10F/8424 & RS225-8 FAST / WAW Ref Monitor

I used 6x 6.5in buyout woofers in SLOB FAST w TC9. Sounded great. Just 2 of those in a WMW might work well too. They are smooth drivers so easy to XO. With two you have a 2ohm load. Many Class D amps handle 2ohms.

I recall that project. I grabbed the woofers because they were too cheap to not have a few on hand. Would wiring for 8 ohms cost me too much sensitivity? I have some 3116 and 3118 amps, but wasn't even considering 2ohms.
 
Hello X,

got to ask your permission here...

I have a surf buddy that started a project with his local community. They collect plastic trash on the beach, sort it, crunch it and try to use it for building other things. They have stuff like surf combs, some art, a lamp. and even next year trophy for the World Junior Surfing contest next year.

Right now, his oven and press are about right for the size of a dual TC9 mini-karlsonator.

My plan was to make him one, so he can go to shows and present the kind of things that he can do with the recycled plastic. I'll make it free of charge for him.

Would that be ok with you if I used the mini-K as a demo for his project?
 
Thank you for sharing this build! Have you compared the Dayton driver to other 8" drivers? For instance SB Acoustics. According to my simulations, SB drivers require a bigger cabinet and cant take the same amount of power before X-max. But I am also/more interested in sound quality.

Also: Where can I buy the foam for the Dagger within EU? I have never worked with that material before, så curious to try it out!
 
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I bought a pair of SB23NRSX45-8 and have a baffle with their cutout. Meaning to try it but from Aatto’s build with same woofer - it will take some work for a new XO. It’s not as smooth through midbass range. Also a kink at the important 1kHz spot and perhaps lower frequency breakup modes. RS225-8 breakup is waybupnat 7kHz so easier to filter out with first order XO.
 
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Right, two drivers in series will have same sensitivity at same voltage as one driver but can take double the power. Impedance is also doubled so 4ohms x 2 is now 8ohms. It may work well as those are 88dB at 2.83v woofers. -5dB for baffle step loss and so add resistor to tweeter to get about 83dB overall. I suppose that’s not bad for $10 of woofer plus a $10 TC9FD and you have a fairly good FAST. Those woofers are very flat response so maybe the first order XO (as presented in post 1 for an 8ohm speaker) will work well. Although if in a WTW arrangement, the T needs be recessed 3in with a waveguide.
 
hi XRK,
my speakers are ready now and i am trying to setup them. I have collected most of passive xover components except the huge 4mh which i may get in coming week. so meanwhile i am experimenting with dayton dsp 408 as well as piano dac'2 built in dsp.

piano dac dsp and dsp408: takes in analog input and gives out analog. 2x4 configuration. LP is BW first order at 600hz and HP is BW first order at 600hz. is this correct?

with this setup, i am hearing kind of boomy bloated bass. its not accurately following the music. the room is 13ft x 15ft and height is around 8-9 ft aprox. speakers are up against the wall very close to them and around 6ft apart. is this a good setup?
 
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Hi Soundnovice,
You will need a microphone to do this accurately as the electro-acoustical XO is going to be different than the electrical crossover. Although play around with the frequency - as I recall, the actual electrical frequency of the XO may be different. For example 900Hz low pass on woofer, and a -20dB notch filter at 3400Hz, and 500Hz high pass on tweeter. Etc.

Having speakers next to wall increases bass from about 800Hz and rising as high as 5dB more at 50Hz. It is bad for imaging and sound stage. Try mounting on stands 3-4ft from back wall. If stay at wall, you may need to reduce bass or boost tweeter. Usually tweeter has to be attenuated 5dB to account for bass fall off from baffle step.

Try moving away from wall - that’s the boomy bass.

If active DSP, I recommend Harsch XO - discussed in this thread and in Harsch XO thread.
 
i read through some of the posts where ever you have mentioned about harsch xover. finally i could understand that if going with dsp, harsch makes a very good xover while 1st order passive achieves equally (or better) transient performance. overall passive xover is less complicated but never the less i will try both since i have dsp to play around and update my listening experience.

locally i am only getting steel laminated inductor core for 4mH. i hope the steel core wont degrade the sound quality too much. and to construct 61uf, i will need to go with something like 20uf*3=60uf+1uf combination.
 
While 1st order is in many ways close to ideal, it's very very demanding on the drivers - they have to be very well behaved over a very wide range of frequencies (notice 3 times I used the word "very" :) ) . DSP+Harsch gets you much steeper slopes and much more freedom with drivers. But the price is twice amplifiers and the cost of dsp.
I myself would never even consider having an audio setup without some sort of dsp for room correction and if that's the case, the jump to active xo becomes much more manageable.
 
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@wxn
you are correct. since we are having a wide response woofer and a full range driver, i think only here we can think of 1st order filter. in a normal woofer+tweeter setup, it would not be possible.
cost of a good passive xover is more or less equal to a cheap dsp unit. in my case piano dac having builtin dsp costs around USD40 which is pretty cheaper compared to buying huge caps and inductors. plus driving full range requires low cost amp something like tpa3118 based board which is hardly available for 20-40USD.
 
soundnovice, a few comments...

As X mentioned, move the speakers away from walls and see if it fixes the boomy bass. Also, walk around in the room, you will hear that some places are more "boomy" than others. You'll have to find the best spot for your speakers and your ears. Just enough bass, but not too much.

I also agree that you will need a microphone if you start playing with XO curves. Otherwise, stick to the recipe X has given for this build.

For your DSP, going analogue in -> digital correction -> analogue out will degrade the sound and you will lose information. Most notably, spatial information.

If you can, try to stay digital all the way to output. That way, you won't need the extra A-D encoding. Try to use a computer with the piano DAC, or a usb drive for your audio files.

Finally, your 10F/RS225 build deserve better amps than those little D amp boards.
The little D amps are cute and good enough for a boombox at the beach, but they lack a lot in detail and imaging. For something as detailed as the 10F, get yourself nicer amps to drive them.
 
totally agree.
i dont like A->D stage of dsp. I am only going to use dsp to get the xover points correct. once its finalized, i will try to implement the same in piano dac. Piano dac with volumio plays songs from Tidal.

also i presently have two 85W class AB amps for biamping. Later i plan to switch to allo's tpa3118 amp for full range ps95 as my impression about this amp has been good. i have used this amp with MA alpair 10.2 and the detailing was excellent. maybe class A/AB will sound better.

i also have plans to try out class A (5W amp camp amp or 8W jean hiraga for full range).

8a1.jpg

8a2.jpg
 
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No worries Perceval. It might be interesting to see green recycled speaker cabinets wherever possible.

I got an Arduino kit the other day and they provided a base for mounting the arduino and a breadboard. The baseplate was made from injection molded clear plastic but filled with finely pulverized wood sawdust. Not as fine as particle board and not as densely filled. Probably 75% wood and 25% plastic. It had the look of wood chips but was smooth and sharp features of injection molded plastic. Never quite seen anything like it. I can imagine an injection molded speaker that was like this and used recycled plastic as the binder. The material would have nice vibration dampening properties I think. And it looks interesting.

Anyhow, been teaching myself how to program little microcontrollers lately and see lots of uses in audio.
 
Got a pic of that board?

It is interesting that they use recycled materials, but this product would be almost impossible to recycle again, with the wood chips glued to the plastic.

So, your speakers are going to have little robotic arms now? :D

Just read the news that the USA want to catch up with the world on AI... doing your part? :D
 
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