  Simple 12 db per octave xover that I did real quickly with his drivers when they were here.  I did not have as thick of baffles, nor the wing....so that is why he will need to measure and tweak for best response.  He says its pretty killer and his old Dunlavy's are now history.  The total cost on these speakers is around $6500 with Jantzen coils, great caps and everything shown (stereo pair only...not the center channel).  A version with 6 Neo 10s and 16 neo 3 would add another $1500....pretty darn cheap for the world class speaker results.  All the woofs going forward and physically aligned with the panels will give tremendously delicious sound.  H-frames will extend bass and dynamic range (assuming you need it!).....but maybe not sound as good in the lower midrange do to the woofers in square tubes (would have to be listened to be determined....which no one has ever done.

[aldcoll]

Okay great pictures now how about some details PLEASE

Alan

[Ric Schultz]

Some modified AV processor, EVS modified 105D, Odyssey Kismet mono blocks:

[studiotech]

Thanks for the picts.  Super cool, Ric!

[Danny Richie]

Our servo subs are loosing a lot of output in the lower ranges by being mounted on a flat baffle like that. If you used an H frame or W frame design you'd get a lot more output down low.

[Ric Schultz]

I have not doubt your right.  He says his bass is really great and does not need a sub.....except maybe when playing monster stomp movies.  His bass would be even better if he made a brace between the base and the top of each sub baffle.  However, the advantage of having perfect physical alignment of all drivers at all frequencies is IMO a major improvement over h-frames.  You notice that he has his woof baffles slightly forward of the mid/high baffles... aligning the voice coils.  Sounds best this way.  H-frames are just a way of increasing baffle size without it sticking out.  I don't want my upper bass, lower midrange coming out of square tubes and some of the sound coming off the back of a driver (the driver in reverse)....does not makes sense to me.  If you were crossing over at 60hz or so then I don't think it would matter.  But those woofs go up there in frequency.  There is no way the coherency would be as good with H-frames.  The only way to know is to try both ways.  The bigger line source with 6 neo 10s goes lower in frequency so the problem of integrating it with the subs is less.  I will take a little less low bass any day over losing the coherency of perfect alignment with the mids.  The upper bass and lower mids define a system.....you get that right and you get goosebumps.  It may be a reason why you like your new NX Exoticas better than your Super 7.  The Super 7 has the h-frame woofs matching the midrange problem and the NX does not (you cannot move back the mids and highs to the center of the woofs with the Super 7).  The NX has woofs all in line going all the way down below 100HZ....this makes for super perfect alignment in that critical area.  Crossing over at those frequencies to H-frames makes sense.  Of course, the only way to know which sounds better is to listen to both in the exact same system using a stereo setup (moving the subs around in both cases, etc.).  No one is going to do this.  You are sold on H-frames and that is no problem.  I am sold on physical alignment.  We each buy what we want at the market.

[HAL]

You can do both.  Use time delay on the mains to match up to the H-Frame servo subs wavefront.  Works exceedingly well.

[bdp24]

One can also face both woofers in an H-Frame forward (though not in a W-frame, of course). The voice coils of the woofers can then be aligned with the upper range drivers no differently than woofers on a flat baffle. The only penalty of the H-frame is the cavity resonance created in each chamber of the frame, which limits how high in frequency the sub should be used, to prevent that resonance from being audible. Danny states that with a 14" deep frame, that frequency is around 300Hz. I cross mine over at 180Hz via a 2nd order 12dB/octave filter, so no problem. And if one crosses-over lower (below 100Hz or so), the "misalignment" of opposite-facing woofers won't be audible, the wavelengths of frequencies that low being far too long to be so.

[THROWBACK]

Fun indeed! Thanks for posting, Ric.
I built my 3-stack (per side) of 12" servos in individual h-frame cubes so that I could: a. lift the suckers**; and b. rotate the center woofer cube to determine if aligned (per Ric) or staggered (per Danny) sounded better. I started with aligned and it sounded so danged good (and still does) that I never bothered to complete the experiment. I still can, though, if someone persuades me it's worth it.  **1" MDF with 1/4" formica-like counter top cladding.

Danny, you said somewhere that the amps should be close to the subs or there would be problems with servo delay. Is 10 feet too far? What should be the max? Thanks.

[Danny Richie]

Regardless of which way the drivers face, moving the woofer tower forward or back can be done regardless. And with a complete 0 to 180 phase control right on the amp, it is pretty easy to get them to be in phase with the main speakers.

Now, does reversing a driver cause some phase shift between the group? Yes, it does. Can a shift or phase rotation of a few inches be heard on wavelengths that are many feet long? I doubt it. We are talking about a very slight phase rotation at a pretty low frequency range. We would have to try them both ways to hear the difference.

I believe Linkwitz claims the alignment (one facing another way) cancels out some odd order distortion. Is this correct? I can not confirm that. This may not even apply with a servo controlled system. Does it balance out the weight of the tower? Yes, very much so.

By the way, you could add baffling to the back of the drivers making a U frame and gain back some low bass extension without changing anything you are advocating for with this alignment.

One thing for sure in my might though. That is a great looking set up and I bet it sounds great.

[THROWBACK]

A slight (?) bit off topic, but looking at those tall towers brings up the subject (again) of point source versus line arrays. In fact, we had a discussion of that subject at our all-day-yesterday "System Hop," in which we travel from house to house listening to different systems for (usually) an hour or less eventually moderately lubricated (us, not our systems) by adult beverages. We do this every quarter or so. Try it You'll like it!

Back to my off-topic subject. Some manufacturers argue strenuously in favor of point sources (like Lowthers) and give all sorts of technical reasons why they "must" sound the best. After 60 years as an audiophile (and inveterate classical concert goer), my ears tell me that the best modern sound comes from linear arrays and open baffles. From there it's merely (hah!) a matter of application--'stats vs. planars vs. hybrids vs. cones.

Listening to the Brahms German Requiem (original vinyl: EMI, Klemperer) on my GR Research LS-9s with servo bass really brought it home to me yesterday. Having that magnificent orchestra and chorus envelop the room was what I have been after all these years. I could hardly talk afterward. Oh yeah, the music was pretty great too.

Again, to my ears at least, there is just something marvelous and "right" about the sound possible with the LA/OB combo that is just missing with point-source/closed-baffle approaches. And it's not even close.

I can come up with some good guesses as to why this might be, but I'd love to hear from someone who really knows. 

 
 

[Danny Richie]

A slight (?) bit off topic, but looking at those tall towers brings up the subject (again) of point source versus line arrays. In fact, we had a discussion of that subject at our all-day-yesterday "System Hop," in which we travel from house to house listening to different systems for (usually) an hour or less eventually moderately lubricated (us, not our systems) by adult beverages. We do this every quarter or so. Try it You'll like it!

Back to my off-topic subject. Some manufacturers argue strenuously in favor of point sources (like Lowthers) and give all sorts of technical reasons why they "must" sound the best. After 60 years as an audiophile (and inveterate classical concert goer), my ears tell me that the best modern sound comes from linear arrays and open baffles. From there it's merely (hah!) a matter of application--'stats vs. planars vs. hybrids vs. cones.

Listening to the Brahms German Requiem (original vinyl: EMI, Klemperer) on my GR Research LS-9s with servo bass really brought it home to me yesterday. Having that magnificent orchestra and chorus envelop the room was what I have been after all these years. I could hardly talk afterward. Oh yeah, the music was pretty great too.

Again, to my ears at least, there is just something marvelous and "right" about the sound possible with the LA/OB combo that is just missing with point-source/closed-baffle approaches. And it's not even close.

I can come up with some good guesses as to why this might be, but I'd love to hear from someone who really knows.

I have designed some of the best point sources, line sources, open baffle speakers, and open baffle line sources out there. And a few of those have been pretty extreme.

So my take on the advantage that the line sources have is the same advantage that servo controlled woofers have. It is all about settling time. It is about how fast a driver can return back to rest.

If you take any driver and push it hard (especially in lower ranges) then you always have to deal with stored energy. That object in motion tends to want to stay in motion unless acted on by a force. And the harder that you push it the harder it is for the suspension to control it and stop it.

With a line source you have a lot of drivers sharing the load. So each driver moves only a slight amount to contribute to the overall SPL level. With the driver barely moving setting time is much faster. So the overall system is cleaner, clearer, and has better resolution across the board.

It's a pretty big advantage.

[bdp24]

I'm with you guys! An important thing line sources do better than point sources is size and scale. No matter how big a point source loudspeaker may be (Wilsons even), everything sounds miniaturized. A grand piano is huge, and sounds that way through a planar. And point source speakers always place the vocalist's mouth three feet off the floor, while planars get them up to a realistic five feet. And if the point source is a box (sealed or ported), the music sounds like it's being squeezed through the box, not just suspended in space like an OB, dipole, planar, line source. It's a completely different sound and experience.

[THROWBACK]

Interesting replies, gents. The consensus at System-Hop was "because they load the room differently."

But of course there's a lot more to it than room-loading or load-sharing or image height (or lack of cabinet resonance; or . . .).  There are several guys out there doing LA/OB designs that don't sound near as good as Danny's. 'Nuff said. (OK, Danny, time for your famous "aw shucks," full-body blush routine. Just don't overdo it like last time, OK?)

[THROWBACK]

Ric, Danny (Ritchie)
Interesting about the felt. The GR LS-9 crossover has a notch filter built in to combat a rise in response at about 9K Hz (I think). According to my friend (a speaker mfgr.), the rise does not appear to be a resonance in the NEO-8 speaker itself, but rather in the way it is implemented. He suggested that I use felt, as your friend has. I have resisted doing that: A) because I am lazy; B) because it might look butt ugly on my beautiful Ruben-Herrera built baffles; C) I don't know what kind of felt to try.

Any further thoughts (on the felt, that is; not my laziness)?

[Rocket_Ronny]

A grand piano is huge, and sounds that way through a planar.

j

I have always been able to get a grand piano to sound huge and breathtakingly realistic on small 2 ways and even full range drivers. It's all about speaker setup.

Rocket Ronny

[PDR]

By the way, you could add baffling to the back of the drivers making a U frame and gain back some low bass extension without changing anything you are advocating for with this alignment.

 

So Danny how wide for the front baffle, and how long would the wings need to be using a U frame?

Thanks

[Ric Schultz]

I am no expert in baffle knowledge but if you measured the distance from the baffle to the outside front tip of the U-frame you would get 6.5 inches.....so the total distance between the front baffle and the rear baffle is 4 times that plus the one inch for the woofer baffle = 27 inches.  So, if you extended the baffle out straight or back at some angle everywhere from the woofer half of that distance (13.5 inches) then maybe? you would have the same frequency extension.  Don't quote me here.  Just quessing.  It could be that because you are extending the baffles in an H-frame to the front and rear that might make more difference to those low frequencies.....so maybe the baffles on a U-frame would have to be longer than my questimation.........we need an expert here....not just a quesser.

[S Clark]

j

I have always been able to get a grand piano to sound huge and breathtakingly realistic on small 2 ways and even full range drivers. It's all about speaker setup.

Rocket Ronny

That's a bold statement.  I'd have to hear that to believe it. 

[bdp24]

j

I have always been able to get a grand piano to sound huge and breathtakingly realistic on small 2 ways and even full range drivers. It's all about speaker setup.

Rocket Ronny

Me too. I've never heard a point source speaker come anywhere close to the sound of my 3-panel Magneplanar Tympani T-IV's (6' H X 4' W).