Thinking similiar to Statement/Khanspires but ...

[Kornbread]

Drat, my pics keep going sideways? They don't show like that on the computer?

[Kornbread]

What a pain in the bum to finish these things. Planned on spending maybe ~$100 in paint, easily spent $200 just in paint, and several weeks of filling, sanding, and painting. No matter how hard I tried to fill/sand, where the pieces mated, the lines still ghosted through the final finish. Used plastic body filler and glazing putty. No dice. Face it, I'm no paint-n-body guy. Tried to get a pic showing it, but the old iphone wasn't up to the task. Doubt I'll be going this route again. Kind of disappointed, not the finish desired in the off chance of being able to make one of the diy meets. You guys make it look so easy.

Anyhow, there up and playing. Time to get back to work on the minidsp. Generally speaking, with a WMTMW like this, in reguards to lobeing, is it better to go with a higher order crossover? Is there some general rule of thumb I need to be keeping in mind like, ie.; to use, or not use, a combination of odd and even order crossovers? What about using 1st order crossovers in combination with shelf filters? Here's when I'm at presently. Red is the latest revision, gated @ 3.4ms. Measurements were taken inside as these things are too heavy for my aching back to schlep outside.

How does the impulse response look?

[jhollander]

I assume you have a spray gun and this is not rattle cans? If so find a good automotive paint store and do a candy color on top. A darker tint clear will add depth. You could also add a metallic clear.

I'd not add anything to what you already have for the base. You could paint what you have black and add a rubber feet.

IMO 1 color speakers look the best unless you have a removable baffle. Even then black is meh. For MWAF I'm doing chocolate spray latex, seal coat, semi gloss lacquer, with a amber baffle, gloss.

[Kornbread]

Been a couple months.

The speakers have been sitting in the bedroom waiting for sanding, a couple more coats of primer, and paint. Note to anyone that might use the premixed ready-to-spray, Dupli-Color primer from O'Rielly's, it doesn't go very far. One 32oz. can wouldn't cover both speakers once. It sprayed like it needed to be cut further. They did have some other 'normal' Dupli-Color primer that cut 1:1 with their 'specialty' reducer. Total cost for 32oz. primer and 32oz. 'specialty' reducer was about the same as one 32oz. can of premixed ready-to-spray, Dupli-Color primer. Coverage is much better with the normal primer; got two coats on both speakers with maybe ~1/4 can of primer/reducer left over.

Wet sanded with 600 after the first and third coat of primer.

For some reason, the local O'Rielly's had an issue getting the premixed candy apple lacquer paint, settled on molten red. If you ask me, molten red looks just like barn red from the local farm supply store. One 32oz. can of the Dupli-Color premixed ready-to-spray paint covered both speakers with two coats, and enough to go back over and hit any light spots I'd missed.

Anyhow, here they are in two coats of barn ... I mean molten red. They have not been cleared, or sanded yet, so not much shine.

Not really a fan.

My thoughts, start from just behind the roundover, and paint the baffle flat black. If that doesn't sound good, they have 'most' of these colors in stock; http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/se....00+-+%2425.99

Need your advice. Which of those colors is going to look nice with this barn red? What else can I do to make them look better?

Oh, and ideas for the feet? They need to be about 2" off the floor, and not something that's going to let these heavy behemoths pierce my floor with holes. Trailer hitch balls?

[Kornbread]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I had forgotten to visit O'Rielly's auto parts store. They have a Dupli-Color brand lacquer ($25 quart) that comes premixed and ready to spray as a four part process; prime, base, candy coat, and clear. And they have Candy Apple Red. That just happens to be the color I was wanting.

[ontariomaximus]

I would consider a small foam roller with a Tremclad Rust Paint. Done it a few times - finish turns out pretty decent.

[Kornbread]

What has it been now, a couple months since slapping them together for some testing. IMO, they now sound significantly better than my long time reference nht2.5i's. I'm liking them. Wish there was someone nearby to give their opinion.

Had a few vacation days that needed used before April and boy is home for Spring break, so, I have a little time and a helper for moving these behemoths (still managed to hurt my back) . With boy's help, all spots have been filled, BIN on for the last time and sanded, it looks and feels smooth. One speaker is ready to paint. But there seems to be a problem, what kind of paint can I use over BIN (shellac)? No one around town mixes lacquer (some kind of regulation) and these things are just too big for a rattle can. Besides, these things need to shine like a new penny, what are my options?

[rpb]

Here's where I would start. It's hard to describe the full process, but the first thing I'd look at is the mids measured alone with no eq. See how flat, or lumpy the response is on axis, and off axis to the sides.

Next, I'd add a highpass and a lowpass filter. Maybe 4th order at 225 and 3k. Import the response as an frd into PCD, and compare it to a target curve. Next use a little EQ, or change filter types to get closer to the target.

Switch your displayed results to 5 dB scales, and show us some pictures of just the mid response.

[Kornbread]

Woofer crossed at 250hz., BW24db/oct, (it took this slope to clean up a rather large resonance? well into the midrange)
Mids at 250hz BW24db/oct and 1700hz BW36db/oct
Tweeter 1900 BW42db/oct. (steep slope cleaned up a peak below the cutoff freq.)

Played around with the xover points, and slopes, but so far, these settings measured better. I know, some of you guys are going to look at this and scratch your heads thinking, we've got a blind man driving down the freeway! And ... basically ... your correct. Anyhow, feel free to comment. I'm trying to learn, and I learn best by doing, even if a few (bunch) of wrong turns are made in the process of getting there.





Overall eq. effecting all channels.



Woofer eq.



Mid eq.




Tweeter eq.



Way more correction than I wanted, and some may even be contradicting others. All I know is it sounds better than it was. You can see where a high shelf was used to raise the overall output, and a low shelf was used to remove some materiel below ~20hz to ease some of the strain on the tiny tk2050 chip amps.

[---k---]

So what active filters are you currently using?

I think you're finding that it is very easy to get decent results with an active crossover. But to get truly amazing results takes just as much effort and experience as a passive.

[Kornbread]

The wife finished her beauty rest ... didn't help much.

Green is the same measurement as the earlier red trace, blue is new settings @1meter, gated 3.3ms, which should give a fairly accurate measurement to ~300hz?





Anyhow, cleaning up the area from ~400hz to 1500hz and balancing out the tweeter really helped, but something was still wrong in the bass.

So I opened up the gate to 100ms. Right way to do it or not, it showed some fairly large peaks centered around 190hz., and 88hz., each peak spanned about 80hz. Squashed them. This is the result gated at 100ms. When this measurement is gated to 3.3ms. it gives the Blue graph above.

There starting to sound better. Roger Waters sounds and images good, other good recordings sound pretty nice, and the pile of overly compressed 80's hair band cd's laying around sound just as harsh and compressed as ever, so this leaves me thinking, there getting closer to accurate. I'll get a better handle on their sound over the next couple weeks.

Something to note, at my .... cough ... age, I didn't think the area at 10k and up would be noticeable, so I just left it alone. Now I'm not so sure, there seems to be a bit to much shimmer on top.

Overall, this has been a very productive day.

jhollander, one of these days I'll make it to your neck of the woods. Want a crack at them?

[Kornbread]

Had a bit of free time today. Blue trace should be the same as earlier measurement, Red trace from today. Went from sounding hot in the lower treble to heavy, slow, and distant. Using the minidsp, I'm able to make changes on the fly, I don't see how you guys do it passively. I'd play around more but the wife is taking her beauty nap, and we all know what happens when we wake the wife from her nap.

Measurements taken same as before; @1 meters on tweeter axis, gated 3.3ms

[Kornbread]

Finally got around to taking measurements @0,10, 20, 30, and 45 degrees off center. All gated at 3.3ms.
Purple=0* Maroon=10* Light Blue=20* Dark Blue=30* Orange=45*

[donradick]

Kornbread

If the measured frequency response is pretty flat, but (as you said "still sounds hot in the lower treble") sometimes you need to measure off axis.
Simple enough, leave your mike in the same position, and rotate the speaker 10-20-30-45 degrees off axis.

But that only works if you got your gating right and have good clean results. Sorry, I can't help you with REW.

[---k---]

Placed the mic as close as possible; just off center of the phase plug on all drivers, and came up with this. Then let REW 'average the responses.'

I'm not the measurement / crossover guru in Khanspire team. CJD is.
But, that measurement method doesn't sound right to me. I believe you measure @1m. Measure the tweeter, then the pair of mids together, and then the pair of the woofers. This way you're capturing the baffle effects and the summation of the drivers. You should be gating off a lot of the base, so you'll have to bring that in. I'm guessing Jeff's paper goes through all this, but it is the hardest part of the process - which is why I've never tried.
Bad measurements are going to give you bad design. Active doesn't make it easy.