[scorpion]

Wind Chaser,

It seems that I am only echoing what JML, JohninCR and Dmason said already on thread-page 82.

Vinnie and Stempy,

I am interested to hear more about your findings with the felt-circles. The Bastanis' Prometheus are reputedly very good speakers
 and I hadn't noticed that design-feature before.

/Erling

[texendo]

Regarding the "felt stickers," a similar topic was briefly discussed over at the Omega circle:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=26691.0

[Stempy]

Having read through some of Robert Bastani's posts on the Asylum, his view appears to be that all full rangers can be modified/tweaked to some degree, each reacting differently to the same tweak, some drivers may in fact act negatively to a tweak that works well on other full rangers. He states the area around the dust cap and pole is most problematic.

Like I have stated, my efforts so far have been fairly crude. I have used 4 largish felt pads around the cap evenly spaced about 2 inches from the cap.

What I have garnered is an approximate  doubling of the sweet spot. Also more air around instruments. One would assume greater detail, but I haven't drawn that conclusion one way or another. Have noticed also improved layering in the sound stage, If there is suckout it is happening in the upper midrange. The upper range  extension seems to be intact.

The good news is that the pads I am using have adhesive strong enough to adhere, but not strong enough to do visible damage to the driver upon removal. The down side is the adhesive weakens some each time it is removed and reapplied. I don't see any visible residue of the adhesive on the driver. That doesn't mean it's not there. If the adhesive is weakening  I assume it is taking fine traces of the driver with it although I don't see any in the adhesive( mine are brown/black felt w/ a whitish adhesive).

If you are going to try this I would not recommend pressing them on firmly, just hard enough they they stay in place. I assume if you pressed them on emphatically you would run the risk of doing damage.

Also Bastani is a believer in lacquering the drivers.

[mcgsxr]

OK, I think I will forge on (you are right MarkC, I do know that I have to go it alone!) and go with the option to mount the 12 inch woofers around 4 inches off the floor.  I perceive that this will be aesthetically pleasing, and will also keep the effective baffle as large as possible, and leverage floor boundary reinforcement.

I won't likely have the time to get to this until the end of the month, so I welcome input around others' experiences with woofers and b200's configured on the same baffle etc.

[-Richard-]

Hi mcgxsr ~

For sheer inspiration take a look at the Jamo design solutions in the 6 moons review:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/jamo/909.html

Scroll down to see all the pictures... the yellow baffle examples are particularly
well photographed ~

When I was using my bottom B200 driver in my simple flat baffle (a flat baffle... oh you
can't be serious, Richard!), which is about 4 inches from the floor, the floor nicely
reinforced the lower frequencies ~

I like the way Jamo curves the sides and the front of the baffle... also the plinth supports
the lower back of the baffle panel a few inches off the base creating the illusion of the baffle
"floating" or hovering above the black base... note the use of a hollow aluminum support
in the back that also serves as a wire guide to the crossovers that must be worked into the
plinth... the Danish are wonderful designers... and their European market must be receptive
to the lively color schemes Jamo offers... I would imagine most American women (bless
their hearts!) would be quite put off by the intensity and saturation of those stimulating
colors ~

Good Luck, mcgxsr, in your explorations... do keep us informed ~

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[mcgsxr]

Geez Richard, could you set the bar any higher?   

Nice ideas there, a great piece of inspiration - now, no one get any expectations of glossy finish from my corner, you know it will be raw mdf for a few more months... years?

I will try the 12's (one per baffle to start, though at the price, a pair per baffle is easily rationalized, and would have my 300w plate amp happier at 4 ohms, rather than 240w at 8 ohms...) around 4 inchess off the floor, and pay particular attention to how the expected increased vibration of the panels (both main, and wings) affects the clarity of what I hear from the b200 itself.

Nice catch, thanks for the link!

Expect the adventure to be continually documented, warts and all!

[opnly bafld]

Hey mcgsxr,
Vibration was my problem with the SI Augie 15" driver on the same baffle.
Never got around to trying 1.5" to see if that would cure the shakes.

Lin

[scorpion]

Mcgsxr,

I do think that Oldtimer has a valid point not using big woofers on the same baffle as the B200 which Lin also states. It can be done of course and I'll give another link to prove the case: http://www.bd-design.nl/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=d92.html. In my own case I am in fact thinking of a design that looks like Mr Content's in Decware Forum but with an opening for an acoustically decoupled manifold almost unvisible behind. The trapezoid form has merits on objective grounds which can be illustrated in the Edge program (link given earlier).

/Erling

[JohninCR]

Recently the thread has taken a turn toward Believers vs Objectivists
with the usual oversensitivity in the believers camp, and getting into that
kind of debate can ruin the discussion.

No one has said the B200 doesn't sound good.  Some people like the
sound of an uptilted response, especially in the way it brings the female
vocals forward in the presentation.  A hot top end results the perception
of more detail, because the frequencies containing detail are more pronounced.
Also, regarding bass, one can easily get used to bass that is rolled off,
especially the way it is gradually rolled off by the B200.  This is really a matter
of taste and taste in music. 

I feel compelled to point out though that some of the same people, who said
in the past that the B200 produced plenty of bass by itself, are now searching
for bass fill solutions.  I don't think anyone here is from the camp of "a ruler
flat response is the be all to end all", and we're all just after great sound, to
us, in our rooms.  I also don't think anyone can argue that there is anything
wrong with a flatish response or that an uptilted response can sound any more
"real".  Flat response at your listening position means hearing the recording
played accurately, however, getting there can introduce other problems.

When you are used to rolled off bass, be aware that when you first implement
bass fill it can sound very bass heavy.  I experienced this first hand and it took
a couple of days for my ears to adjust to a much flatter and extended response.

Regarding the top end and detail, air, etc., I believe many are confusing and
exaggerated top end with higher resolution.  Visaton's response graph shows
just what the driver sounds like, and there is some content missing at the very
top, however, it does go high enough for most.  In terms of resolution, a high Q
driver simply doesn't a strong enough motor to match the resolution of some
low Q drivers.  For example, the Fostex FE206 and FE108EZ both provide a
greater level of detail and resolution due to their lighter stiffer cones and stronger
motors.  The 206 has some objectional peaks at 3khz and above, which are hard
to live with, and make the B200 sound far smoother in comparison.  A low Q driver
requires assistance to make bass below about 200hz in free air operation, so they
can't work as a single driver OB solution.

Regarding wings vs flat:  Wings make bass easier in a much more compact form,
and anyone who wants to debate that, just bring it on.  In the higher frequencies
wings become a problem if you don't address certain issues that I've tried to
share.  However, it's possible to use wings that concede nothing to a flat baffle in
terms of sonics, while retaining some key sonic and visual advantages.  I believe
this because I took a small flat baffle and altered it into a winged version going
through many stages until the imaging equalled it's small box counterpart (something
I've yet to obtain with a flat baffle), but kept the large open sound of the OB flat
baffle.  Because I have multiple driver pairs, I was able to make direct comparisons
throughout the process, since using our audio memory is totally unreliable.

Implementing bass augmentation on the same baffle or not:  Obviously, launching
your lower frequency wave from the same plane is optimal.  There are 2 things to
consider.  Baffle vibrations-  Typically an open baffle isn't as structurally stable
as a boxed speaker, so we need to make sure our woofer augmenter(s) aren't making
the platform for our wide ranger flap around.  Heavy baffles or isolation easy solutions.
The 2nd, and probably more important, is the phase relationship around the crossover
point between your main driver and the augmenter.  Once you throw a crossover into
the game on one or both drivers, then you change the phase.  Also, if you use a boxed
solution for your bass, then you're trying to blend the LF coming from one source with
both the front wave and out of phase rear wave.  This is probably why those using
boxed solutions report their best results with the subs a different distance from the
wall than the main baffle.  My solution to date has been using a single amp and only
1st order crossovers to minimize the phase shift, so my drivers are mounted on the
same plane.  I'm in the process of attempting an active XO solution that not only has
extreme flexibility in XO points and slopes, but it also has features of delay for each
driver group AND phase shift correction.  I'll post results once I get it working, but I'm
quite excited about the ability to have a truely "transient perfect" speaker.  I just hope
the solution is a completely transparent one.

[-Richard-]

Hi JohninCR ~

Always fascinating to read your explorations... thanks for sharing your insights with us ~

Keep up the great work John!!!!

Recently the thread has taken a turn toward Believers vs Objectivists...

Ahhhh... self-righteousness is a deadly business in any form and on any level is appears...
it requires the most astringent intelligence to have the courage to face it...
in a sort of manly manner... and discard its oppressive tendencies toward an over-bearing
heavy concretizing of ones "position"... a true scientific approach demands extreme
self-discipline on the psychological level as well as a fundamental understanding of logic...
otherwise ones "objectivity" is seen for exactly what is it:
self-interest masquerading as empiricism ~

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[Dmason]

Jihad!  Have fun, folks, adios!

[scorpion]

I am the B200 your speaker and you shall have no other speakers before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol speaker, whether in the form of anything that is in hi-fi above, or that is in lo-fi beneath, or that is in the muddy water of any other forum. 

/Erling

[ebag4]

Mcgxsr:
I too am putting the sub on the main baffle.  I am using the Hawthorne Augie.  I know others have had issue with the B200 and the Augie, however I am having great success with this coupling.  The Augie in this application does not draw attention to itself, it simply fills the bottom end, I have it crossed at 100 hz.  I am currently using a 100 watt plate amp to drive the 2 Augies in series, I will be adding a 2nd amp in the near future to enable stereo bass.  This baffle has gone through many revisions, it started off at 20" wide for the top half, it is now at 16.5" the entire length.  It is difficult to tell from the photos (assuming I can get them to load) but the baffle is 2.25" thick in the middle and 2" at the edges, of course when it was 20" wide the edges were down to about 1.5".  I tried the 20" baffle with wings starting close to the drivers and out on the edge, I tried various wing widths, nothing was working so I decided to cut the baffle down.  I tried various wing widths with the 16.5" baffle but it wasn't until I was removing a wing to change the size while music was still playing that I noticed how much the sound opened up with no wings.  At this baffle width with these drivers in my small (10.6'x12.6'x8') the sound is outstanding.  The sound seems to be part of the air, floating but still creating a soundstage, and excellent imaging, Shawn Mullins was just standing in my room behind and between the speakers singing.  I still have a lot of work to do, I have come up with a method to decouple both drivers from the baffle which I hope will eek out a bit more performance, although even on bass heavy tracks the baffle vibration is minimal.  BTW, these Augies are outstanding bass units, very musical, plenty of bass and no box required!  Anyway, that is what I am finding in my space, all subjective to this point, no measurements completed to date, but they are very musical, I have not found fault in their sound yet, and I listen to various types of music with differing bass requirements.  Of course this is in my room with my ears so YMMV.

[-Richard-]

Hi ebag4 ~

I really like your baffle design... lovely lines, nice curve on top and you are using the
plinth to support your baffle in a way similar to the Jamo... very very nice indeed!!!!!!

From your description there can be not doubt about it:
YOU ARE HEARING IT... CONGRATULATIONS...
YES THAT'S IT!!!!  the music penetrates and invigorates the room like live music ~

As doctor Frankenstein says: IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Thanks so much for posting your photos... truly inspiring ~

Warm Regards to all ~ Richard ~

[Wind Chaser]

Jihad!  Have fun, folks, adios!

For all those infidels, and especially those audio terrorists who dare to bomb our favorite driver...

Recently the thread has taken a turn toward Believers vs Objectivists
with the usual oversensitivity in the believers camp, and getting into that
kind of debate can ruin the discussion.

To some extent we all are Believers and Objectivists.  For example, the notion that all cables sound the same; or the statement, “…our audio memory is totally unreliable” are beliefs.  Such beliefs are not held by everyone.  Every individual’s experience is unique to the individual. Therefore it comes as no surprise that people have different POV.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Believers often tend to propagate their POV as acumen or axiom, while the so called Objectivists (who in actuality are mere subjectivists) subject their thinking AND experience to the limitations of their scientific understanding.  Is one approach better than the other?

I feel compelled to point out though that some of the same people, who said
in the past that the B200 produced plenty of bass by itself, are now searching
for bass fill solutions.  I don't think anyone here is from the camp of "a ruler
flat response is the be all to end all", and we're all just after great sound, to
us, in our rooms.  I also don't think anyone can argue that there is anything
wrong with a flatish response or that an uptilted response can sound any more
"real".  Flat response at your listening position means hearing the recording
played accurately, however, getting there can introduce other problems.

When you are used to rolled off bass, be aware that when you first implement
bass fill it can sound very bass heavy.  I experienced this first hand and it took
a couple of days for my ears to adjust to a much flatter and extended response.

The truth is the B200 can put out a tremendous amount of low end energy, so much so that I sold my Augies.  I don’t want to offend anyone here, but in relation to the B200 in my system, I found the Augies to be slow and muddy while not offering any useful extension. A single pair of B200’s in my room mounted on the baffles I made with wings produces superb low end energy in both quality and quantity, almost to the point of being boomy! 

However I prefer the way the sound opens up in my baffles without wings, but in so doing considerable bass output is negated.  I tried the Augies but again was disappointed with the result.  A second B200 mounted a little more than 2” off the ground attenuated to the right volume proved to be a most effective solution.  Rap lovers and car audio enthusiasts need not apply, but anyone who loves real (natural unamplified) music will be delighted.

Visaton's response graph shows just what the driver sounds like, and there is
some content missing at the very top, however, it does go high enough for most. 

Visaton’s graph illustrates the way the driver sounds without a baffle inside an anechoic chamber.  Add a baffle and a room and everything changes.  It’s time to get over the FR graph. 

...it's possible to use wings that concede nothing to a flat baffle in terms of sonics,
while retaining some key sonic and visual advantages.  I believe this because I took
a small flat baffle and altered it into a winged version going through many stages
until the imaging equalled it's small box counterpart (something I've yet to obtain
with a flat baffle), but kept the large open sound of the OB flat baffle.  Because I
have multiple driver pairs, I was able to make direct comparisons throughout the
process, since using our (edit-MY) audio memory is totally unreliable.

First I can’t accept anything anyone says based on the flip of a switch as in A switch B switch A switch etc…  That’s infantile dark age audio.  I’ll contend further that if you get to know your system by listening to it often without making any changes or modifications, as in leave the damn thing alone for a while and simply enjoy the music, you will get to know what your system sounds like, and thus be able to discern subtle changes through that knowledge.  Another thing, to listen critically, it really helps if you close your eyes.  The brain can focus much better without having to process a plethora of visual information.

My experience with wings is limited to one baffle 9.5” wide.  But no matter how the wings were positioned, the consequences to the sound stage were both obvious and detrimental.  Hence the imaging also suffered.  Like Nigel says, Wings are best suited for airplanes.


John

[JohninCR]

That's what I meant about being overly sensitive.

I'd address each of your invalid points individually, but in the
interest of harmony I won't.  I will say this, until your baffle
construction (winged or flat) addresses the fact that the region
of highest velocity exists at the edges of your baffle, then it
can be improved.

The only way to fly like eagle is to use an airplane.

[-Richard-]

As long as we can integrate and absorb each of our particular interests in working to
understand the limits and possibilities of Open Baffles speakers, in order to gain a deeper
understanding of how best to implement our shared findings, I see no conflict here,
save differences in our approach ~

May I suggest that we each take special care in how we cast each other within the
limits of our own image making... our wish to express our assumptions and characterizations...
there is a great deal of intelligent people here who are quite capable of defending themselves...
and whose lives have obviously taken them successfully through the hazards of self-knowledge ~

May I also suggest we place our considerable collective intelligence at the service of our
shared interests in OB's ~

We are all here because we have rejected the "commercial" offerings that are placed before
us as the holy-grail, but which we have come to see as an inferior design direction, no matter
how much money they are charging for their fancy "packaging" or how much hype is
expressed in "rave" reviews and expensive glittering advertisements... that is our common
shared experience which we can build upon ~

I want to learn more... my curiosity is engaged... let's look more deeply together ~

Warm Regards ~ Richard ~

[scorpion]

Richard, Ebag4,

Very good points Richard, I agree wholeheartedly ! Ebag4's baffles are a very good exemple how we can benefit from each other. It is good design and shows that it takes solid dimensions if you are to put big woofers on the same baffle as the main driver. It looks a bit like both the Jamo and the design by Bert Doppenberg. The Jamo by the way I will be able to listen to in Gothenburg, Sweden Sep 9th I hope.

And Ebag4 please keep us informed by your decoupling experiments. Even Linkwitz uses decoupling now in the Orion. Myself I have
some wild ideeas including weights in fishinglines to hold and decouple the B200 from the baffle. I am now finishing my designs for the B200s.
It will be a trapezoid main baffle 110 x 45 cms with a 'hidden' manifold behind containing 8 8"-units woofers for each channel. Woofers have 30 Hz fs and a Ots of .74. I found the woofers in Germany for about 6$ each. They are surplus stocks nominal price has been almost 40$ each. This is the kind of affordable experiment that I like.

/Erling

[hurdy_gurdyman]

The truth is the B200 can put out a tremendous amount of low end energy, so much so that I sold my Augies.  I don’t want to offend anyone here, but in relation to the B200 in my system, I found the Augies to be slow and muddy while not offering any useful extension. A single pair of B200’s in my room mounted on the baffles I made with wings produces superb low end energy in both quality and quantity, almost to the point of being boomy! 

Greetings all,

Some of you know me from other forums, some of you may not. I have been reading this thread almost from the start, but have refrained from posting because I don’t own a B200, nor have I yet heard one. I decided to jump in now because of the above statement about the Augies having  “slow and muddy” bass.

I own a pair of Augies and have heard them in another system as well. The bass is both clean and extended as any bass I have heard in a sound system in my entire life. It allows bass down to 30 Hz on a modest sized baffle, and does it very clean with no boom, muddiness or other bad effects. It is now developing a strong following on it’s own for having astonishingly clean and open bass.

I would suggest that if anyone is having a problem with muddy bass using the Augies as a bass augmenter, there is something very wrong. Either the room has a serious problem, or the Augies was not hooked up properly, or the associated equipment has a compatibility problem. One has to be sure there is little overlap of the Augies response range and the main driver. This is true of almost any bass augmenter. The Augie is intended to supply bass below where the main driver rolls off or is restricted by the crossover. If this is not done right, muddy bass could result. Not the Augies fault, though.

BTW, the Augies are intended to be run from a separate amp in a biamped fashion. If they are hooked up in a passive way to the main amp, I don’t know how this would sound. I suspect it would be, to a large extent, depending on the amp’s ability to damp the speaker with a large inductor in the path. This might cause some muddiness. This would be the amp/inductors fault, not the Augies.

As for the B200, I’m sure it’s a great driver, as there are many folks who simply love it, including many whose opinion I value. I’m going to refrain from commenting on it one way or another until I actually hear one (anyone in Michigan have one I could listen to?)

I probably won’t post hear often, as I feel I have little to contribute. I’m a believer in posting about what you have had experience with more than just speculation or theory. I’ll continue to read this fascinating thread as I have been for months now. I’ll post if something comes up I feel compelled to post about.

Dave 

[JohninCR]

Scorpion,
You should take a look at Nigel's decoupled mounting for his B200's.  In addition
to decoupling, the way he handles the mounting to the driver via a stack of wooden
rings over the magnet would seem to help smooth the flow of the rear wave as it
clears the driver.  I've always wanted to take his idea to the extreme and make
the whole assembly behind the basket legs shaped like a giant phase plug.

Do you have a link for those 8" woofers?  I'd like to get 16-20 of them too.  Do
you have Xmax for them?


Dave,
I'm with you, but once again his loss is my gain.  I picked up a pair of B200's
from him (before his change in religion) and that pair of Augie's too, which gives
me 4 of each.  I've just been waiting to implement them properly.