|
Isolation Ward From ebony pucks to magic foil, mystical and controversial tweaks. |
|
|
|
Isolation Ward From ebony pucks to magic foil, mystical and controversial tweaks. |
|
In Reply to: Sorry posted by unclestu52 on September 17, 2009 at 12:43:38:
"One factor which distresses me about the DQ-10s is the non symmetrical spacing of the the individual drivers and the fact that the speaker is not made in mirrored pairs."
Yeah, that driver layout IS kinda wacky, but in the design iteration I have (and I believe there were several?), the tweeter is mounted on a recessed (time-aligned?) baffle directly above the upper (dome) mid. The lower (cone) mid is over to the side, about a foot away, however. At the crossover frequency between the lower and upper mids (around 800Hz?), the wavelength is just about long enough to make that separation inoffensive. But any lobing in the polar response between the two drivers WILL occur in the horizontal rather than the vertical plane. The lower mid operates in "muffled dipole" mode, with a thick felt pad over the back, which complicates things further. The crossover frequency between woofer and lower mid (around 250Hz?) is presumably low enough that the slight horizontal offset (about 30 degrees off vertical) won't matter. The horrid piezo superscreechers were mounted on the corner of the lower mids' baffles -- who knows why? -- but I got rid of those, along with their entire leg of the crossover network, and mounted some old JVC ribbons, crossed in at 12.5kHz, to the side of the dome tweeters. (Thanks, Dave Elledge, for both the ribbons and the crossover component values). I would have preferred to mount them above, for the good reasons you cite, but they wouldn't fit behind the grill that way. And these things are boot-oogly without the grills -- naked Vandersteens are Miss America by comparison. Supposedly the ScanSpeak 9300 is a drop-in replacement for the old Phillips tweet, and precludes the need for a supertweet, but that mod is down the road yet.
I do need to swap the side-by-side baffles around on one of the speakers, to mirror-image them, but that's another "down the road" project. Involves replacing -- or splicing -- a whole lot of wires. I measured and sketched out all I would have to do, and got a serious attack of the dont-wannas. I did put felt anti-diffraction rings on the tweeter faceplates, and felt blocks on the edges of the midrange baffles (similar to your suggestion with the putty). I also replaced all the old crossover NPE caps with poly-film types, of higher voltage rating and tighter tolerance.
But as weird as they are (and as many of the truly innovative vintage designs were), I still seriously LOVE the sound of these speakers. Yeah they're inefficient low-impedance power hogs, but DAMMIT they draw me into the music! I'm an acoustic musician, and know well the live, unamplified, nearfield sound of fiddles, guitars, banjos, flutes, mandolins, string basses, pianos, etc., from many a gig and informal session. The DQ10s reproduce the sound of these (and presumably other) instruments, from good recordings, with remarkable ease and naturalness.
Also, they WERE among the first "audiophile" speakers that got people rhinking about imaging and soundstaging. I suspect, as you suggest, that the weird driver layout adds it's own effects to the perceived soundstage, but they nonetheless sort out all the parts in busy arrangements rather well. Perhaps I'm biased by all the work I put into restoring these, after getting them for nearly free, but I'm extremely happy with them.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- DQ10 driver layout - caspian@peak.org 20:04:09 09/17/09 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
