New Faital Pro 4FE42

[Nissep]

New and shiny toys!

I played around with 4fe32 and 4fe35 and they are quite nice once the breakup/resonance is dealt with. And if one keep the excursion down by not trying to reproduce the lowest frequencies they can play quite loud!
So I have high hopes for this new little driver.

The frame and gasket is the same as the 4fe32 I believe, but there is a new cone material and dust cap shape.

Don’t get any high hopes for quick updates on any project. This is only a teaser.

https://faitalpro.com/en/products/LF_Loudspeakers/product_details/index.php?id=401005105

https://en.toutlehautparleur.com/speaker-faitalpro-4fe42-8-ohm-4-inch.html

 

[duvixan]

Please post some listening impressions

 

[Nissep]

Absolutely, if someone like to beat me to a test enclosure, go for it.

And “baksida” is Swedish for back side, didn’t see it until now.

 

[twocents]

Exciting news! Subscribed. I love my 4FE32 drivers in the TABAQ enclosure.

 

[duvixan]

The bullet plug is glued to the cone, right?
The new vc is 25mm and Bl increased to 6.
Sounds like a pretty serious midrange contender for a 3 way.

 

[Nissep]

The bullet plug/dust cap is part of the moving assembly.

As with all these drivers in the series the front gasket is a bit bold and sticks out. And the frame is truly made for assembly from the behind of the baffle.
But a nice waveguide in front of it would probably work great for midrange duty.

 

[duvixan]

Yeah, I wish they came with a nicer round frame.
A bit of a shame with how nice they sound. I have the 3fe22. Sounds very good

 

[Nissep]

I have hid the frame behind wool, 3d-printed baffle, 3mm mdf, but as you said too bad this serie didn’t come with a more hifi oriented frame and gasket.

 

[duvixan]

Nicely done!

 

[Nissep]

Over the night I made a router template on the 3D-printer and I made a boring discovery.
I didn’t have enough scrap 12mm baltic birch plywood to make two of the ported enclosures.

So it’s first home will be a closed box, golden ratio (internal dimensions) for the looks, 1,7L internal volume, Qb=0,7 F3 ~153Hz F10~80Hz

But with the baffle configuration I know it’s not going to be quite as smooth as Hornresp predictions.

But I’m mostly curious if the annoying/fatiguing resonance of its predecessors is fixed.

 

[Nissep]

Well I took a day off from being a dad and actually finished a speaker.

First I printed a router template, then I beefed it up with some mdf. Then I cut all the scraps to size. Routed the recess and I will never do that again in 12mm plywood for these drivers. To get it flush there is barely any wood left. Added a few braces made out of thin mdf floor.
Stuffed the entire volume with melamine foam. And finally added my signature banana plug solution for the connectors.

No measurements yet,

 

[twocents]

Great work. Very well braced for such a small enclosure. Signature banana plugs? 🙂
Looking forward to listening impressions.

 

[Nissep]

Tomorrows when the family is not asleep I will listen and see if there is anything alarming.

Casual listening to tv with 5 distributed subs sounds really nice so far.

And the embedded connectors is a thing I’ve been doing a couple years. I flare the end so it’s conical and really fill the hole.

 

[Nissep]

Well it’s a little to soon for a final verdict, but so far they sound pretty nice until the placebo wears of and I actually measure them and find out how much correction they need.

Well no surface treatment yet only card scraped baltic birch.
And I made a cute little cover out of the cutout in felt from a previous non recessed baffle.

 

[duvixan]

How are the highs? Do you miss a tweeter?

 

[Nissep]

Nope, i even added felt in front of the driver.

But until I make some measurements it’s only my opinion.

 

[Nissep]

The measurement is done in a crowded room, frequency dependent gating and about 40cm between microphone and speaker.
The lower knee show a perfect 12dB per octave from 150hz and down. There is a rising response up until 3Khz where a resonance/dip occur that is visible in the impedance measurement both in box and free air. And then there's some wiggle above this.

I showed the effect of my felt cover, but also what happens with 3 thin layers of Visaton LTS50 coating.
And unfortunately I messed up the before and after measurements, so one measurement show a bit lower spl level
All is left is an appropriate amount of eq!

 

[Nissep]

Coated cone, and a few thin applications of shellac “platinum”. Basically a very light colored shellac.

 

[duvixan]

Quite a rising response, much different from the datasheet
Pls share listening impressions after linearizing

 

[Nissep]

Well to get what you see in the data sheet you need to make a huge baffle. In wall/ceiling application for surround sound would get you closer to that response.

I ordered some parts to make my first passive correction ever. I could actually make them active with dsp for around the same money but, for the fun of it I’m trying this.