Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

[SoundProf]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

HI, I'm a little late to this thread: If you have a measurement mic, I suggest measuring the spectrum at a gig that has the sound capability you're trying to duplicate. You may be surprised how little very lo freq content there is. There is a reason why so many DJ's successfully use 15in Eons or equivalent. In contrast, serious low end requires equipment that is expensive, heavy, hard to transport and most attendees wont be able to hear(feel) the difference. (That's not an insult, just the reality of how our hearing works and conditioning) The chest thump that so many use to judge bass performance, is at 150Hz and higher. Even popular JBL 18in PRX subs are down significantly at 40 HZ. Don't forget that the whole system, and potentially lighting, must run off a single 15Amp circuit in most cases! BTW: you get room gain from the floor whenever the speaker is approx less than 1 wavelength from the floor. A speaker on a stick, 6 feet up in the air, still gets a boost from 150Hz and below, whether it's a 5in or an 18in driver.

[billfitzmaurice]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

The chest thump that so many use to judge bass performance, is at 150Hz and higher.

50 to 70Hz, actually, and it has to be around 100dB or more at the listening position. It takes serious subs to deliver that, but serious DJs use serious subs. Like here, where the sub complement consists of twelve 2x12 folded horns:

http://www.clubtherapyri.com/

OTOH smaller club DJs can usually get by with a pair of eighteen loaded reflexes.

BTW: you get room gain from the floor whenever the speaker is approx less than 1 wavelength from the floor..

Less than 1/4 wavelength and the cab is still in half space. More than that and there will be floor bounce cancellation notches.

[jarvissound]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

Blenton--unless you are dead set on building or don't consider your time as being monetarily valuable, go buy some of these piece of crap Chinese (American Audio or Behringer) speakers so he can blow those up instead of your pride and joy. I don't care how bigga PA you get him--HE IS GOING TO BLOW THEM UP. ;-) That's what DJ's and young PA guys do. Those American Audio Pulse 15's are ridiculously loud and don't sound too terrible and they cost barely more than the plywood should. Ditto with the subs. Bill is totally on the money above about real DJ PA...We did a gig on a pier in NYC last year for ~2000 people with Zedd playing and I had TWENTY Meyer 700HP 139db concert subs...and it wasn't enough.

[Blenton]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

It's been a long time coming, but here are the fruits of my efforts over the last few months. I ended up going with:

(1) PRV 18SW2200 2+2 ohm 18" subwoofer
(2) Dayton PA255-8 10" Pro woofers (xed ~1700 hz)
(2) JBL Selenium D250-TRIO horn drivers (xed ~1700 hz)
(2) Dayton 3 3/8" bullet tweeters (xed ~10khz)
(1) Behringer iNuke 3000DSP

Orignally, I didn't want to include the bullet tweeters, but at 10khz, the Seleniums dropped like a rock and sounded very dull. So I threw in the bullet tweeters as a list minute decision to cover the upper octave and add some sparkle. They ended up needing a lot of padding, but that's ok. I'm fairly impressed with the components that I selected: they all seem to be great bang-for-your-buck items. After some break-in and measuring, I ended up going with the suggested box volumes for both the PRV and the Dayton woofers; ~4.25 cu.ft tuned to 42 hz for the PRV and .9 cu.ft sealed for the Dayton. We'll see how long my B-i-L can go without blowing anything up :D

[Brian Steele]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

Those look pretty decent. I guess you're running the two tops off of one channel and the sub off the other?

The 3000DSP may not be enough to get the most out of the sub, but that might be a good thing :-).

Do you have an impedance / frequency response measurements?

Interesting choice of a sealed cab for the 10" tops. I might have gone for a slightly larger vented cab, then fix the low end with the 3000DSP's EQ, to get a bit more oomph out of it.

[Blenton]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

Thanks! Yes, yes, and not yet... I've got the two tops running off of one channel and the sub off of the other. The sub can definitely take more power - it'll probably handle the 3000DSP all by itself! I figured he can run all the speakers off of one amp for now, then add another one later if he finds the need and money to do so. That keeps things simple.

Impedance and FR measurements will have to wait for a bit. I had to pillage my amp/mixer/mic setup to splice in the iNuke for testing and initial setup.... :( So those will wait. Though. lest anybody think I was shooting from the hip, I did used SE to design and measure the speakers before final assembly...

[HU-JIM]

Re: Pro Audio vs home audio drivers?

BEAUTIFUL - when is the gig