[nicksgem10s]

I hope this is in the right circle.  If not please direct me to the proper circle.  Thanks.

I am curious to find out if anyone on AC has had any experience using the Audience A3 driver in a DIY speaker project.

Here is the driver information

http://www.audience-av.com/loudspeakers/A3.php

This driver is very interesting to me and am researching my next project.

I have read everything I can find on DIYaudio and other audio sites.

I would most likely look at designing something similar to what Audience does in their speaker line.

I was thinking about using 4 or 8 of these per speaker (sealed) and then using helper woofers for the lowest frequencies.

Have you ever heard or used them?

Thanks and Happy New Year!

-Nick

[chrisby]

No doubt these are an excellent driver, but I'd imagine the combination of the rated sensitivity of 82dB and the price of $170 each has probably given a lot of DIYers pause for thought.  Most likely the widest listening experience to this driver will be at audio shows.

8 x 2 x $170 = $2720

The full blown line array of 24 drivers per side ...... well you do the math.

[jhm731]

I heard the LSA2+2.

Great for a small room.

I think the LSA4+4 or a line array with 8 drivers would work better in an average size room.

[nicksgem10s]

No doubt these are an excellent driver, but I'd imagine the combination of the rated sensitivity of 82dB and the price of $170 each has probably given a lot of DIYers pause for thought.  Most likely the widest listening experience to this driver will be at audio shows.

8 x 2 x $170 = $2720

The full blown line array of 24 drivers per side ...... well you do the math.

Thanks Chrisby.  I kind of figured it was the price that was the main drawback. 

I believe the sensitivity might be less of an issue in an array of 8 drivers per speaker. 

Audience specs show that with a design of 8 drivers the speaker would be 93db 8 ohm.

I think that would be pretty manageable other than the cost of the drivers.

I heard the LSA2+2.

Great for a small room.

I think the LSA4+4 or a line array with 8 drivers would work better in an average size room.

Any comments on their sound quality?

Thanks again.   

[jhm731]

Any comments on their sound quality?
Thanks again.   

From 100hz up they're outstanding.

[FullRangeMan]

Hi all,
My personal choice are an FR with a bigger cone, as the usual good sound MarkAudio Alpair 10 or the even better Alpair 12(8inches).
This both Alpair drivers have enough good bass(do not need sub or crossover) and MarkAudio have a excelent reputation.
My favorite is the 8inches Alpair-12, looks it cost 179. USD each.
Regards,
http://www.markaudio.com/store/alpair/12
P.S.: Alpair 12 FR comes complete with rubber seal and wood screws, (a first class product as usual from MarkAudio guys).

[chrisby]

Hi all,
My personal choice are an FR with a bigger cone, as the usual good sound MarkAudio Alpair 10 or the even better Alpair 12(8inches).
This both Alpair drivers have enough good bass(do not need sub or crossover) and MarkAudio have a excelent reputation.
My favorite is the 8inches Alpair-12, looks it cost 179. USD each.
Regards,
http://www.markaudio.com/store/alpair/12
P.S.: Alpair 12 FR comes complete with rubber seal and wood screws, (a first class product as usual from MarkAudio guys).

I certainly agree on the overall quality of Mark's drivers, my personal favorite is the paper cone driver labeled for Bob at CSS (EL70).  For the guy urgently needing to try a line array with small drivers, the rectangular frame Alpair 6 would be a logical choice, at less than half the cost of the Audience drivers.




http://www.markaudio.com/store/alpair/6/rectangular

[FredT300B]

Here's the link to one DIY speaker builders impressions of the four-driver speakers he built. He sells these drivers, and I have not heard his speakers. http://www.speakerhobby.com/audience.htm

[mr_bill]

If I buy the Audience drivers, is anyone out there willing to build cabinets and assemble the speakers for a fee?
Either a 4 driver a side or an 8 driver a side floor-stander?

[ferenc_k]

We built a kind of PA system for an Armani shop using 4x A3 and 2xA3 Audience speakers in a very simple boxes, where the most important requirement was to squeeze the boxes into the very tight spaces of the lighting grid. 

They sound absolutely wonderful! Even in a very cheap industrial looking box. In the Armani restaurant beside the shop the 4xA3 based speakers are augmented by a Danley CS30 sub, but they use the system for disco on every Friday evening now. They tried it, liked so it is now used for this purpose as well, not only for the daily background music. The sub and the Au A3 speakers are driven by MC2 Audio 4x250 watt pro amps (few speakers in one output parallel) through a Allen and Heath ZED audio mixer, and the overall sound is really good. In the restaurant the speakers are about at 7m high in the ceiling, not really ideal for such a small speakers but they work against all rules. 

[bill13]

There's another A3 thread, but no postings for past 30 days or more, so this new thread here ...

I have a homemade pair of 'line array' speakers using the new Audience A3 3" full-range drivers. These A3 drivers are very expensive at $170 each, or $150 each in quantity 8 or more.

Currently I'm using four of these Audience A3 drivers per side, now in stuffed aperiodic (variovent) cabinets. The Dayton 1 cu ft curved-side cabinets (maybe a bit large for only four A3 drivers - but I got the cabinets used, so, relatively inexpensive).

The speakers have a wonderful 'palpable' midrange, and are very dynamic. However, there's a 'brightness' that I'd like to do something about.

There are recent rave reviews on the internet of the Audience Clairaudient family of no-crossover full-range speakers using line-arrays of these 3" A3 drivers.

Anyway, IMO, there are a couple of issues with my particular speakers - they currently don't have BSC (Baffle-step-compensation) which is achieved with the commercial Audience Clairaudient speakers by adding a second array of A3 drivers facing to the side/rear.

My general-purpose Parts Express Dayton curved speaker cabinets are only 9" wide, whereas the Clairaudient speakers typically have a wide 15" front baffle that helps with BSC.
 
Consequently, my homemade speakers sound a bit bright, probably due to frequencies above baffle-step transitioning into 2pi half-space, and the 6 dB resonance at about 7-8 kHz (Q of this bump appears to be roughly = 10). . The bass is great, IMO, because I added a Velodyne DD-15 subwoofer in at about 80 to 100 Hz - located immediately behind my seating location, midway between the speakers. Surprisingly, The sub blends in seamlessly.

A couple of questions for the AudioCircle speaker hobbyists here:

1. Should I add four more rear/side facing A3 drivers on each speaker for the needed BSC -- or instead electrically compensate for BSC and 'brightness' frequency response?
Perhaps I could use a resistor-capacitor comp network before the inputs to the power amps?

2. If I wanted to add say, a RAAL ribbon 140-15D tweeter at say, 3+ kilohertz, how can a constant group-delay 4th order passive crossover be made?
Evidently according to the YG Acoustics Inc. speaker advertisement in the current issue of TAS, a symmetrical 4th order, constant group-delay passive crossover (24 dB/oct slopes) is achieved with wide band drivers.
YG Acoustics claimed only 5 degree phase error (minimum deviation from linear phase) for their 4th order passive crossover slopes throughout the speakers frequency response range, 200 Hz on up.

BTW, Audience Inc. demo'd their prototype "2+2", four A3 driver, speaker in a smaller rectangular cabinet (two front-mounted drivers and two rear-firing drivers) using a passive radiator at the 2010 SHOW (a picture of the prototype might be at speakerhobby.com)

Bill

[bill13]

Regarding the MarkAudio Alpair 6 drivers.   Zaph Audio has tested many small drivers including the Alpair 6 and the Fountek FR88-EX 3" drivers.

Measurement-wise at Zaph Audio the Fountek seems to be a superior driver at a fraction of the cost -- good for line array applications above, say 125 Hz?

[planet10]

Measurement-wise at Zaph Audio

I always take anything by Zaph with a grain of salt. His evaluations are driven by the measures he makes, and for instance, the work Geddes has done show that the distortion measures have no correlation with sonics.

dave

[VadimB]

I've got a pair of these drivers for evaluation from Meniscus and spent quite some time with them, and like them a lot. On the other hand, I'm not too fond of line arrays, so I've tried to use just one of those little gems per side. It was installed in a 3.2 liter ported box, tuned to 60 Hz, basically because I had a pair of these boxes. My measured T/S and FR were pretty close to those published. If it's possible to post pictures on this site, I can show the data. (can somebody let me know?) This driver can be used in a 2.5 liter ported box, tuned to 65 Hz. I've tried this same box closed and did not feel it was better.
The bottom edge was surprisingly good. As was pointed out above, the efficiency is low, but the power handling is quite high.
As far as brightness goes - there are two peaks. First is around 8.1 kHz. That one I managed to remove with a regular notch filter. The brightness (or rather a bit of brittleness in my terms) remained, but the imaging improved noticeably. The other huge peak is going up for 5-6 dB from 10 to 15 kHz and jumps another 10dB above that and goes beyond 20 kHz. This is on-axis only. Off-axis it's obviously down, but still does not look good.
With 4.5” x 9” front baffle there is a 5-6 dB rise from 400 to about 1300 Hz. I’ve designed the baffle step compensation circuit, but have not used and did not feel (hear) a need for it for some reason.
These speakers have recently moved to my friend and are being used with 16 Wpc single-ended triode amps that have 16 Ohm taps. He uses them with subs and different cross-over point via Marchand active 4th order crossover. They fill quite large room with enough sound, unless it’s a big party.
I like the sound of these speakers and especially like the imaging. I am an imaging freak, but can’t name anything that would beat these little guys.
So, I am working on a new design with 2 of these per side and a ribbon supertweeter. Details of the design will be revealed (to me) once I built the cabinets (a bit non-orthodox) and install and measure the FR of the drivers.  I’ll most likely use only one as wide range and the other to compensate the baffle step, but both will be on the front side. The cross-over between A3 and the supertweeter is undecided yet, but will be a lot higher than mentioned in Bill’s post. Crossing at 3 kHz is a waste of this driver IMO. I will either cross at around 10 kHz, but will use a notch-filter for the peak at 8.1 kHz, or at around 6.5-7 kHz without the notch. First option should allow very shallow slopes, maybe even 1st order –we will see. Second option will require a steeper slopes, but still nothing like 4th order electrical. It’s a lot of work, but I think these drivers are worth it.

VadimB

[doug s.]

vadim, it is easy to post pics in your post.  if they are already on the web, yust click on the "" icon above the text box when posting, and link the image.  if the pic is on your hard drive, you can set up your own gallery by clicking on the "gallery" icon at the top of the page, and then creating a new gallery, and uploading your pics to it., then, by clicknig on the same "" icon, you can link pics from your gallery.

hth,

doug s.

[VadimB]

Thanks for help.
I've created a gallery, named "VadimB's Audience A3" and posted a couple of photos and all the relevant measurements there. Please, take a look if interested. Just to try, here is the photo:


VadimB

[Raiderone]

Hello,

I too have contemplated dropping the bucks for these drivers.  I have heard the Audience 4 + 4 speaker and it sounded really good, better than a conventional two-design or larger full range in a similar sized cabinet.

A few comments:

This 4 + 4 driver array did not suffer from any of the comb filtering issues that I have read about.  (See Jim Griffin's line array white paper for details.)  Another poster who seems to have experience with this type of mini array says that the rising frequency helps to negate the effects of comb filtering.  I can't verify if this is true.  I can only say that the imaging was pinpoint and very defined and nicely layered sounding.

I have heard many single small fullrange drivers and none can play (loud enough) satisfying bass without distorting or flattening of the soundfield.  (The closest was a Fostex 108 Sigma in a large swann style enclosure powered by two huge 400watt Accuphase monoblocks.)  However, there is a unique "attack" and "speed" in the mids that the smaller driver has that the larger ones seem to lack.  I'm going to guess that Audience wanted to preserve part of this and the answer was to use multiple small drivers. XBL technology helped lower the fs of the driver as most 3" drivers have a fs greater than 100Hz. And as mentioned above, by building in a rising frquency response it might have mitigated the comb filtering issue stated above.

Another key to the good sound is the absence of any electrical filter; gave the speaker a more "pure" or "direct" sound.  The 4 drivers on the rear took care of the baffle step loss.

Finally, I would not deviate much from what Audience is doing. Especially if you don't have the time and energy and equiptment to build your own speaker.  Actually, I would build the cabinet as close as possible to the Audeince box. Furthermore, I would surmise that this driver is designed to be used in a line array.