Jims 3 way speaker build

[jimbones]

Another (Important) update: Well all this while we have been perplexed with my assessment of the quantity and quality of the bass performance. It turns out that I had bad tubes in my preamp. After 2 hours of listening the other day it went from bad to worse where I could no longer ignore it. I replaced the tubes and WOW what an improvement. The bass quality is good albeit a bit much, but it is more tolerable than bad bass lol. Also it matters what amp is on them. I just switched to a Benchmark amp and bass levels are perfect. With the Peachtree Gan400 there was too much bass. As I dig into this more I'll report back. Thanks All.

[jimbones]

attached are the schematic and frd curves. Note that the sub is included on the extreme left.

[jimbones]

Hi all, sorry for the delay I was sick with COVID really bad, hospitalized etc. Was the roughest and Ive had it more than once. Ugh!! Anyway I am close to completing this project for the time being. I am refining and not making any big changes to the XO. I will post as soon as it is done, done. I have moved the speakers and have gotten the series resistor down to 1.25 ohm. I'd like to remove it completely and will consider that a future effort. I did have to slightly pad the mid and tweeter. Not sure why as you would think that if I just remove the woofer series resistor I would be able to remove all padding on drivers but it sounds like poop when I do that. I did not raise the cabinet off the floor yet. I did however find out that the cabinet plinth was flexing under cabinet load so it was not making a solid foundation for the speaker so I have to rework it so I get good coupling with the floor. You guidance and suggestions are appreciated and thanks to all.

[jimbones]

the speakers front plane is 6 feet from the front wall (the room is 22 ft long) so i try to be approximately 1/3 into the room. I like the idea of getting them off the floor. will 8 inches be enough? I'll have to make something up. I have to protect my back. I'll get a buddy to lift for me lol. Ya gotta have friends

[Wolf]

One more question, are these close to the front wall still, or are they pulled into the room?
Against the front wall will heavily load that woofer like you are describing.
if you are pulled out from the wall, try placing them 6-8" above the floor on a short stand.
A cinder block can work in a pinch.

Wolf

[jimbones]

Oh I agree I think I just bought a woofer that is too efficient. I unpadded the mid a tweet and they are loud. I'll try again. There is a 4 ohm on the mid and a 2 ohm on the tweeter that I will remove along with the 3 ohm on the woofer. I totally agree that having the 3 ohm on the woofer is wrong, I just experiments to get the right balance. Now I have to figure how to unwind it.

[Chris Roemer]

NO ONE would recommend running any type (size) of resistor in series w/a bass driver.
If you've got accurate .frd & .zma files, then there must be a way to get an identical(ly shaped) FR in an XO sim by unpadding (& / or changing the filters' transfer fns (shapes)) the other drivers, with the curve just a few dB higher - across the board.

[jimbones]

Oh and I check the resistor to see if it gets warm but nothing, it is cold. I have an IR thermometer to check but if I had to guess it is room temp 70 degrees while playing.

[jimbones]

Don't leave that 3 ohm resistor there. If you use series resistance, it must be the DCR of the coil. Resistors on woofers put off a lot of heat, and can cause a fire hazard. I'm thinking you lined the woofer cabs, and if you only did that, stuffing them can bring down the level if you use enough. Plugging the ports can also reduce level. IIRC, you have dual woofers. Running them in series over parallel can lose 6dB.

Use an Audyn Q4, Jantzen CrossCap, or Clarity PX for the 100uF if it were me.

Wolf

I already have a high dcr coil (1 ohm) and i only have a single 12 in woofer. I do have some stuffing but not sure how much to pack into the cabinet. right now I would say it is kind of light. I will be making covers to seal the ports. Yep the Cross Cap looks like a good choice.

[Wolf]

Don't leave that 3 ohm resistor there. If you use series resistance, it must be the DCR of the coil. Resistors on woofers put off a lot of heat, and can cause a fire hazard. I'm thinking you lined the woofer cabs, and if you only did that, stuffing them can bring down the level if you use enough. Plugging the ports can also reduce level. IIRC, you have dual woofers. Running them in series over parallel can lose 6dB.

Use an Audyn Q4, Jantzen CrossCap, or Clarity PX for the 100uF if it were me.

Wolf

[jimbones]

IM baaaaccckkkkk. Lol~
Ok so Ive been playing around with voicing and I got it sounding pretty good even if it is somewhat unconventional. Things to note:
1) I removed padding from mid and tweet and it sounds horrific, For some reason it sounds better with padding. I tried to lower the resistance but it still wants some.
2) Bass is still too loud. In my Roon Pgm I had to reduce bass level by 3.5 db. I tried to do it passively in the XO and I end up with a 3 ohm resistor on the woofer. Now I have never seen a woofer with padding on it so I don't know where to go with this. Keep it? options?
3) The footers on my cabinets were not stable and the cabinet had some wobble in it so I made it more stable for the time being and will make the plinth more rigid.
4) The HP section of the Mid requires quite a bit of capacitance to get it to sound right crossing over in the 300hz region. I dont like to use NPE in series with the Mid so what is the best type of Cap to use that isn't so physically large? I typically use Jantzen Superior Z Cap (red) but for super large caps (100uf) it would be big and expensive.
Thanks and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!!

[jimbones]

rpb I tried that with the mid and it didnt sound right. I will try again tomorrow when I have more time to attempt to remove as much as I can without it sounding to bright, shouty etc.

[rpb]

Take out some of the mid, and tweeter padding too. In my sim, I was able to get the mid abut 4 or 5dB louder than the woofer.

[jimbones]

His suggested coil prob'ly has a DCR of around 2ohms.

yep I see. Just for the hell of it I added a 3 ohm resistor in series with my woofer and it helped. I disabled the DSP as it is no longer needed. This is just a test not sure if it is ok to keep it there

[Chris Roemer]

His suggested coil prob'ly has a DCR of around 2ohms.