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In Reply to: RE: Resocking Tympani's posted by BDP24 on July 07, 2016 at 16:20:41
One thing to consider, depending on your decor -- my IVA's actually look pretty good without socks. I desocked them, meaning to replace the socks after I'd done some repairs, but now I may not bother:
(The glare is some stray shellac, I cleaned it off and also touched up the black paint in a few areas.)
Agree with Roger, though, the job is easy. A bit tedious -- there are about a zillion staples to pry out! But then a manual staple gun works well enough to put the stocks pack on (I used one to resock my 1-D's years ago).
BTW, I understand that the white grille cloth is the most acoustically transparent fabric that they offer.
Follow Ups:
Mmmmm, can I suggest 2 things, Josh:
1. The pic shows you have the ribbons next to the bass panels - the mids should butt up to the inner bass panel.
2. Remove the hinges and have the 2 bass panels each side, standing alone but butting up to each other - so they are in an arc (with the mid/ribbon panel) and equidistant from your ears.
Andy
Aside from baffle loading assistance from the bass panels there is no benefit to having either driver of the mid/tweeter besides (or not even near) the bass panels- There are particular driver - listener distances that work with the particular group delays of the crossover. The particulars of the room placement can compensate for the lower mid's dip when set apart from the midbass panel.I have been working out a similar layout with flexibility of crossover alignments and all that the move away from the bass panel does is change the rollover of the midrange by about 1/3-1/2 of an octave upwards so requires raising the bass B3 LP a bit and adjust driver offset slightly.
This "reverse split" configuration allows you to try wall loading of the bass panels which provides an Organ worthy deep bass (and highights TT rumble). The wall loaded bass panels are like the Limage/HK setup just taken to an extreme. It leaves little room for subwoofers to fill in and the results impressed both my Jazz contrabassist brother in law and my friend with the Focal Nova Utopia. Both people who appreciate deep bass more than I do.
Unfortunately, when wall loading, you must retain the face forwards for both bass panels because you are using the mid sidewall position to catch the transverse room mode at 40 hz and its weaker double at 20hz along with the long wall mode at 56 hz and with the wall near the deep bass panel, you don't cancel out the ~33hz resonance. of the deep bass panel with the dipole null on one side. So you get room gain with minimal muddying of the bass from 20 hz to 60hz and that is very useful indeed. If you alter the angle of the midbass panel to try and get better time domain behavior you reduce the transverse modes and excite the short wall mode and particularly the problematic midbass null nodes at particular portions of the room that you can not EQ out.
So why unfortunate? since the bass panels are in a lateral spread they will have a braod arrival time at the listening seat and thus can't be completely time aligned with the midrange. Thus making the use of 1st order XO impossible. You then need to cut off the bass output fast to get it out of the way and have both drivers operating only the narrow band where the combined 2nd order mid acoustic rolloff and a 1st order HP for the mids complement the B3 LP for the bass. You just don't get the perfect cohesion that an all 1st order symmetrical XO and equidistant arc configuration of the drivers provides. This does not allow reproduction of square waves below 300 hz. Which is indeed possible in the 1st order/eqidistant setup. But that setup does not do deep bass anywhere near as well.
Edits: 08/10/16
Hey, Andy.
The reason the tweeters are next to the bass panel is that the mid/tweet panels are too close together. I wasn't getting enough lateral image spread so I tried reversing them.
Position of the woofer panels was (and is) experimental. I noticed that in this undersized room the bass panels were blocking the backwave and depriving the image of ambiance and depth. So I was experimenting with different woofer locations. The standard split configuration didn't work very well for me so I tried bringing the woofers forward, folding them, etc. Some promising results but as I said still experimental -- I'll have to use the MiniDSP to adjust the timing but right now my Hafler and Emotiva are packed up to be sold so I only have one amp to work with.
Also, you can't separate the IVA bass panels because each one only has one foot! :-)
This was all a preliminary experiment to try them out, see what condition they're in -- I have to move the speakers to another wall anyway. Planning to experiment with the MiniDSP today to see how it sounds and then my next step will probably be to fix the delam on the woofers.
Josh, neat picture, seemingly taken with a camera/phone capable of shooting at a wide angle? I suppose even if all the speaker drivers are currently functioning as 'new', you're still not satisfied to leave well enough alone, and want to throw some Neo 8's into that picture!
It's a phone shot, stiched together in a panorama, which is why the floor looks bent. Definitely want to put Neo 8's in! In fact, I have all of them less three -- the guy I got them from in Hong Kong didn't send them all. But it will have to wait until I round up some more amps. I already have a MiniDSP to use for the crossover.
However, first task is fixing the delam on the woofers. They're playing but the wire has come up at the top and bottom. I also have to move them to their new position against the side wall.
Today I received the new Parts Express flyer-catalog and it contains three different Neo models, so you can definitely go to town.
I just checked their site and it looks like they have even more drivers available now, including some versions of the Neo 3:
https://www.parts-express.com/cat/tweeters/17?N=19813+4294967118+4294965611&Ne=10166&Nrs=collection%28%29%2Frecord%5Bendeca%3Amatches%28.%2C"P_PortalID"%2C"1"%29+and+endeca%3Amatches%28.%2C"P_Searchable"%2C"1"%29%5D&PortalID=1
Interestingly though it doesn't look like they have the regular Neo 8 anymore, just the Neo8 PDR and the Neo8S. The S has higher sensitivity and is 8 ohms. It would be easier if I didn't need 3 of them . . .
I am guessing all the drivers are made on the same assembly line and they produce to order. Since the initial rush is still ongoing there is probably a backlog for the Neo8 and they are not yet scheduled for production. Actually, I would be surprised if they have all the driver models available at the same time for quite a while longer.
Or maybe the intend the 8S as a permanent replacement?
BTW they mention in the blurb adding felt strips to improve dispersion and high frequency smoothness.
That is a possibility.. Looking at it again it is a better driver for midrange use with higher sensitivity and better bass extension so a line of them can be crossed over lower still and you can play right through fs since the resonance is really small compared to a cone driver. (and this is unlike the resonance freq for the Chinese drivers which is substantial both in the FR and phase. 10db range vs <3db in the Neo8 family)
Still have not found a set of measurements for the Neo8s in a dipole line array.
Some have used a line as a mid tweet in the LS6 and LS9 design approach instead of the Neo8pdr in the original and just noted a lack of air and sparkle. As a couple of DIY'ers said, after using Neo8 variants or Neo10 they consider cone mids obsolete or "like they never existed".
To get a clue as to what it would sound like in a line array, look at the Neo8S FR off axis at 30 and 45 deg, no top octave at all. Needs a supertweeter crossed into play at 10khz. I add in the tweeter at 14-18 khz 1st order.with the Neo8 but don't low pass the mids (a la Apogee and ET in the LFT8) It provides somewhat less head in a vice than having a real symmetrical XO at 8-12 khz. The head in a vice problem disappears as you go down from 8khz symmetrical 1st to 6 khz and entirely gone at 4-5khz.
Yes, I think using the 8S as a tweeter is a stretch. I'm intrigued by the possibility of making an acoustic lens with some felt, though, to get the ribbon XO higher . . .
It should be doable but you will need the exact felt spec for the freq range you want to block so that you don't just lose output across the board. Also look at sorbothane as some makers have product particularly designed for acoustic lens use. There is a DIY project somewhere that did cuttings of rather thin sorbothane sheets to get the right thickness profile going into the center area of the driveer (I don't remember which drivers they were adjusting) and I didn't bookmark so I can't tell you where the discussion was.
As IS , you can run the driver to 6khz before the dispersion starts tightening too much. Above that you will start having a head in a vice problem if you keep to a standard XO and the middle (2nd and 3rd order) slope filters are far worse than either the 1st order or the brick wall like LR4 as you go up beyond 5khz Above 8-9khz you don't want to have a low pass on the midrange at all, and just cut off the tweeter and let it enter as a rising FR up from 13-15khz on Neo8 arrays when you measure..
I'm looking forward to experimenting with high slope FIR filters. Had a hangup with my MiniDSP, couldn't download the software, but got that straightened out so should be doing a bypass test/comparison as soon as I'm done with jury duty. My main concern with a high slope filter is that the difference between the Neos and the ribbon will be too obvious.
Re neo8 and ribbon.
Go play a pair of single drivers (just lean them on the floor against the outer edge of the mid panel's frame aimed at your seat) with violin flute and cymbals material on and then the TIVa mid/top both without the bass engaged and compare The neo8 can be run without a filter to quite a high volume or you can run them on the XO box' HP output just to be safe. Since it is 1 driver you will not have canellation of the cavity resonance peak but it will show you how easilty the two sould integrate. I found it very easy to integrate them up to 9khz with either B3 or LR4 and beyond that it was slightly worse that with the lower freq. 1st order was good no matter where you put it. .
Thanks, good idea. I'm in the process of moving everything to the side wall so should be able to try it in the next few days.
Reposted from the wrong place
Yeah, that does look good. But mine have scriblings in crayon from magnepan on them and I set the mid/tweet the other way round so they are visible from the front. Besides that I rather like the white and it does not do much damage to detail in front of the midrange and my ribbons are facing open side forwards, so no white cloth in front of them..
Makes sense. And the socks do look good. I may end up resocking these after I'm done with the mods and fixes. For one thing, they may not look as good after I've routed out a space for the Neo 8's . . .
You can just mount them to a railing the way I did and screw or staple the railings as you would the OEM drivers.
Thanks for the pics. I thought you had to increase the height of the midrange slot to accommodate all the Neos?
Got my new computer assembled, so I'm going to check out the Mini DSP -- can't try a crossover with only one amp (Emotiva is packed up ready to sell and the old Hafler is as well) but I got my new computer assembled and I want to try a bypass/DAC comparison to see how it sounds and whether it has enough headroom.
There was no need to take out material since the line of holes on the drivers fit in perfectly into the slot. On a TIVa you have extra length to the midrange so you can just put the railings in and probably pop out the entire stretch of the raised body of all the drivers in the line.
Wasn't there a discussion here of the need to lengthen the line to fit all the drivers in? I'll have to take the Neos upstairs and measure -- still moving stuff back in now that all the painting is done. But today I'm going to try to get audio from my newly-assembled HTPC and try the bypass experiment with the MiniDSP.
It is an issue with the TIV with 6 drivers but I found the fit of the radiating surface to be just right so stayed with that and put the plan for extending the slot on hold. The IVa has quite a bit longer midrange slot and should easily fit the entire body of the Neo8 drivers.
That is damping foam tape on the front of the drivers got caught on the sock material when I opened it to take the photo.
I'll give them a thorough listen before deciding whether or not to resock. I use my ET LFT-8b's without their grills, and the side rails are black, not natural oak or walnut. The nude T-IV's will look very similar, now that you mention it!
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