A Speaker that Kicks Butt in Large Spaces

Nah, I got an older version, # 2830-110101. It happend while in "Loudspeaker Wizard" mode when I was changing the "Ang" parameter and went to "0,0 x Pi" by accident. I know not to do this now, but getting the most recent version could not hurt in any case. ;)

Hi IG,

Thanks for the information on the bug. I think you will find that everything works okay in the latest release. I strongly recommend that you download a copy, as a number of new features have been added since Version 28.30.

Kind regards,

David
 
That's interesting... I never knew that lossy cabinets like foam core may be helping the high Qts Vifa from being boomy. Is boominess caused by the bass peak at the low end? My measurements never show that peak, typically I thought that the stuffing took care of it.

Hmm, thought I pointed this out to you fairly recently. Regardless, the lower the system’s Qt [sysQ], the more rigid it ideally needs to be and vice versa and why at some high sysQ point, the box can be dispensed with and at a higher point, even the baffle.

Yes, typical damping mutes minor peaking at Fb. ‘Boominess’ is typically in the mid-bass of an under-damped bass alignment.

GM
 
I'm "just" 63 so have to check my magazines from the debut era (1952-) of the Karlson to see how many offered variable output impedance vs fixed loop feedback from the output transformer secondary to some earlier point. A 17-20dB feedback might have been typical with common push-pull tube amps. The Karlson as we know it from the product was/ is a coupled cavity version of the K-coupler (and that's what Karlson admits in the 1964 HiFi Workbench radio program available at archive dot org). The slotted pipe makes a very nice sounding HF alternative to horn and CD-waveguide provided the xover is typically 1K2 and above.

K15's back and wings should be tied/braced to the lowpass shelf - the rear lowpass constriction bends the back panel making the cabinet "breath" and pumping up system Q - - same for the wings. 3/4" dowel rods work well for the wings. even one little "sound-post" strut from the rear of the shelf to the back panel helps the back quite a bit. My 604 sounded very nice in K15 and I'm happy enough with P-Audio neo coax in my blonde pair.

Karlson enclosures were quite expensive at first - so they were audiophile material.
 
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Comparison of With/Without K-aperture on Directivity

In the Mini Karlsonator thread, I was asked to see if changing the K-aperture would affect the resonance bumps in the frequency response - it doesn't. But after I went into the model to modify the K-slot, I realized that this was something I had not played around with yet. Since the K-aperture was defined mathematically as a normalized function (ranges from 0 to 1), all I had to do was to zero out the first two coeficients and set the constant to 1 to simulate the effect of not having a K-aperture. Basically it makes it vent duct on the front waveguide the width of the cabinet (which is the same as not having anything there). Anyhow, the effect of this on the frequency response was minor, as expected, the bass extension decreased because of less mass loading and a shorter effective waveguide - see the first plot. If I put the K-aperture back in, the response pulls the bass down to 70 Hz vs 80 Hz. These sims are for the dual Vifa drivers in the 0.53X scale Karlsonator with the wall 60 inches away and the measurement at 3 m away. As you can see, with 2.83V into 4 ohms (2 watts) the SPL is pretty good for a couple of 3.5 in drivers - and it throws the nice bass shelf out to 3 m no problem.

Next, if we look at the spatial directivity of the sound without and with the K-aperture, it tells a very interesting story. The third figure shows the polar plot of the SPL at 3 meters for 80 Hz, 200 Hz, and 500 Hz without the K-aperture. Below 200 Hz, it is fine, but at 500 Hz the SPL is down kind of low and there is substantial lobing, and you can see the very narrow sweet spot. The fourth figure is the polar plot for the case with the K-aperture put back in. The result at 500 Hz is staggering in its effect! The sweet spot is substantially enlarged, the depth of the lobes is minimized, and it shows why I thought that the sound from speaker sounded almost as good when standing almost 90 deg to the side.

Anyhow, more data as to why the Karlson aperture makes a nice speaker.
 

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Yeah, the K15 needs a ~120 deg horizontal pattern horn/500 Hz, so a poor match to most large horns unless XO'd much higher up, which is too much K15 resonant BW for me, though in theory a low tuned K-tube might be the 'hot ticket', so hope 'springs eternal' that I'll get to audition one before I'm too old.

GM
 
K15 sounds good nuff to me with a 604 - if one thinks a 604 is a good speaker. I've run a stamped frame Nirvana Super10 in K15 and it sounded quite nice. Maybe a dedicated cone-driven midrange K-coupler would be nice vs a horn.

with the little SK8 collective project from the late and great Gregg Baker's K-forum the following aperture was nice sounding and looking
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
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Yeah, the K15 needs a ~120 deg horizontal pattern horn/500 Hz, so a poor match to most large horns unless XO'd much higher up, which is too much K15 resonant BW for me, though in theory a low tuned K-tube might be the 'hot ticket', so hope 'springs eternal' that I'll get to audition one before I'm too old.

GM

500Hz is where the Transylvania Power Company guys actively crossed-over their K-Tubes using 1" Altec and JBL drivers. Sounds quite low to me for such a little device. I see its lowest usable frequency at ~800Hz myself, which is as low as the BMS 4550 I had on would play, ~its own natural kneepoint. Maybe it'd be fine for domestic levels, but these were meant for pro use ultimately, so I'm not too certain here.

Art Welter commented on "HF being sprayed everywhere" in his recollection of hearing the ellusive 2" version. Must have been hell for feedback. :)

Personally, the TPC Tube is what worked best on top of any (of the two I've had ;) ) Karlson. I've crossed over as low as 1.5kHz. A small 90° round conical waveguide did OK ~3kHz. A 100° mini Smith horn was pretty good at ~1.5kHz.

IG
 
the Transylvania K-tube seems pretty "loud" with DE250 - a 12pe32 pretty much keeps up for a very hot little K12. David A. Young made the 2" size and said it worked very well - but IIRC (?) did not specify if the source was pre-recorded - or coming through a mic. "Spraying everywhere" sounds like one person's comment of Alan Weiss' mini-klam tweeter lens. Smith-horns are a nice match to Ks.

12pe32 - Transylvania Power Co. "The Tube" -
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How sensitive is that Advent speaker? The B&C Karlson must be quite a bit louder. These Advents seem pretty popluar with the "vintage" crowd. The only one I've ever heard is deemed to be one of the worse in the lineup. I think it was the one with two small cone tweeters on a small plastic wedge. Nothing memorable.

IG
 
re: large Advent = it must be at least 13dB less than the little Karlson - -Henry Kloss' stuff was always respectable - I had KLH6 40+ years ago and presently have KLH17 - my TSG 109oz magnet coax in a K12 with B52 polymide compression driver is noticeably less loud than the 12pe32/K-tube combo. I think the Martin 1114 (also Eminence) coax with 80oz magnet might be in-between. 12LTA is plenty loud but lacks dynamics due to weak motor. 12LTA augmented with a K-tube and cheap but cheerful compression driver such as ASD1001S or PRV 280 could make a nice fullrange/Karlson project - 12LTA might work well in Greg B's Karlsonator12 - or a "K13" (13/15 scale K15) -- 12LTA in the standard 6-slit vent K12 did well with Tomservo's Harley track - AN10 in reflex could not deal with the dynamics. (I've got a 1200 but due to chronic vertigo can't ride..)
 
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One nice thing about making the Karlsonator with the dual (or maybe 4 or 9 drivers) 3 inch or 3.5 in full range drivers is that they have the built-in property of having a good high end (solid performance to 20 kHz) so no tweeter or compression driver is needed to hear the full spectrum. I may be looking at making a quad driver Karlsonator - the 2 driver one already sounds great, I can only imagine how much better it can sound with 4.
 
Hi Freddyi
Your right, people don’t appreciate that part of what we hear is how the spoear radiates. A constant directivty source is one thing that not only allows a speaker to sound the same over a range of locations but also what can allow it to have the same effect over a large range of distances. If one has a radiation with a “Q”, that lobe can be used to taper the SPL so that the inverse square law can be “cheated” producing a near constant spl vs distance as well,

I was at an installation last week that illustrates this is a very large space. Pop on some headphones and try a couple of these of a large scale hifi that can hit 105dB A at 800 feet at the farthest seat, has a -2dB at 28Hz but is only about 6dB louder on the bottom end under the scoreboard where the system is

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nmmmdtum82lyig9/QnEaYWlnDE

LSU's Tiger Stadium - YouTube

Best Regards, take care.
Tom Danley
 
here are some directivity measurements and they show why the Karlson sounds good in a large space - very uniform directivity up to about 3 kHz (for vocals) and a 100 to 120 deg wide cone that is lobe-free[/IMG]

What happened to the image? :confused:
Guess I missed out. :(

Also, can someone show me an excursion plot? ..something like how WinISD shows the excursion for sealed/ported/bandpass systems. I'm currently under the assumption that it would be similar to a bandpass, is this correct?

Edit: I see the image now. Thanks for posting. :)

Edit again: My current thoughts for a "kick butt" outdoor system. Karlson with either Delta Pro-15A or Kappa Pro-15A, underneath an SEOS-24 with 1.4" CD, sitting on top of an 18" tapped horn per side, tri-amped and actively crossed around 60 Hz and 500 Hz or so. Hmmmm...

http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Delta_Pro_15A.pdf
http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappa_Pro_15A.pdf
http://prodance.cz/protokoly/eminence_delta_pro_15.pdf
http://prodance.cz/protokoly/eminence_kappa_pro-15a.pdf
http://www.diysoundgroup.com/plastic-seos-12/fiberglass-seos/seos24.html
 
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What happened to the image? :confused:
Guess I missed out. :(

Also, can someone show me an excursion plot? ..something like how WinISD shows the excursion for sealed/ported/bandpass systems. I'm currently under the assumption that it would be similar to a bandpass, is this correct?

Edit: I see the image now. Thanks for posting. :)

Edit again: My current thoughts for a "kick butt" outdoor system. Karlson with either Delta Pro-15A or Kappa Pro-15A, underneath an SEOS-24 with 1.4" CD, sitting on top of an 18" tapped horn per side, tri-amped and actively crossed around 60 Hz and 500 Hz or so. Hmmmm...

http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Delta_Pro_15A.pdf
http://www.eminence.com/pdf/Kappa_Pro_15A.pdf
http://prodance.cz/protokoly/eminence_delta_pro_15.pdf
http://prodance.cz/protokoly/eminence_kappa_pro-15a.pdf
Fiberglass SEOS-24? - SEOS? - Fiberglass - The SEOS? Waveguides DIY Sound Group

I have sim'd the Kappa 15A but not delta. I will post sims as soon as I have some time. One very nice feature about the K15 is that there is very little cone movement so that you really have a very high SPL system that won't be as limited by xmax like other alignments. It's interesting but in some cases the smaller Beta 10cx outperforms the larger 12 and 15 Kappas in a K15. A tapped horn sub might be a good idea as the K15 doesnt have much below 50 Hz.
 
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K15 with Delta Pro 15A

Here is the simulation of the Eminence Delta Pro 15A. First plot is freq response at 1m, second is impedance, third is driver cone displacement (note how small movement is). Fourth plot is freq response at 5m. These are all for speaker placed 60 in away from a back wall with 1 watt input. This particular driver does not have a nice flat bass shelf that some of the drivers like the Betsy or Beta 10CX. The efficiency is just astounding though: 95 dB at 80 Hz with 1 watt at 5 meters! Fifth plot is the freq response 10 meters away with 250 watts power (114 dB at 80 Hz). Sixth plot is the cone displacement with 250 watts input, still within mechanical excursion limit if a high-pass at 40 Hz is used to protect driver. Definitely a speaker that kicks butt at 10 meters.
 

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