Hey guys...we need a little rallying here... - Page 117

Right, as you helpfully pointed out last week in that other thread and I haven't forgotten. It supports the case for going sealed here. We would/could tweak the box volume/QTC for the sealed boxes so the -3 db point falls right at 80 hz. That I think is the simplest/cheapest way to go.

However, if blending with flanking subs ala Parham, then one might want a higher crossover with a lower slope and would pay the cost of smoother bass in higher system complexity, happily in my case if those upper-bass nulls would go away.

I still don't see the attraction of ported (which again makes me wonder what I'm missing since ported seems so popular) unless one wants to get enough bass to be usable for music w/o a sub. That I think takes a little more xmax than the drivers we've been talking about, or sacrificing some SPL.

Sorry if this is a bit too OT... is there something fundamentally unique about "flanking subs" that makes them very different from what many people call "bass bins", or even simply designing a large full-range speaker (2.5- or 3-way) in the first place, in a single cabinet?

I see Wayne Parham recommends particular placement (beneath, beside and slightly behind) - is this an important part of the recipe, or just the most sensible suggested placement assuming discrete sub boxes?

I'm a big 2-channel music guy, so I suspect I will be happiest if I can get a substantial portion of the midbass and bass from in the vicinity of my mains - with mode smoothing tackled after that with two or more additional smaller subs elsewhere in the room.

anti: flankers are purposely distanced from the mains by a couple feet so that the nulls created by boundary reflections from them are at different frequencies than the nulls created by boundary reflections from the mains. Then, in range of frequencies where both have output, one fills in the nulls for the other. You don't get enough separation with sub and mid woofer in same cabinet to get the same effect.

Thanks for the clear and concise explanation Jack, makes tons of sense.


EDIT: Are you by any chance available to explain it to my wife?

Learn something new everyday! I hadn't heard that before, makes sense.

That is interesting, and good explanation, thanks.

That could be applied to a TWW, with a box of suitable depth, by placing the second woofer on the back panel.

If you couple the second order from the receiver with the acoustic roll off of the box thats fourth order.....

The sub is still only gonna roll off second order right? Isnt that bad for several reasons including phase and probably a bit of a response dip?

Isnt this why most speakers are designed to have -3db points at least half an octave away from the intended crossover point?

Yes, but with no ability to tune interaction via placement (compared to separate subs).

So is the net acoustic LR4 HP of the satellite; what are the chances that even if a speaker is designed for LR2@80 Hz that it will have that response in someone's room?

Ok, that makes sense i wasnt aware the crossover slopes were different...... Ideally we want them to be the same.

bwaslo: "if they could be mounted up against the ceiling, woofers at the top of the baffle near the ceiling to avoid reflection (ground-plane style)"

You could put 'Malcom in the middle' of your driveway, on the ground, woofers down, to simulate the first bounce of the proposed ceiling mounting.

Wondering, would the ceiling affect the vertical polar?

Also wondering if instead of waveguide above Ms,M,M,Ms--- could the vertical polar be improved by Ms, T, Ms over M,M (Ms being the shaded speakers) or viceversa for the ceiling install.................

I hate to come off all anti-theoretical, but the response of speakers at bass and sub frequencies in a room has so tremendously little to do with slopes and filter shapes that the are hardly worth discussing. You're measuring with a micrometer and cutting with an axe, here. Measure an In-room response of a speaker and compare to near field at bass freqs to see what I mean!

Just be aware there will be a cancellation notch where the path length from listener to front and rear drivers differs by 1/2 wavelength.

Yes, but same thing with the flanking subs.

True, but if there's a phase cancellation because of a poor XO it's an independent issue, right?

Bill, perhaps you can answer a question that I've posed to others a few times over the years but never gets answered:

Taking a XO not swamped by room effects, say W-T, is it really important what the slopes are once either driver is down by, say, 6 dB?

At that point, the rolling off driver can only add or subtract (depending on phase) 1 dB from the overall output at that freq.

I know you asked Bill, but I'd say it depends on the cross over slope mostly. If it's a 2nd order, yes it still matters a great deal even below the -6db mark. There is still quite a bit of interaction. If 8th order, then once past -6db, there quickly becomes hardly any influence, so it would matter very little.

All in all, I feel the knee of the slope is the most important to get right. A lot happens right there. Phase, amplitude, and shape are all important. I argued Wolf over at Tech Talk about this once. He was claiming a bunch of his designs used odd order cross overs. They did, but in all of his examples, the -6db and above areas were essentially even order LR4. So I said, sure they're odd order below the knee, where it's not a big deal, but those are LR4 cross overs.

Thoughts Bill?

Because of the fixed short distance, bipole path cancellation occurs at a fixed higher frequency...opening a new can of worms. Adjusting flanker position for complementary in-room response seems more realistic.

How's that? At -6 dB, there's only 1 dB of max effect possible.

Ever modelled an LR2? It affect power response as well as output. Also, 1db? I'm on my phone, that doesn't sound right.

6 dB is 1/4 the power; 1.25 W gives 1 dB more SPL than 1 W.

Sound power response, not power handling.

The LR2 has a much more gradual transition from woofer to tweeter, even if the -6db points are the same.

Wikipedia clealy illustrates the difference between BW2 and LR2.
Simply one has a Q of 0.707 (BW) and one has a Q of 0.5 (LR).



A BW2 xover generally inverts polarity on one driver to maintain a flat sum through the xover.

Hi, I am new to this venerable thread, my name is Marc. I am planning a 3-way speaker with one SEOS 18 (Beyma CP380M, 107 dB)), 2 Seas H1262-08 MCA15RCY ( 89 dB, VAS 12, Fs 51, Qt 0.25, Xmax 3.4) and 2 AE TD15H (94 dB, VAS 467, Fs 21, Qt 0.26, Xmax 14). The crossover-calculator gave this result : 1st order normal polarity, 6400 Hz, 800 Hz for the 8 Ohm Tweeter / 4 Ohm Mid / 4 Ohm Woofer, 0 db Bandpass Gain, Spread = 8 : 3 octaves. Can anyone tell me if the XO points, the bandbass gain etc are in an acceptable range, should the horn start lower ? Thank You !

Powers don't necessarily add like that. For example, if you place two identical drivers next to each other you gain more than 3 dB (2x power). It's closer to 6 dB, which would be summing of the pressures (20log10(2)~6). If you're wondering how to reconcile this with the power viewpoint, what happens is the system's radiation impedance changes.

If you sum the pressures of a source at 0 dB and a source at -6 dB, that is 1.5x or .5x the pressure, which is +3.5 dB or -6dB. To see how far down the lower source has to be in order to get the deviation below 1 dB, set -1 = 20log10(1-p_low) and solve to get p_low ~.1 or -20 dB.

Tbh, there's quite a bit here that is questionable.

The purpose of using a waveguide of that size and a compression driver is that they can work down to 1 kHz or even lower. 6.4k+ could be covered by a .5" dome tweeter on a small waveguide. To put this in perspective, the SEOS-18 can be used from about 800-20k Hz. 800-6.4k is 3 octaves. 6.4k-20k is a little over 1.5 octaves, and there is less power per octave at those frequencies in most music.

The midranges don't really match up with the rest of the system in terms of directivity, sensitivity, or power handling. You could do them next to each other horizontally; that would sort of match the horizontal directivity of the horn but you'd have to cross a little higher than desired and the vertical would be too wide. Also, when you turn the stereo up, the 1" coils on the mids will heat up much faster than the other drivers, causing a dip in the middle of the overall response. If you don't listen very loud this might not be a huge problem but it's something to consider.

First order crossovers are generally a bad idea. Even if they sum perfectly on-axis, when you go off-axis vertically the path length differences to the drivers causes a relative phase shift which makes them sum differently. That effect is present with every crossover, but the shallow roll-off of 1st orders makes it a problem over a large range of frequencies. So even if the response is flat on axis, if you move up or down you get huge holes in the response. Even if you only listen in front of the speaker, what you hear is also shaped by later arriving reflected sound that may have originally emanated from off-axis.


My suggestion would be to simplify. Do the SEOS-18 + CP380M and a single TD15H. Cross them around 1 kHz, maybe slightly lower, with 4th or 8th order slopes. If you don't have a lot of experience with passive crossovers, you're probably better off going active. This is a setup that, properly tuned, can give you first rate sound quality and serious output. Adding a midrange in-between these doesn't really provide a lot of benefit and it makes the system harder to tune and more costly.

Doesn't matter; my question was about the range past the -6 dB points.


Yes, but the driver that's down 6 dB because of the XO won't be in phase with the other.

Thanks for the refresher on the difference between sound power and pressure.