Active 3-way DIY Setup.

[chithead]

Wowzers. Excellent work sir!

[Glenn]

Nailed it!

[claydo]

Awesome erin, I'm glad you decided to go the diy route! Looks like you chosen some excellent drivers as well. I think you should have gone all out and hand built your own passives though, maybe a bit selfish there, as I would've enjoyed seeing what you would have come up with considering your knowledge and all the tuning tricks that can be applied to passives. Maybe the active application can serve as a starting point for learning the drivers behavior in the room, and lead to the experimenting later.......lol.

[erinh]

I simulated some passive designs as a starting point. But, the time it would take to get the passives right... I just don't have that. I imagine it would take weeks of listening and evaluation to get what I really want after a few large hammer swing attempts.

That's not only time but money as well. I figure active gives me the control I need at not a WHOLE lot more cost than running active. Especially since I was going to have to get an extra DSP anyway (the 8 channel Rane would've been maxed out once I added additional surround and subs).

I'd hate to spend a month on tweaking passives. I'm ready to be done. Lol.

[BigAl205]

Just contact XtremeRevolution. He could design you an outstanding x-over using his proprietary software

[chad]

If you had a wall of parts drawers with every value of cap, coil and resistor under the sun then yeah, passive would be dope...

But as you stated.... Fuckit. Active rocks anyway, no sense in wasting power.

[erinh]

Yep. Active FTW!

Another 1.5 hours cutting the woofer hole out. This part makes me a nervous wreck given how much time has been spent already on the baffles with the dados, and double baffle. Don't wanna screw em up. That would SUCK!

So, this is what I managed tonight. The woofer is flushed in.







I ordered some t-nuts and screws from Madisound and hadn't even considered the diameter of the mounting holes... and guess what... the screws were too large. No big deal, just take a step bit to the $300 driver and make the holes bigger.
You can see that they have indeed been enlarged by looking at the exposed metal (silver) in the mounting hole.





For reference, that's a 10" woofer and it looks like a baby in that tower. These things are seriously imposing and that's exactly what I want. I want to sit down in front a speaker that you KNOW is about to deliver the goods. I'm really, really looking forward to firing these up. Still gotta finish this one and then move to the other one.

[claydo]

I thought the months of tweaking was the whole point...lol. Ah, just a dream no one else shares I guess.....to design a speaker I could hook a two channel amp to and blow minds......knowing the voicing that manufacturers do with their passives I have a strong desire to learn the magic they are working in there.

[erinh]

I finally managed to get the speakers assembled. First order of business was to run a sweep on the woofer section and see if my Qtc was what I built it for. To my shock, I was dead on.






Up next was to make sure everything played. I set some fairly generic crossovers on the towers through the Rane and lugged them upstairs. Hooked them up and was grinning from ear to ear for the next 30 minutes. They sound phenomenal. So. Much dynamics and incredible tonality. The soundstage is just plain stupid. By far the best speakers I've ever heard. So much promise.

Can't wait to get some fine TA and level matching going. I was going to paint them but think I may wait until after the NC meet so I can work more on my car's tune and maybe even wax/polish it if I have time. So for the time being I think the speakers will be plain mdf. Plus, after two months, I need a break from this build.

I'll post measurements once
I've gotten to that point as I tweak the crossover and other DSP driven aspects. Once this is done I'm gonna have to have a meet of my own just to get some others' ears and subjective feedback.

[BigAl205]

That looks great, Erin. I think Todd's reference system had the same KEF drivers and it sounded awesome. I can't wait to hear it.