[-Richard-]

Hi Wind Chaser/John ~

Thank you for your wonderfully detailed insights into your experience with the
Planet 10 modification of the B200 which uses a phase plug along with dampening
of the driver basket and magnetic housing ~

Clear, concise and nicely fleshed out!!!

Please keep us informed as your experience with your B200 Planet 10 mods becomes
better understood ~

Again thanks for sharing your experiences with us... I deeply appreciate it!!!

Warmest Regards ~ Richard ~

[lonewolfny42]

Is there a link for this "Planet 10" ?

Thanks !!

[-Richard-]

Hi Lonewolfny 42 ~

It appears to be here:

http://www.planet10-hifi.com/index.html

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[lonewolfny42]

Hi Lonewolfny 42 ~

It appears to be here:

http://www.planet10-hifi.com/index.html

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

Thank you Richard !

[-Richard-]

My pleasure lonewolf!!!!!

Not much information on the website as you are finding out ~

I emailed Dave about his mod service as it pertains to John's mod of his B200's ~

Hopefully Dave will get back to me soon... when he does I will gladly post the
information here... of course if someone else has already contacted John with a
similar request and received helpful information please post it here... it would be
most helpful ~

Thanks in advance ~

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[texendo]

Here is the short correspondence from Dave a few weeks back that really only adds lead time for modifications...

Jason,

Just wondering how much scratch a pair of those Visaton B200's with fitted phase plugs would set me back.  I'm planning on constructing some open baffles for them.  Also, what would be the lead time if I were to order a pair?

A modified pair of B200s is $400 CAD. Lead time to ship is about 3 weeks.

dave

[LarryC]

John's phase plug observations are consistent with what I have also heard on the modded B200's and posted previously. Dave's comments have also been posted and makes comparisons to other full range speakers that he has also plugged. All have been very notciceably improved by the plugs. An easy, cost effective improvement that is definitely worth doing; and Dave does a wonderful job with them.

Here is the photo link that shows the plugs as well as the  basket and dampening
of the driver basket and magnetic housing:
http://www.websiteonline.net/b200/b200.htm 

The addition of the BSC circuit adds an additional balance and smoothness to the sound that refines the B200 even further. Dmason's expermient with the BSC circuit, I believe found the same results.

Plugs and BSC together bring the B200's to to a wonderfully listenable and engaging pair of speakers.

LarryC

[-Richard-]

Hi Texendo ~

Thanks for your information as regards the cost of purchasing the B200's with mods
from Planet 10 ~

Actually I already have my B200 drivers... my question is: how much is the moded
service on my existing drivers?

Thanks for any help you can give!!!

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[fergs1]

greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Chris but some of you might know me from other forums as fergs.Well it appears i'm getting sucked into gravity well and it feels ok! Ive got my b200's and I'm about to build a pair of Nigels(nigel,barfind, mrContent etc) baffles and I'll augment them with a sub. Now some questions..
 Firstly has anyone here built the ripole BMC style dipole subs   and using them with their B200's? has anyone any thoughts on it?   Its concept really appeals to me and I know it gets a bit poo pooed because its application doesn't include high spl unless you add more ripole in a ripole stack, but I'm in a small flat and I don't need high spl.Quality over quantity.Vlado's over The Keg Steakhouse anyday!
  Secondly Ive just been playing around with the drivers with out any baffles and I find the cones jump around alarmingly on some tracks and Im using only a 9watt 300b SE amp with moderate volume. Does mounting on a baffle tame down the excursion. I know most people are using thieir b200's full range regardless of if they are using subs or not aand so the sight of the cone movement is making me nervous to say the least, especially in light of the fact that when i picked up my speakers one of them showed a dead short straight out of the box and had to be replaced. if the xmax is 2mm is that 2 each way ie 4mm or what? thankyou for your answers in advance and thankyou for a fantastic thread.                        cherio   chris

[Asic81]

Hi all AC members
I am newbie here, after browsing through all 97 pages in 2 nights, my brain is throbbing just like B200 OB at it Xmax. Thanks Dmason for started this wonderful journey  . I plan to build a single B200 Visaton with wings baffle and have no intend to use any additional sub. Some of you (LarryC, Winchaser, -Richard-) built your baffle with different sizes and seem like they all sound super. Since my listening room is 13x17, I wonder what sizes of baffle I should go with and here are my questions:
1) Base on my room size, what are optimal sizes for the baffle height, inner wing width, middle panel width, and outer wing width?
2) What is optimal distance from the floor to center B200 speaker?
3) What material is best for baffle: oak wood, DMF or Partial board?
4) Should I go with modified phase plugs from Dave?

Thanks
Dustin

[opnly bafld]

Hello Dustin,

Welcome to the OB journey, I have a feeling you are going to like the trip.

Most of the questions you have are best answered by experimenting yourself.
One that I would say has a general agreement is to make the baffle just wide enough for the driver.
Then use the wings (one wider than the other) to get the desired width for bass response.
As far as center height for the driver, this will depend on many things.
Are the baffles going to be vertical or will they tilt back some? How far away will you be sitting? What works (sounds) best to you?

Hope this helps some,
Lin

[JLM]

Dustin,

Baffle material has little impact on sound as there is little pressure on it.

IMO your room is minimumally sized for O.B. use as you'll want the backwaves to be at least 10 feet longer than the front/direct waves to avoid smearing of the sound/imaging.  So the speakers should be at least 5 feet from the front wall (and you should be at least 5 feet from the back wall for the same reason).

Mounting the driver lower increases bass response.  Tilting the baffle back will help "bring the sound up".  The B200 will "beam" frequencies over 4,000 Hz, so even with tilting you'll probably want to mount it off the floor (based on setup described above).  As mentioned, you'll have to play around and decide for yourself how much bass to give up versus the beaming versus the smearing.  All speaker designs are a compromise.

[-Richard-]

While nothing compares to getting your OB's outside with meters of space
behind them, their open and natural sound still blows away boxed speakers even when
tuned for very near wall placement of only a foot or so.

Quite right JohninCR!!!!

I have the inner edge of my B200 OB panels 25 inches from the back wall... the outeredge is
40 inches from the back wall... the inner edges are 6 feet 2 inches apart in width so that
the drivers cross in front of the listening position ~

I am using Louis Chochos's Bipoles for subwoofers behind my OB panels facing side ways...
not facing forward... and cut off at 150 Hz using a simple coiled inductor with a 6 db fade
per octave hooked up in series with the top B200 driver ~

JLM does not have an OB speaker... he does not own a B200 driver... so he is merely
giving himself permission to speculate... and his speculations are contingent on the
parameters of his imagination... JLM's imagination seems to have no bounds when it
comes to giving advice on this OB thread... all readers should be aware however that
there are several contributors to this thread that are sharing their direct experience
with their OB configurations, such as Dmason, JohninCr, opnly bafld, Vinnie Rossi,
myself and others ~

This is a public service announcement (and you thought I did not have a sense of humor!) ~

Warmest Regards ~ Richard ~

[Vinnie R.]

Also, regarding tilting OB's, it can actually lower the audio image and soundstage, because it projects the rear wave down toward the floor and what happens with the rear wave is extremely important for the soundstage height and depth. 

Hi JohinCR,

Excellent observation and this is exactly what I found! 

I have my OB's pulled out about 5 feet from the rear wall, and like you mention that backwave is extremely important for building such a realistic soundstage (height, depth, layering, etc).  I hear all the performers and they are way beyond the baffles....almost as if the sound isn't coming from the front of the OBs at all!   

The ultimate experience for me is when I play at night in the dark.  I have never been so 'there' before and I love it!

Best regards,

Vinnie
 

[markC]

I've been experimenting for a couple of weeks with the b200's. I'll share my findings for those interested. I'm using a pair of 15" ib sub drivers and a 360W plate amp to augment the bass. My centre baffle is 10" w and 40"h. The wings are 12" and 8"  cut at 45* angles at the top to add a bit of estectics. The centre baffle is temporary with easy select height adjustment, (see previous post a couple of pages back). The best driver height for me is 23" off the floor. Higher makes it too difficult to balance the bottom end with the subs. I found the mids too "shoutty" ,if that's a word, and applying cork on the baffle front tamed this very well. My buddy was over yesterday for a listening session and was blown away by what this set-up can do. He recently spent over 2 grand to build a speaker system consisting of mtm scanspeaks and morels and a pair of dual 8" hi v subs with plate amps. In short, He wished he hadn't. We had things cranked pretty loud, (we measured mid 90 db's), and the dynamics were simply amazing-best Either one of us has heard. Just when you think everything should go POP with a plumb of smoke it just got louder! Listening to the live Patricia Barber cd Companion was like being there- the smack of the drum stick and the leading edge of electric guitar were incredable. The detail is very good, like that little ball bearing percussion thingy- in quiet passages you can here the balls rolling on the cylinder as the performer raises it. All in all it was a very pleasing Sunday afternoon in all things audio land. Oh yea, yesterday was Mon.- long weekend up here in the great white north.

[Dmason]

MarkC

Glad to hear of your "epiphany!" Sorry to hear your friend was on the wrong side of a learning curve, apparently.

I had a very interesting open baffle experience last week. I decided I could no longer take the heat and humidity around my oceanfront "pulapa," so I took off for a mostly audio-free two weeks on the northshore of Oahu, to vent body heat the old-fashioned way: by remaining on the leeward island, downwind of the cool winds blowing down the side of the Keaulana crater, and onto the parklands surrounding Waimea Bay. Perfection!!  And to Nodiak: solid 3-4 on both west and south shores. 

 I stumbled into a restaurant/bar at one point, and got into a bit of a beery discussion about music and audio with its owner, a fine fellow indeed, sort of a Jimmy Buffett clone, more like "Jimmy Buffet," judging by his girth. He owned some high quality, multi driver, elaborate crossover-all-in-a-box type speakers, which required the serious current capabilities of his mint vintage Sansui receiver, which did a fine job indeed, but these days, sounded like just about every other multi driver stereo speaker I hear, to be honest. I enjoyed being out of the rain, the cold beer, his company and his choices in music. The rain increased to the point where it was pretty much solid water coming straight down, so I packed up and moved into a nice motel down the road. It had one of those big TV sets you see in "better" motels. I noticed it had RCA stereo inputs on the front, and I plugged in my cheapo Sony disc player and tried this set up for the first time ever. Now TV sets do not contain their drivers in boxes, one nice thing about TV's -- essentially an open baffle sound. Folks, and especially the Hidden Choir: I could NOT believe just how much better this set up sounded, compared to that of Mr Buffet. No contest. The set was a modern, late model Panasonic thing, likely with a Tripath amp, because Panny is the major corporate customer of Tripath small output chips. VERY NICE sound coming from this TV set. Open baffle speakers, probably OEM Fosters, 3 inchers, and probably energized by a T amp. This was the OB object lesson from hell, for me personally. Thought you would like to hear it. The ability to actually HEAR the recorded message and intent was made easy. Sensible sounding sound.

Now, I am back home, it is cooler, and the sound from my B200.2's with the Signature 30 is like ambrosia. In fact, I am listening to Ambrosia, so yes, it sounds like Ambrosia. I am even further convinced of this stuff. If that is possible.

"Nice, nice, very nice. So many people in the same device." --Kurt Vonnegut, wrote the lyrics for Ambrosia's "Nice, Nice, Very Nice"

[markC]

Yes, funny thing about "full range" drivers is that I'm even starting to pick out the "good" qualities of the crappy door speakers in my work van. Tuned to a quality jazz fm station of course. Many thanks to you and Mark in Burlington for opening my eyes and ears to these ob's.

[Stempy]

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1159531371

Looks like morrow audio has a new commercial OB effort

[JohninCR]

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?spkrfull&1159531371

Looks like morrow audio has a new commercial OB effort

Do not buy that.  $200 markup from common retail price if you want to buy only the drivers.  $400 more gets you a $30 sheet of plywood turned into a simple but quite compromised ugly baffle.  While those P-Audio drivers are monsters, you're looking at a really low Q....70hz .... Morrow says they need a sub, but good luck trying to integrate it.

Time to launch a website!

[-Richard-]

Hi JohninCR ~

Do not buy that.

Now that is why I like you so much John... no frills feedback fired with
passion and precision ~

Keep up the great work!!!!!!

Warmest Regards ~ Richard ~