New DIY Mid High (90deg) - AKA PM90

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

I’m sure you're a 100% correct … but WOW that MUCH BASS! I knew you guys over the other side of the big pond like a lot of bass, but …. 30dB more !!!!

What I find interesting is that so many people argue for a flat frequency response, the flatter the better, yet they "hay-stack" the sub frequencies. I typically see 10dB or more.

]

The number of 25-30 is Genre specific. Not all Genre has that much but most "pop styles" have at least 15dB greater need for the lows that mid/highs.

I do agree that it is funny how many talk about a flat response-but it is not just the lows that are "altered".

Often a hole is cut in the midrange and sometimes the highs are rolled off.

So the result is FAR from flat-but they talk about how "flat" it is.

I I would argue "Flat-as measured how?" Different measurement systems. parameters etc can come up with different responses.

It is more of a term that people who don't know better "throw out" to seem as if they know what they are talking about-so they can try ot impress others who know even less.

Just like a lot of audio terms such as: combfiltering, line array loses over distance vs point and shoot cabinets (I don't use the term point source-because most (not all) of the cabinets that are called that are not even close to a point source and don't have anything in common with a point source , -3dB freq response, arrayability and cabinet angles, pattern control and on and on------------

 

[Art Welter]

Re: New DIY Mid High

I’m sure you're a 100% correct … but WOW that MUCH BASS! I knew you guys over the other side of the big pond like a lot of bass, but …. 30dB more !!!!

What I find interesting is that so many people argue for a flat frequency response, the flatter the better, yet they "hay-stack" the sub frequencies. I typically see 10dB or more.

Why do we like it that way? Wouldn’t it more logical to integrate the subs a little more smoothly? You would assume the original recordings already had right amount of LF so the DJ boys would only need a flat system.

Not all of us "like it that way", I still prefer a flat response between the subs and mains, and mains that have the same dynamic headroom at the crossover point as the subs.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Not all of us "like it that way", I still prefer a flat response between the subs and mains, and mains that have the same dynamic headroom at the crossover point as the subs.

And as I said earlier-it depends on the particular style/type of music.

For a live performance in which the FOH guy has control over individual instrument levels and tone-I agree.

But for prerecorded music (EDM specifically) that is not at all what they are looking for. At least in all of my experiences with it.

I would "argue" that the sub level is much like spices in food. Some people like a lot-some don't like any and some people like something in between. Some people like the taste of the spices-others like the raw taste of the food.

What is correct depends on the particular person.

 

[Roy Novio]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Ivan I know where you're coming from as I've been a DJ for but 9 years as mobile in NYC (80-90's) and now wedding DJ here in the Tampa Bay area less than a year I can tell you that some prerecorded music have different levels of bass some have thinner than others, that is why some inexperienced DJ's mess with the EQ on their DJ mixer boosting more and more bass until they start clipping their amps and some like to see that red flash once in a while. I think this mid top has a nice balance in output it can be loud as a single box or multiple for larger venues. Can someone suggest a double 18 sub, I have been looking and contemplating on building all DIY sound system my first choice for subs designed by a French gentleman Marc O. from another website I was planning on building 3 per side MTB 246 loaded with Faital Pro 18HP1020's as per designer and I get great prices from Faital USA. It can be used from 40-150 Hz with a slight bump at 150 Hz for that kick sound so many in EDM and some bass heavy material. Any thoughts? Thanks!:blush:

 

[Roy Novio]

Re: New DIY Mid High

I plan to use the BMS HE with the RCF horn but is there an 18Sound 12" neo equivalent of the RCF MB12N351 Peter? Thanks!~:-D~:grin:

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

I plan to use the BMS HE with the RCF horn but is there an 18Sound 12" neo equivalent of the RCF MB12N351 Peter? Thanks!~:-D~:grin:

Here are some plots at the speakers rated power -

Top left - 18sound 12ND830 - 450W
Top right - 18sound 12ND930 - 500W
bottom B&C 12NDL76 - 400W

Light grey trace - RCF MB12N351 - 650W - at the same input level they all have almost identical efficiencies.

I have also included some hornresp calculations for the RCF - not sure if this is exactly what the production model ended up as - Its close - I varied some of the parameters to check it would still work if the box or driver was slightly different, or if my guess for the parameters I did not have would matter.

Basically its a 600mm long exponential horn with a 2.9 : 1 compression ratio.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Here is a screen shot from the main stage at a pretty large EDM event (the ticket sales alone were something like 15Million US$).

I know I put 300' on the screen-but in retrospect I think it was more like 400' away.

The display also says internal mic-but I was using the studio six external mic-not sure what was going on there.

There were 48 "big name" double 18" subs and 88 line array cabinets flown and 40 line arrays for the delays (not counting front fills) provided by one the larger sound companies. I was well within the coverage of the delays-which were at FOH position.

You can see the ratios of higher freq to sub levels. These were averages over time-maybe 30 seconds or so, I don't remember. I have some more captures I need to find.

This gives an idea of the ratio of sub to top capability that I am talking about.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Here is another shot from the same position-not long average-so more of an idea of the "perceived" levels.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

And just one more-from FOH position -maybe 200' or more from the PA.

In the middle of the afternoon.

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Ivan,

I may be wrong, but aren’t those plots a function of the system alignment plus the spectrum of the music ?
If you put pink noise into the system how much extra sub would you see ? Its the system alignment I'm most curious about.

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Ivan,

I may be wrong, but aren’t those plots a function of the system alignment plus the spectrum of the music ?
If you put pink noise into the system how much extra sub would you see ? Its the system alignment I'm most curious about.

Yes that is the final combination. But that is what needs to be considered when trying to figure out the sub to top ratio and what the capability needs to be.

I don't have any measurements of the system response with pink noise. I will try to get some next time.

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Yes that is the final combination. But that is what needs to be considered when trying to figure out the sub to top ratio and what the capability needs to be.

I don't have any measurements of the system response with pink noise. I will try to get some next time.

Thanks Ivan that would be interesting to see.

One of the things I’m struggling with is how should I EQ this box with Smaart or Systune. Flat, HF boost, LF boost or something else; a smooth response where spectrum is balanced so it voices nicely with a measure mic.

As you pointed out in an earlier post there are many different ways to measure a system, and they will all give you different answers.

• Environment – anechoic, in a space / room and outside.
• Measurement system – FFT, MLSSA, TEF, RTA etc.

I suspect if I measure a system in an anechoic environment, flat is correct, but your voice sounds very thin in an anechoic chamber. As soon as you put a boundary in the space then we will hear a low frequency boosted caused by proximity to the boundary, and it sound right again. Smaart or Systune will also include some of this this in the measurement.

The problem for us in the live sound industry is that we need to EQ the system in a space and make it sound nice. I believe many people are not understanding what Smaart is telling them and making incorrect adjustments just to get frequency response line to look as flat as possible.

…anyway this is a whole new thread. If anyone else builds a box based on this design they can EQ to their taste.

I have however posted a couple of pictures – note the similarity to the original frequency response I posted (pic 1 & 3).

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Thanks Ivan that would be interesting to see.

One of the things I’m struggling with is how should I EQ this box with Smaart or Systune. Flat, HF boost, LF boost or something else; a smooth response where spectrum is balanced so it voices nicely with a measure mic.

As you pointed out in an earlier post there are many different ways to measure a system, and they will all give you different answers.

• Environment – anechoic, in a space / room and outside.
• Measurement system – FFT, MLSSA, TEF, RTA etc.

I suspect if I measure a system in an anechoic environment, flat is correct, but your voice sounds very thin in an anechoic chamber. As soon as you put a boundary in the space then we will hear a low frequency boosted caused by proximity to the boundary, and it sound right again. Smaart or Systune will also include some of this this in the measurement.

The problem for us in the live sound industry is that we need to EQ the system in a space and make it sound nice. I believe many people are not understanding what Smaart is telling them and making incorrect adjustments just to get frequency response line to look as flat as possible.

…anyway this is a whole new thread. If anyone else builds a box based on this design they can EQ to their taste.

I have however posted a couple of pictures – note the similarity to the original frequency response I posted.

Peter-agreed that what happens when you a speaker in a room is what really matters.

But it is a bit more "complicated". What the is actual pattern of the speaker-down to what freq-where are the nearest boundaries-what is the size of the room and the "room gain".

In your middle photo-it is assuming a "normal" sized room. So what is a "normal sized room"?

Of course once you go outside it all changes-much more low freq is needed.

It is real easy to get "hung up" on a single aspect or idea, but it is the overall product and usage that must be considered.

Very often marketing wants to "suck you in" to one thing-making you think that everything else is great. Often that is far from reality.

The WHOLE picture is what needs to be looked at-not just a tiny part.

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

I have added some fly ware to the top of the box. The inside of the box is braced with 3mm aluminium angle (60mm x 60mm) so that the sides and the top of the box are bolted together.

I will now be able to fly them from a small line array towers and make some full space measurements down to a reasonable frequency.

 

[Roy Novio]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Where did you get the metal parts including the metal front grills and top hat (what length looks long on the pics)?8)~~

 

[Jack Arnott]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Peter-agreed that what happens when you a speaker in a room is what really matters.

But it is a bit more "complicated". What the is actual pattern of the speaker-down to what freq-where are the nearest boundaries-what is the size of the room and the "room gain".

Ivan, Peter, do either of you use a live mic when setting up a system?
I know part of this thread has devolved into EDM, but I think of this as primarily a live music room (internet room), not playback.
I ask because I still use a lot of testing of me through the mic. I know there is talk earlier about "this is the best sounding speaker with my voice", but I go a bit further than that when setting up. As in, I do like my voice as source, because it is one thing I know the best.
But I also like to hear the mic live, and how it is going to react. It is more than quality, but also, what else is the mic going to hear?
And it is about a live mic(s) stability.

Peter, I like the hanging hardware. I use something similar all the time. But for a different end.
Instead of speakers on a stick, it's speakers from sticks. I put two sticks up from my subs/lows, and a crossbar. So the mid/high is always suspended, not impaled from the bottom of the cabinet. This has two advantages. 1) I can tilt the cabinets by choosing my points on the track. 2) It is much more stable. With a stick, the stick acts as a fulcrum, so any disturbance to the sub gets amplified by the stick, and the weight of the speaker wobbles around. With suspension, the speaker acts as an "object at rest tends to stay at rest". So if the sub is bumped, the mid/high will swing against the motion, and act as a self stabilizer.

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Ivan, Peter, do either of you use a live mic when setting up a system?
I know part of this thread has devolved into EDM, but I think of this as primarily a live music room (internet room), not playback.
I ask because I still use a lot of testing of me through the mic. I know there is talk earlier about "this is the best sounding speaker with my voice", but I go a bit further than that when setting up. As in, I do like my voice as source, because it is one thing I know the best.
But I also like to hear the mic live, and how it is going to react. It is more than quality, but also, what else is the mic going to hear?
And it is about a live mic(s) stability.

Peter, I like the hanging hardware. I use something similar all the time. But for a different end.
Instead of speakers on a stick, it's speakers from sticks. I put two sticks up from my subs/lows, and a crossbar. So the mid/high is always suspended, not impaled from the bottom of the cabinet. This has two advantages. 1) I can tilt the cabinets by choosing my points on the track. 2) It is much more stable. With a stick, the stick acts as a fulcrum, so any disturbance to the sub gets amplified by the stick, and the weight of the speaker wobbles around. With suspension, the speaker acts as an "object at rest tends to stay at rest". So if the sub is bumped, the mid/high will swing against the motion, and act as a self stabilizer.

Hi Jack,

I always use a live mic for all the reasons you mentioned, and a selection of various and different recorded tracks to test other aspects of the system.

FWIW I attended a shoot-out / demo on Wednesday for systems suitable for 500 or so people. The room was awful and I'm not too sure how good the source material was either, there was some sort of digital timing error producing a little click from time to time. I didn't think any of the systems sounded good on the recorded music, and I had to actually ask if we could hear the speakers voiced with a microphone!

Darnley’s SM80 / TH118 were there. It was the first time I had heard any of their stuff and as expected they were one of the better sounding systems. To my ear however they were voiced with a little bit of a hole in the low mids. The SM80 sounded a little disconnected from the TH118 as a result.

After listing to the demo I had a closer look at frequency response of some of Danley’s speakers. The SM80 has a steep roll off from around 200 Hz which is probably what I was hearing.

I also had a look at the J1 and J2 frequency response plots. The J1 seems to be voiced with the low frequency being 10dB above the midrange, with a little dip around 4 KHz. I think this speaker would sound really nice from what I have been measuring and listen to. What I found interesting was how the J2 was voiced with the low frequency being about -2.0 dB less in the low frequency end compared to the mids (12dB less than the J 1 ... ???)

The conclusion I’m starting to come to is - a system measured with Smaart or Systune with the measurement mic at about ear level should show a gentle increase in low frequency from about 500 Hz. This allows for the bass boost we hear from the proximity effect. You should ignore the phase cancelation dips. There should be about 6 –12 dB more below 100 Hz when compared to the mid-range. It also sounds a little nicer if there is a small dip (2 dB or so) around 3.0 KHz to 4.0 KHz i.e. the point on the Fletcher Munson curves where your ear is the most sensitive.

The J1 measurement below is an example of what I think will sound really nice.

One of the things that I find interesting with this box is when I was developing some IIR settings it was easy to get it to sound nice. Using the FIR setting was much harder. I suspect that when you have an impulse, phase and magnitude response as good as this box is capable of with Lake processing; every small change and error starts to become very noticeable. When the speaker sounds exactly like “you”,you notice everything. The more accurate you make it the more noticeable the small errors.

Jack, I have never considered the impact of the pole mount etc. … Excellent suggestion, I’ll do some more work. When my small line array towers come back I will make some more measurements with the speaker 3 or 4 meters in the air so I can avoid the boundary effects.

In the meantime I’m looking at building some 60 degree boxes. You should be able to fly 2 per side off a small 80 - 100 Kg rated lighting stand and cover a serious amount of people for what is a very small and quick to deploy system.


Below –
Top SM80, Middle J1,bottom J2

 

[Glenn James]

Re: New DIY Mid High

OK so I met Peter Morris on Wednesday at the same speaker shootout. It was kind of a weird moment when I asked a stranger if he was the same Peter Morris from the forums who was making speakers and the answer was 'Yes!'

There were a variety of cabinets as mentioned above, and the manufacturers were asked to supply a system for 500 people. (I think some were thinking solo guitarist and others were thinking EDM concert there was so much variation in what was supplied) The systems had been set up in 3 previous venues and the manufacturers had not been able to make any adjustments since the first deployment in the first room. Most systems I assume were well short of their best tuning in this venue due to these circumstances and some were definitely better in various aspects than others.
The most distorted material was handled best by the Danley in this comparison, it did not break up as harshly as some of the others, the Void system was only good if it was loud and the Meyer system seemed to lack top end on this day. The comparatively short listening tests did not really give any clear conclusions from the other brands, except Mackie was the cheapest!!

A few hours later we went to Peter's workshop to have an inspection and impromptu demo. Peter screwed his horns back in the box after showing somebody the design and we fired things up. After a little futzing around with cables (Peter must move things around LOTS) we had a great little system going coupled with Peter's double 18s.
The boxes were light enough to stack on top by one person and the sound was definitely very easy to listen to.
There were no obvious or fatiguing faults, no harshness, and actually very easy to listen to at our reserved listening volume. This was a residential neighbourhood at about 4.30pm so not a great time to bash out and Metallica, unfortunately.

We went for about 45 minutes on many styles of music, including tracks that were used in the demo earlier and Peter's design definitely holds it's own. As good as anything I have heard and is still small and powerful as was the design goal.

 

[Peter Morris]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Where did you get the metal parts including the metal front grills and top hat (what length looks long on the pics)?8)~~

Top hat ... ebay (Cannon Sound - Australia). It was originally a 200 mm deep top hat that I shortened and welded up again. I think Parts Express may have some thing that could work (???)

Fly track ... ebay again but Penn Elcom have some.

3mm angle brace, screws and lock nuts - hardware store.

Grills - I made them out of perforated metal, cut and bent to shape. A metal work shop that specializes in this type of stuff should be able to do this. Penn Elcom also appear to offer this service.

http://www.penn-elcom.com/default.asp?MC=01180101
http://www.penn-elcom.com/default.asp?PN=M1553
http://www.penn-elcom.com/default.asp?PN=G1592 - G1593
http://www.cannonsound.com.au/shop/...nch-deep-heavy-duty-speaker-mounting-top-hat/
https://www.parts-express.com/penn-...nting-top-hat-for-1-3-8-tripod-stand--245-019

 

[Ivan Beaver]

Re: New DIY Mid High

Hi Jack,

I always use a live mic for all the reasons you mentioned, and a selection of various and different recorded tracks to test other aspects of the system.


Darnley’s SM80 / TH118 were there. It was the first time I had heard any of their stuff and as expected they were one of the better sounding systems. To my ear however they were voiced with a little bit of a hole in the low mids. The SM80 sounded a little disconnected from the TH118 as a result.

After listing to the demo I had a closer look at frequency response of some of Danley’s speakers. The SM80 has a steep roll off from around 200 Hz which is probably what I was hearing.

I also had a look at the J1 and J2 frequency response plots. The J1 seems to be voiced with the low frequency being 10dB above the midrange, with a little dip around 4 KHz. I think this speaker would sound really nice from what I have been measuring and listen to. What I found interesting was how the J2 was voiced with the low frequency being about -2.0 dB less in the low frequency end compared to the mids (12dB less than the J 1 ... ???)

]

Of course it depends on how the systems were setup. Where were the crossover points-the delays etc? It can make a big difference on what the "perceived sound" is. It can be hard to judge a system if you are not aware of how it was setup. And maybe the person who provided the system liked the particular alignment that you heard. How the crossover is handled can make a big difference on how "disconnected" or not a sub and top cabinet are.

Regarding the J1 and J2-they are different cabinets with different intended usages. The low freq capability of the J1 is quite a bit more than any other part of the cabinet and much more than the J2. Even though they both use 6 18" drivers. The drivers are different and they way they are loaded is very different.

There are a lot of other differences and intended usages between the cabinets. For example the J2 has greater pattern control down lower and goes lower in freq naturally, but the J1 has much more impact/punch naturally down firing (stadiums where the speakers were up high was the original design idea) and so forth.

We had a demo yesterday with a "company that everybody knows", and the comments from the engineers went from "looking at spec sheets does not begin to describe what we are hearing", to "I have been in this business a long time and I have never had so much fun listening to loudspeakers", to "I don't want to sit down-I am so excited".

Spec sheets are a good start, but not the ending point for whether or not a particular loudspeaker is correct for a particular job.