If you throw enough of it at the wall, something is bound to stick

I was thinking to post some of this in @Priidik 's thread on speaker building but it was soon apparent that this was a work in progress and thus thought I would start a thread to journal my foolishness to perhaps aid others in not going down too many rabbit holes .

So where to start - probably where I have been for a while : my current set up

Source: rPi with pi2designs fantastic 502DAC hat - rDAC - Liquid Glass ( preamp ) - DIY PASS Aleph - 0.7i Maggies

In-room response with recommended Dirac filter



It sounds great, I enjoy listening to music both for fun and seriously so why ..... well, I came up with several self deprecating jokes but ultimately it is all for fun ( and perhaps a little therapy ) Let's be clear, there has been no planning or much thought put into the process. I bought a pair of Moth Cicadas and wasn't enthralled, I heard they sounded great in a PAP Trio type of arrangement - I knew 15" woofers would never set foot in my living room for any extended period of time so I snapped up 4 Exodus Audio DPL-10's when they popped up in Chicago.



When I could, I snatched some time to do ..... MATH - probably shouldn't have bothered and just winged it as I am sure the results would have been similar. Well that criticism is probably a little harsh but we are our own best critics. The truth - they sounded reasonably balanced so long as I could adjust the gain on the not so efficient DPL10's.



No idea what happened next but I ended up with a horn loaded tweeter, a Linaeum wide dispersion midrange ribbon ( and 3 PASS DIY amps seem to have appeared out of nowhere


I wrote up a short description here .

Linaeum wide throw ribbon


all was not lost here - the rest of the Optimus LX5 transformed into very nice nearfield monitors with the help of a Monsoon planar PC speaker and a Tangband 5" longthrow "subwoofer"



Horn tweeter


I do think I have finally figured it all out. The more pressure I am under at work with deadlines and all the stuff that usually shortens ones existence, the more productive I seem to be with this episodic DIY energy. I have seen DIY as a sort of self preservation therapy for a long time and it all makes perfect sense if you can step back objectively.

and a forth amp squeeled past almost unnoticed - once I have this one all buttoned up, I will post a separate thread as I think it performs well enough to be a serious contender for anyone wanting a decent 100W Class AB amp



- if you can't wait it is XRK's version of the very popular 100W amp on DIYA , I think now generally known as the gridle amp.

Well I am in the midst of grant deadlines, editing a book that I had also agreed to write 3 chapters in and with doing 14 hour days through COVID, I find myself in possession of some more toys to tinker with.

Scandinavian Audio Labs SAL 08C08 = full range drivers that are no longer being made : these are hand made by Frank of SAL. I do believe he still has a FB page and is continuing his experiments with different materials. The drivers I bought used to be stocked in the DIYAUDIO store and I acquired them as part of a deal which included the makings for Dick Olsher's OB3. Yes, in other words I do now have 15" Augies and the crossover parts - so it would be a shame at least not to try this.

SAL FR drivers



the pictures do not give you a fraction of the sense of the size and build quality of these things, they weigh more that the 15" drivers which are no waifs.

AUGIE 15"




So where does this leave me?

4 x 10" dipole bass drivers
2 x 15" OB bass drivers
Moth Cicada FR drivers
SAL 08C08 FR drivers
Ribbon wide dispersion midrange ( supposed to be FR )
Neodymium Horn loaded tweeter
a box of crossover parts
2 digital crossovers : CSX2496 and minDSP 4x10
too many frigging amps to count

i.e. a whole load of goodies to play around with and hopefully they will distill into a single speaker which I may or may not be allowed to use in my living room - at least I am in a good place, I do love my Maggies, so this is relatively cheap therapy and the entertainment value is priceless.

'papette' in its current form



I will post more as things progress. My intent is to take measurements and post ( regardless of how awful they are ) in the hopes that someone else having a flight of ideas might be somewhat guided by my own experience.

hope if nothing else , this serves as some entertainment to others.
..dB

 

"Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment."
-Robert Benchley

 

I want to see some motor porn on those drivers. Those are some good looking cones! (plenty punny, but 100% serious also)

 

If I had money at the time I definitely would have bought those SAL drivers

 

not my picture but some serious magnets and the entire frame is CNC cut from 10mm alu



I thought I would show you what the maker of the SALs has put into practice



- somewhat of a PAP approach but using 2 SAL drivers

This is where I am headed

My plan is to initially do some experimenting with the papette as it is - try various combinations of the drivers (including replacing the Cicada for the SAL) and adjusting the various influences of the drivers with the DCX2496

I am also curious how the SAL driver sounds in the MOTH speaker cabs - the biggest challenge with the Cicada is it has little to no bass ( and is a little shouty ) - the SAL driver has real excursion and might just generate the bottom end in the cabinets.

After that I will try something along the lines of Nelson Pass OB platform



I will try this without and also with the additional 10" drivers and if the addition of the horn helps the top , will add that on top of it all too . It may end a spaghetti junction mess or might just be a simple full-range with a little bass support.

so many things to try ..dB

 

I believe awesome is the only word that comes to mind. Since we're looking at Covid sticking around forever due to you know who and all the covidiots, I'm guessing we''ll see a lot more experimentation here.

 

Some noodling of what I am thinking to try

1. with down firing 15" and forward facing 10" bass with full range driver



2. with forward facing 15" and full range drivers - somewhat similar to the PAP Duet



Both ideas have a slight back tilt to the front baffle

Biggest draw back to the first idea is the amplification as ideal would be tri-amped and things start becoming a little cumbersome after a while.

..dB

 

Number one! Then you have an excuse to buy more amps which I know will make you happy

 

Picked these up on a whim



now I really have to stop buying more types of drivers and start playing around with the various options to make a cohesive sounding OB

 

What is this? Looks like headphone drivers

 

Back in the day we used the dipole versions to make SFI franken phones

They originate from these Sawafuji panel speakers



They are planar magnetic tweeters.

 

Years ago I tried implanting some SFI drivers into a pair of AKG K240 Sextetts
I still have all the parts for anyone who wants to try resurrecting my experiment.

 

I wasn't sure where to post this link but it is DIY and oh so cool

https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Tinfoil-Ribbon-Speaker/

 

That's pretty amazing. I wonder how critical the tension is for getting consistent sound across multiple units.

 

People switch out their ribbons on RAAL units. I suspect there is a wide margin of error within the tolerance for it to work - FR may vary from distortion though

 

No updates to my own shenanigans but found this cool resource for fixing CD players

Ebook about CD Players servicing Ken Clements - Understanding And Servicing CD Players (1994) : Ken Clements : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/understandingandservicingcdplayers)

 

Just for the sake of it and because it's such a good resource for more than just cd players, here's the pdf bookmarked and cleaned up and compressed a bit:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rf5sv8l3asmlm30/Understanding and Servicing CD players.pdf?dl=0


.

 

A small update to the tinker OBs

I decided it was sacriledge to waste a pair of functional MOTH Cicadas and thus returned the driver to their rightful homes. I did the same with the RAAL tweeters and the Selah Veritas are complete once more ( these mini monitors sound exceptional from 100Hz up = maybe they just need some OB bass - another distraction for another day.

I had little 3" full range drivers made by TangBand and decided to have some fun - I hacked up some bass ports I had lying about and epoxied on a mounting plate which then seated the little 3" drivers into makeshift horns ( yes, many are cringing at the math and scientific profiling that didn't do into this carefree whim )

I had the house to myself last weekend and decided to haul them up and set up a crown 6 channel amp along with the external crossover. I used one channel to drive both bass units , one to drive the mid and the other for the vintage alnico horn tweeter.



The cool thing about this crown is that it allows you to set the level of each amp and I could thus dial in the mid and tweeter relative to the bass units

well, in this form it is not replacing the Maggies, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't WOW and it wasn't as good as the Cicada / Raal combination - no surprisses there but it was better than an awefull lot of things i have heard. The precision horn mids are a little honky / shouty and i much preferred mids with the linaeum wide dispersion drive ( it just doesn't play loud and mids are recessed but with HUGE soundstage )

not sure what to try next - perhaps the 18" bass units with the 3" FR? that could be interesting

..dB

 

the ortho tweeters!!!!

 

Crazy thing is I had forgotten about that box of drivers till I was scrolling through this thread and thought the same thing!