Hi Yasper, are you using the 425 or just the 204? How you finding the top end without a tweeter?

Nice photo. Heres my best effort, and without the room looking like a pigsty for the first time in many months. Yasper youre welcome to borrow my tweeters and 1000hz horn if you want to try a tweeter, I dont think I'm going to be using it in the foreseeable future.

Hi Bevan,

Just the AH204 as the 425 and Yamaha CD is still with Martin at the moment. With the better Yamamoto 45 SET amp , i don't find the Coral Beta/FLH high too rolled off for my taste now where as it was with the cheap Chinese SEP i had.

Thanks for your generous offer of tweeter loan. Appreciate it. Probably won't happen for a while and i might just go ahead with a Fostex horn tweeter at some stage. Excellent work on your bass cabs and the whole setup looks quite compact for a 4 way. Nice.

One more question, how quiet is the Yamamoto? I'm finding my Miniwatt N3 a bit too noisy to live with forever, I can hear it from the listening chair during quiet parts of a track. The older MiniWatt S1 is quiet though, but I cant help thinking the speakers deserve something a bit better than a $250 amp, eventually. Unfortunately I cant open up the S1 to mod it as I've stripped some screws.

Anyone know what other candidates have a reputation for being very quiet? Almaro A318, Melod I2A3?

One more question, how quiet is the Yamamoto? I'm finding my Miniwatt N3 a bit too noisy to live with forever, I can hear it from the listening chair during quiet parts of a track. The older MiniWatt S1 is quiet though, but I cant help thinking the speakers deserve something a bit better than a $250 amp, eventually. Unfortunately I cant open up the S1 to mod it as I've stripped some screws.

Anyone know what other candidates have a reputation for being very quiet? Almaro A318, Melod I2A3?

Yamamoto SET has very low noise.

I have a Miniwatt N3 too which is used with a Saba drivers based speakers usually but i i did try on a pair of horn tweeter i borrowed a few weeks back ( before i got my Yamamoto). I found the noise/hiss level to be quite intrusive too and my sitting distance is about 2.8 to 3m meter from the speakers.

Thats a big horn! I saw Martin building them, they look great in your room.

Tuyen you know you NEED one.

I may move to 204hz or 160hz horn when I upgrade my mid-low from GOTO 555PS to current spec GOTO 505-TT. As they have different spec mouth diameters (555ps 18mm, 505-TT 30mm) I will not be able to reuse my current 340hz horn. Oh the fun of horns!

Bev, I am getting a few 45/2A3 SET amp kits made by Eric Han (if you know of him). All I will need to do is wire up all the bits under the chassis and supply my own tubes. Initally will try AC heater supply on the and see if there is any hum (will be using decent quality UTC chokes). If there is, will convert to DC heater supply which should reduce the hum levels to near nil.

Even with the current setup, the class T amps, are not noise free either. There's audible noise on idle coming out from the mid-high and high drivers. Although haven't been able to put my finger on if it is the vintage GOTO CF-1 crossover unit or the class T amps themselves.

Trying to find dead quiet components and taming noise from existing components when playing with ultra high sensitivity drivers in a domestic environment can be quite the challenge. I LOVE IT!

Basic time alignment was achieved simply by aligning the drivers so that their diaphragms are in line in the Z-axis.

Hi Tuyen

Once you get your Onken enclosure's are you going to measure the speakers for time alignments and work out from the best position for each horn .

I don't evy you setting horns up in a small room can be challenging to get that point source effect.

Cheers

Tuyen

you are a nut! And it is great to see. Congratulations mate. I am very happy you are having so much fun.

Cheers

Andrew

Hi 56oval,

I might try if I knew how to. Don't really know much about the topic.

I have heard what a proper time aligned setup (using digital) can do though. It gave the sound a bit more preciseness in the the depth of the soundstage.

As I run a crossover that does not have any of these eq/room correction features, I'll try and accommodate as much physical alignment as possible within the constraints of my room and see if it is worthwhile. At the moment, I really like how I have it stacked up on top of each other. I will just position the huge onken cabinets directly behind the horns. See how that goes. After then will try sitting all the horns on top of the onken box.

Like so:

Hi Tuyen

Heres a good website with great articles/links http://www.lenardaudio.com/education/01_eduintro.html to start with .

I don't know how much he would charge but Pat at WarAudio might be able to help you out setting up your speakers with out digital EQ.

He has heard a number of GoTo systems in Japan and knows horns pritty well even though he doesn't use them .

Anyway its just a thought .

Cheers

I'm definitely interested in the Eric Han amps, havent heard of them. I'm looking at a new Bottlehead 45/2A3 model

http://www.bottlehead.com/store.php?crn=44&rn=447&action=show_detail

It promises 1 millivolt hum which they recon is low, but maybe still not low enough for the 113db Radians in nearfield. The S.E.X pentode, which I used to have, is DC heated and about 10db quieter, essentially dead quiet, according to the designer. I would be happy to go back there if need be, that amp with the Magnequest iron was pretty killer for the the price. (cant remember who I unwittingly sold that to....if youre reading this I'll happily buy it back;)

Thanks 56oval.

Taken from the website:

"One solution is to simply move the speakers so the voice coils are physically aligned. The other is to use complex high order passive crossovers designed with time alignment correction. This introduces other losses which are often more detrimental. Most domestic and professional passive speaker systems rarely use this correction. Active crossovers can have time alignment correction that does not contribute losses in other areas."

Above is the same method that yoshio (GOTO UNIT dealer for AUS/NZ) had advised me to do when I asked him for help. I'm glad he knows his stuff. Great bloke

Edited November 16, 201015 yr by tuyen

I'm definitely interested in the Eric Han amps, havent heard of them. I'm looking at a new Bottlehead 45/2A3 model

http://www.bottlehead.com/store.php?crn=44&rn=447&action=show_detail

It promises 1 millivolt hum which they recon is low, but maybe still not low enough for the 113db Radians in nearfield. The S.E.X pentode, which I used to have, is DC heated and about 10db quieter, essentially dead quiet, according to the designer. I would be happy to go back there if need be, that amp with the Magnequest iron was pretty killer for the the price. (cant remember who I unwittingly sold that to....if youre reading this I'll happily buy it back;)

I'll keep you informed Bev. It uses 1x 5Y3 tube for power rectification, 2x 6SL7 tubes for input driver stage. Output transformers have 4/8/16 ohm taps. Circuit based on JE Labs simple 45SET (shown below).

Thanks 56oval.

Taken from the website:

"One solution is to simply move the speakers so the voice coils are physically aligned. The other is to use complex high order passive crossovers designed with time alignment correction. This introduces other losses which are often more detrimental. Most domestic and professional passive speaker systems rarely use this correction. Active crossovers can have time alignment correction that does not contribute losses in other areas."

Above is the same method that yoshio (GOTO UNIT dealer for AUS/NZ) had advised me to do when I asked him for help. I'm glad he knows his stuff. Great bloke

hi Tuyen

I'm glad you like the site .After reading his site I decided to go 4 way and active or atleast line level xovers .

I wonder if you will get time alignment at xover freq by just having the voice coils lined up .

I liked the sound of Yoshio's Goto's at his place .

Cheers

Mal

I wonder if you will get time alignment at xover freq by just having the voice coils lined up

Perhaps if you are extremely lucky!

Horn loading shifts the acoustic centre forward. Crossovers introduce phase shifts. To correctly implement time alignment you need to account for all of the factors that have an impact in the time domain.

I wouldn't be surprised if most speakers that are intended to be time aligned, are actually misaligned.

You have to ask how important it is. If you hear time aligned vs misaligned, it's not as if the misalignment kills the sound. However, it does have an impact on imaging, potentially HUGE. In experimenting with this I've been able to get big changes in the sound stage and imaging. Especially when I buggered it up.

When I get some time, I'll post some stuff about my recent exploits with various X-overs, horns and drivers in the old Klipsch Belles. Not esoteric like some of the horns in this thread, but it's proving to be a great learning experience.

Cheers

Tony

I'm interested in what you think Tony.

I'm also a big fan of passive ES networks, but I've found no interest in them at all on SNA. Maybe not exsotic enough to raise any interest on this site, but I'm very pleased with them and happy to see/read that somebody else is using/trying them. I will be looking forward to your more in-depth description of your experimentation with your Heritage Klipsch speakers.

I seem to be having a bit of joy using a rear firing tweeter, anyone tried or heard of this approach to evening out the shoddy power response of horns?

I seem to be having a bit of joy using a rear firing tweeter, anyone tried or heard of this approach to evening out the shoddy power response of horns?

Thats interesting. Would you mind taking a pic of the front and back to show us how its setup?

I know its not a horn speaker, but I was interested in reading about the mod to the orions where they added a rear firing tweeter to match the power response of the open baffle mid and woofers.

Amongst more conventional speakers I think both Von Schweikert and Thiel use it.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25531[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the picture. Is that firing upwards? Sorry, can't quite work it out.

Edit: From that angle the horns look massive and very impressive. Great work, I like :nana

Amongst more conventional speakers I think both Von Schweikert and Thiel use it.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]25531[/ATTACH]

Yeah, its a Radian compression diver on its back with a small black horn attached. Firing up into the underside of the big horn, which should do a good job at diffusing. Its paralleled of the midrange horn which runs 1k-20k.

I'd used a rear one before, on the back side of a Visaton OB, which would have had a very good power repsonse with the B200 firing 50-15k front and back, but it had a similar positive effect of adding air/ambiance/spaciousness to the sound.

Very cool. Thanks again for the pic and explanation. With all these horn speakers popping up on the forum of late, it really has me intrigued. Would love to hear some of these.

No worries Drizzt. I had to build a these before I ever got to hear a pair in a domestic setting. But I'm guessing a few might pop up eastern states if Martin keeps cranking them out.

No worries Drizzt. I had to build a these before I ever got to hear a pair in a domestic setting. But I'm guessing a few might pop up eastern states if Martin keeps cranking them out.

I look forward to seeing more projects like this pop up. You have done really well.

They definitely have that serious hifi look about them. Like they mean business :nana

Bevan,

I forgot mention the other day, I have three of the original T-Amps with a beefy switch mode power supply that you can borrow long term to try on your horns. These sounded good tri-amped on my Edgar Horns a few years ago.

I find with multiple-amped systems it's best to use exactly the same type of amp across the whole frequency spectrum for best coherence. Mixing amps tends to muck up timing and each amp has it's own sonic signature which is not the best situation. Bass is not so critical in this regard. Also, do not disregard good multi channel Home Theatre amps, you can end up with a very good sounding one box solution with volume control built in.

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Edited November 20, 201015 yr by Steve M

Thanks Steve, might take you up on that in a while. Yeah I wouldnt turn my nose up at ht amps, cept it seems a bit wrong with 100w per channel when I'm only using 1/4 watt. I dont know of any multichannel low power tube amps, except one Dared model, if anyone knows of any please do tell. cheers

B