[Viridian]

I am just about to make the plunge into OB and I see that many of you have opted for the B200 FR. I see the HempAcoustics as a likely candidate, many have commented positively on its tone. But I have yet to see any real opinions on its use in OB. Could you please help me in trying to sort through my options? I would like to know if there are any reasons why I should choose one over the other. Or, if there are other options which I have not considered...

Thanks,
Erik

[gooberdude]

Hey Erik,

I was in your same position the last month or so but considered 3 choices:  B200, FR8C & the Hawthorne Silver Iris co-axial.

One of the best pieces of advice that I received here was from a poster who flat out stated:  'For your 1st time at this OB thing, go for the 15" driver.  It will be much easier to implement into your room.'

He was not kidding, its a TON of fun & required no guesswork, brainpower, textbooks, software or soldering.  These drivers create a massive soundstage and do pinpoint imaging & timbre/tone/drive superb thus far...with only a few days of use on them.    I haven't even turned my subs on yet, too busy watching musicians.

I really wanted to go hemp but am more than enthusiastic about the Silver Iris'.   They aren't a x-overless OB, but they are a cool OB speaker for sure & 96 db sensitive to boot.   I won't babble too much, but after reading a few hundred pages on forums about OB (and getting a good feel for what is out there) its easy to state that the SI's have no beaming, completely disappear, produce a bitchin' low end, are as fast as ANY speaker i've ever heard and were sounding good about 30 minutes right out of the box.    4 of these descriptives aren't too typical of OB.

this is my official schill for the day!   no affiliation, but so far a happy customer.



matt

[mcgsxr]

I happen to use the b200 Visaton, and I think I may have contributed to gooberdude's choice, as I know I suggested the Silver Iris would be a good piece.

My b200 adventures have been fun, and I really do enjoy them, but it has taken experimentation to get here.  For me, that is part of the fun, so no regrets of any kind.

But, I do keep reading about people buying those 15's and dropping them into a system and loving them quite quickly.

I have had no experience with the hemps you point out, but the 0.4 QTS leads me to think there are better OB drivers out there for $150...

[opnly bafld]

Hawthorne Audio will soon have a 10" coax SI that might be another option for you.

Lin

[gooberdude]

It was you mcgsxr!   I owe you a beer and a sincere 'thank you'.    

It might take me a few months to get a hold on the SI's, but its looking to be a painless journey.  
But, from what I can tell, each driver & design yields difft results so YMMV.  And, my taste in music is right in line with the SI's...bring on the Funk & Hip Hop.

When the smoke clears i'll no doubt step into a pair of B200's or Hemps, but not for a while...

Regardless of your driver choice Erik, go OB.


A wicked tweak I did last night was to ground each woofer's basket yielding a significant reduction in some type of noise.  My guess is it'll work for any OB design, and probably drivers in general...    Just one 8" strand of CAT5 wire running from the basket to the Neg post on one of the drivers...no scraping or anything, using duct tape to hold the bare wire end against the basket.   This same technique worked in the same way/same results when i grounded both my metal Lovan racks.  odd but effective...


matt

[Wind Chaser]

A wicked tweak I did last night was to ground each woofer's basket yielding a significant reduction in some type of noise.

Matt,

Could you be a little more specific about the "some type of noise" part?


Erik,

Regardless of your driver choice Erik, go OB.  I second that.

[nodiak]

Erik,
I think a main issue is how much involvement (time, effort, $) you want to have with dialing in speakers with your system vs. how much time you want to spend listening. We're all different (I think that knowledge is starting to catch on) and as is always said, what you like will come down to taste, system matching and such variables.
My experience with the original Hemp FR8, B200, and SI's showed the Hemps to have the best mids (to me) but needed bass help on ob. B200's had better bass, needing less help but still sounded better with a helper. Neither one had treble on par with a good tweeter to me - but I never tried phase plugs with B200, only with FR8. Battle lines are drawn over the coherency issue. The SI's are plug and play. The revised xo is said to give better mids. The treble was good to me, and the bass was nice and deep enough to need no help on ob.
I used to love constantly adjusting speakers and trying different types. But now I'm burnt out on my speaker hobby (for now  ) and am looking at getting SI's again for the ease of use factor. Also I have a tube amp now and can dial in tonality to a healthy degree with tube rolling.
Do you now get into speaker building? Or do you mostly just want something ready to play? Seriously, unless you love to work on your system I think it can be really frustrating and expensive to feel unsatisfied and searching for answers and spending time and money...instead of accepting some compromises and listening to music.
Of the three the SI's would make the easier starter, and as a reference when/if you try others.
Excuse me if I'm off base, talking to myself a little here   !
Good luck, Don

[Wind Chaser]

Don,

How big is room / dimensions?

[gooberdude]

Hey WindChaser,

Have you ever tried this?   Its kinda difficult to explain what happens, but easy to hear.    If you haven't, do try this at home...its a keeper of a tweak and takes just a minute or 2.

To my ears, the sound clears up.  The SI's are large & in charge both in stature & sound...with the baskets grounded they sound a bit faster, more nimble, coherent & 'right'. The SI's instantly lost any hint of throatiness - which i figured burn-in would cure.

My SI drivers are only 6 days old - grounding them has made them sound like they've been burning-in 24/7 for a few weeks.   This is not a tweak where 'clearer' will later become 'too thin'...its as if something bad has been removed. But if you haven't heard the effect then you might not be accustomed to the noise.   ie, its one of those "i didn't know it was there until it was gone" sorta things...tough to verbalize, sorry!!!   I do not know the tech answer for why it works...

As I said in the orig post, these drivers are the 3rd component that i've grounded experimentally with positive results.   Some of this might be due to where I live, which is an EMI/RFI rich Urban environment, but if you search here and other forums (tweakers forum) folks have done this for some time.

I went wild with this idea months ago & attached a ground wire to the floor-to-ceiling storefront aluminum frame windows in my condo, hopefully creating a huge Faraday cage (in my mind) or something...   this  sounded bad, imparted high-freq shrilliness.  No clue if I tipped the scale of adding too much noise to the neutral leg, but when it comes to grounding its best to do it by ear & step-by-step.    If you ask some, they will tell you that sending the noise into the lines is a bad thing...i would agree to a point.   Grounding my Turntable, the stereo rack, my TV rack & the 2 SI drivers has done cool things to the sound.   Taking the idea one step further and trying to ground 75 linear feet of aluminum was NOT a good thing!   so, its all an experiment as you can guess.

I'm just glad to have a use for all the CAT5 wiring which was used with failed DIY speaker cable recipes from the past..i call that period of time BAC (before anti-cables!)

i don't mean to hijack the thread...but did get the idea to ground the SI's on Hawthorne's forum.  I've heard of boxed speaker owners doing this, its so simple with OB speakers though since the back is exposed...

If its due to a build-up of static or some other energy, my guess is that subwoofers would benefit too...
This would be a great thread in Occam's Lab circle here...


matt

[nodiak]

WC, 11.5' x 7.5' x 26.5'. Speakers on short wall, pulled out 5-6' . Main seat ~11' back from speakers, ~ 10' behind seat with opening to another room.
Room gets bass lift for sure, have some traps that help. Also use a sub that helps to divide midbass output - roll off mains early to cut down on hump, bring in sub ~ 40 hz. Works well.
Don 

[Bob in St. Louis]

Not sure what I can say to add to this other than my 15 Hawthorne Silver Iris Coaxials are the best $300 bucks I ever spent. "Plug and play", that's a wonderful way of looking at it. I never quite thought of drivers in that manner, but it's true. No complications involved at all. I like to build baffles and experiment with that aspect, but these drivers are not fussy at all. I'm just having fun playing with them. It's the one area (the ONLY AREA  ) of my system that I'm 100% happy with. Period.

Bob - Very Happy Hawthorne Customer

[DanTheMan]

I agree totally Bob.  The only other pieces of equipment that I have that were a better deal only cost me S/H

[Bob in St. Louis]

......and a little "tune-up" time. aa

[Viridian]

Wow, what an encouraging response. I hadn't really considered the SI's seriously. I will now. Just need to save a few more pennies...

Don, I really appreciate your input. You are right. I have a pretty limited budget and 2 small children. I really want to be able to just set it up and enjoy it and perhaps tweak here and there. I tend to be a tweaker but can see that it could get to be too much for my wife/family pretty quickly.

As an aside, I just got two Trends Audio TA10.1's(to power the FR's and woofers seperately) and now am looking for a good USB DAC to run from iTunes and perhaps a cheap preamp. I really am new to this and want to get something that sounds good but for budget-fi outlay. That is OT, but any ideas?

I appreciate the input very much and am still open to anyone else voicing their preference.

Erik

[oracle309]

I have no direct experience with the Silver Iris or the Visaton fullrangers, but do with the Hemp Acoustics FR8s (in a ported box). I can state that they are a no-brainer, but as pointed out with a Q of .41, may not be ideally suited for open baffles (but Hemp Acoustics will soon have a solution for that).

I use the 31" X35" "JELabs" OBs with other drivers. I've cut some "adapters" that will allow me to mount the Hemps where 12s now reside. Hoping to actually do this on the weekend. If I can get my wife to agree, I'll move the OBs into the living room for a short period of time.

The biggest "hastle" with any OB is WAF, and unfortunately the ESL sized OBs simply have zero WAF.

[opnly bafld]

The biggest "hastle" with any OB is WAF, and unfortunately the ESL sized OBs simply have zero WAF.

You might want to change "any" to some, because you are missing out on a whole new generation of smaller and very nicely finished OBs.

Also, I am confident that not everybody that owns OBs or ESLs are single.

Lin

[gooberdude]

Hey Lin,

Can you list some of the drivers or finished speakers you mention??   I just went OB and am really excited about how it all works.   Since it just involves drivers & baffles (initially) i'd like to know what the other popular designs use....its great to try other designs w/o breaking the bank 

The Hawthorne SI's made a gigantic leap towards being perfect last night, did a tweak called the 'screenectomy' in Hawthorne's circle...    Still, at some point in the future i'd like to experiment with a x-overless design.

matt

[opnly bafld]

Matt,
I am just referring to ones I have seen on AC, Hawthorne, Decware and links provided (DIY and commercial).

Lin

[oracle309]

You might want to change "any" to some, because you are missing out on a whole new generation of smaller and very nicely finished OBs.

.

true, but I really can't believe that they are better, just different. I must say the I've spent some time with Basszillas and enjoyed them. But my poorly constructed, fugly, OBs are pretty special.

I am not seeking an argument, so I hope none take it this way. I am intrigued by Linkwitz's designs and similar (narrow baffle, various drivers, augmented bass, etc.). It's interesting to note that some I had advised here or elsewhere in the past have moved along from their original projects onto something more "substantial"