I agree wholeheartedly. My first really successful "EQ of a full-range" was to tame the 5khz peak of Hifi-bird/Isred/Michael's Audio "drum paper" 5.5-inch -- I had meant to listen to a track or two of Bach Goldberg (Celine Frisch harpsichord) but stood listening for 70 minutes to all 30 variations, every note/hand-movement/musical-gesture.
A while ago before I took up speaker-diy during Covid, I had come across your mention of a Lowther notch filter. When I needed it I couldn't find the recipe again, but somewhere else you mentioned taking a few LRC bits and playing with filters. Thus inpsired, I experimented and made my own filters, by now a couple dozen at least, for example here (PM6A, F200A, F108eΣ)
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...le-city-of-22m-laid-flat.393338/#post-7266571
I can listen to a tone-sweep and come pretty close, doing math in my head. My "minimalist method" for XO and notch-filter (which is XO on a single driver)
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...ge-drivers-and-a-tweeter.391053/#post-7143129
When I decided to challenge myself on Mark Audio Alpair 10.3 (12dB peak at 7.8khz), I didn't want to be biased by the published chart. (Mark Audio's taobao store has audioclips of instrumental voices, that agreed remarkably well with FR charts good or bad.) After much tweaking and headscratching, I settled on a notch centered at 10khz to my surprise. Turned out, the chart showed a wide plateau 7-14khz (geometrically centered at 10khz dead-on). So I gained a lot of confidence
Nowadays the most convenient EQ may be the smartphone.... My old Mi 9 has a built-in hearing test function which culminated in a named PEQ profile for use anywhere. I still prefer the sound of my older Huawei phone (the first truly excellent Chinese phone supposedly designed by the Apple China team -- according to my source), EQ if necessary through a copy of vintage Sharp GF-777 or Sanyo M9998K attenuator-based loudness/tone-control. For speaker-diy testing, I cloud-play my own EAC-extracted WAV files (much more precise and realistically nuanced articulation than FLAC files) through a double-TPA3221 (the one recommended on diyaudio, I bought the last units) with heavy-duty power-brick, OCC interconnects etc.
I'd like to build the "FREQ" but last time through China customs (for Vfet) was quite taxing to say the least.
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/products/room-correction/MQ112
https://www.mcintoshlabs.com/products/room-correction
Art, science, guts or luck?
Here's an old thread https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/whizzer-and-intelligibility.185012/post-7154646 (DBMandrake using foam on speaker cone)
to which I appended "plast" (automotive stretchy tape) both as breakup-tamer and whizzer material
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/1-order-crossover-help.391332/post-7151405 (crossover-less LXmidi, honorary fullrange)
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/full-range-speaker-photo-gallery.65061/post-7529204 ($40 high-fidelity wide-bandwidth monitor)
The so-called "drum paper" Hifi-bird/Isred/Michael Audio fullrange drivers I raved about (micro-dynamic realism/articulation reminded me of Axiom 80), is just coated paper, a "tweak". Unfortunately, one source just told me the special coating glue is NLA....
Very transparent loudness/tone-control circuits https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/variable-loudness-diy-for-noob.381420/page-2#post-7213204
Last edited:
I can't Youtube.... Does the McIntosh “EQ on the top" as well as filters/tweaks/attenuator-tone-control, I wonder; probably not a small price.My experience is that only a minority of FR drivers cannot be improved by some sort of EQ on the top, but I think it's a relatively small price to pay.
Vintage Japanese loudness/tone-control circuits came from Sharp GF-777 or Sanyo M9998K.
Re: silver-coil PM6A, at my age I'd still rather have the ear-bleeding aluminum-coil to tame, than silver-coil falling >9khz....
Don't know the current lineup but I also had Neodymium DX8 in a not-large BR with port plugged (why pollute the Lowther with sonic background radiation?), and DX55 atop 8" fast subs crossed high (standard practice).
My first speakers after graduation were ESL63. Guitar sounded like harp so I became a fan of Monitor Audio Studio series (all aluminum first-order XO), until the Lowthers (for a while). The Mo's are still my reference standard, but since coming to Beijing I've had to compromise with the Studio 2 (liter?) atop Jamo 8" subs (recently replaced with up-firing Mo 8" woofers passive first-order, poor man's Studio 60). I mention this because during the pandemic I got the Mo Studio 10 for my office-apartment but was unsatisfied even with small subs -- hence the start of my DIY journey....
My first speakers after graduation were ESL63. Guitar sounded like harp so I became a fan of Monitor Audio Studio series (all aluminum first-order XO), until the Lowthers (for a while). The Mo's are still my reference standard, but since coming to Beijing I've had to compromise with the Studio 2 (liter?) atop Jamo 8" subs (recently replaced with up-firing Mo 8" woofers passive first-order, poor man's Studio 60). I mention this because during the pandemic I got the Mo Studio 10 for my office-apartment but was unsatisfied even with small subs -- hence the start of my DIY journey....
Last edited:
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
Hello, Dave,
I would like to purchase this set of plans. How can I pay for it? Thank you!
My email is: wenlin@catclawaudio.com
Last edited by a moderator: