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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Deep End DIY - Australian take one Macondo.
Post Subject: Yep, very nice.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 3/25/2018
Yep, indeed, it looks very nice. The 8 sections of bass line array look visually slightly overweening but I think when you put the upper bass horns in place it will visually balance the things out. I feel some sort of envy to the way how you plan your project. I did not have this luxury as it was a long evolutionary prosses. It is much better to think about system architecture when the strategically a system is laid out. You did a very good job to conceptualize the Macondo layout into you own version. I initially did not see your cylindrical line array or your curved back frame as prospective direction. I need to admit the now I do see a merit of it. 
 
A major revision of what you do will take place when you connect you bass line-array and will RTA your room from listening position. There is absolutely no way to predict how room will response under 150Hz to your playback. With the configuration you have you will have a LOT of options to deal with whatever response you will get. Do not commit the stupidity many audio people do and do not correct sub 150Hz with acoustic treatments. It never works properly and create more problems then solutions.  The key should be not to fight your room but use your room, converting the room problems into room advantages. The configuration you have is uniquely suited for it. If you hit problems with your RTA interpretation and would be confuse what steps to take with your playback to address it then contact me and I will pitch some directions.  
 
There is a direction that you might consider, I am taking about lower bass channel. I know that you have your wet dream fantasy about large midbass horn but there is topological restriction for you: time alignment. I do not know how to address this problem. The itch for midbass channel is not juts chowing over the “never stop paranoia”. The type of the drivers you use at LF are very good in my view at bottom but above let say 60-70Hz your can do better. You bass drivers have unique non-inertia rubber suspension which doe not feel like rubber and sonically very far from typical rubber used but it still not as loos as vintage paper suspension or leather suspension. Playing some lower MF or midbass instruments, you might feel that the micro-tensions and transients in midbass will be slightly mad out with your bass drivers. Honestly, it will not be felt as “deficiency” as those ScanSpeaks are very nicely balanced. What I did at my time was experimenting with loading. For instance, if I drive your bass driver from 6C33C then the best sound at 40Hz I got when I was loading my amp with let say 400R. However, the best sound at 120Hz I was getting from the same drivers if I load the amps with 1200R. At 1200R ScanSpeaks “ring” like a good vintage driver, well sort of… The irony is that in your configuration it is even possible to do it driving different section of the drivers in array from different taps of your OPT or even from different channels or Milq. It because a bit complex and you need to deal with power matching and a few other factors. I do think that much easy way to introduce little ridicules dedicated midbass channel with nice “loose” vintage driver, similar to what I did in my current room. The “ridicules” part come from that fact that it is not proper speaker. Above 125-150Hz you will have your upper-bass horn take over and at sub 70Hz you have your line-array cover nicely. So, it needs to be a very small little direct radiator box with 100dB efficiency. All that you need this driver to do is juts to inject some textural ringing around 100Hz. The wonderful irony is that 70Hz-100Hz is the exact location where most likely your room modes will be showing. So, you can combine your “injected textural ringing” with amplitude correction – very slick and effective way to deal with problems.
 

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