Building a Dinner Theater w/ DIY Speakers, Subs, etc... - Page 2

I would say the Danley DTS-10 kit is the closest. $975 plus shipping amp and misc stuff so around $1700 or so. The DTS-10 in finished form is $3K-$4k. theres probably some more out there but the F-20 is definitely a great bang for your buck.

There will be small variances and I really WOULD wait until you get the driver. It has happened before where even on the speaker cutout, the cab has been finished then the driver arrives and it doesnt fit to spec. waiting a few extra days is definitely more worthwhile than having to scrap an entire cabinet due to lack of patience. Maybe just grab some more sheets of ply and start on the others

Add an extra c note to that. I believe the new price is $1075 plus shipping. The finished version with amp is $4500 I think so 4 of the F20's with amps would have a rough savings of ~$16-17,000 if your were to buy the finished version with amp x 4. 4 of the kit with 2 ep4000s and eq would come up to around $6-7k when shipping and all is included. So potential savings $4-17k depending on how you look at it. If you were going for equal ouput from readily available commercial offerings you would probably save even more.

The DTS-10 outperforms the F20 in both sheer output and extension. Because of that, you'd have to figure out how many F20's equals the performance of one DTS-10. Two of them? Three?

While I'm flattered that someone thinks so, the DTS-10 is not a good comparison to the F-20. They are completely different designs (The DTS is a tapped horn, with dual 12s, in a larger box, with a lower tune). Not only does it play lower, the DTS-10 gets significantly louder than an F-20, and takes considerably more power than an F-20, that was discussed over in the F-20 thread. There are not too many commercial options for 20 Hz home theater bass horns out there. Of the few that I am aware of, JTR's Orbit Shifter may be a closer comparison, but it uses an 18" driver and has a higher tune (nearer 25 Hz), as well as a higher efficiency. A commercially-built THT would likely be the best comparison in my opinion, the THT tune is within a few Hz of the F-20, the size is similar, and they use similar drivers.

The pictures you saw were with clamps and screws, right? They probably used the clamps to hold the panels in place while they attached the panels with screws. They would then remove the clamps and let the screws hold the box together while the glue dried.

With four of them and your placement restrictions, I would suggest putting one as close to each corner of the main room (the large 'ball room/seating area') as you can. You will have one right next to the spiral stairs and the one across from it will have to be pulled out to make room for the kitchen door. I would not put them on the stage.

You could probably disguise them as columns - Stand them up and make them look like they are built into the wall. Put them on the right wall in your original picture far enough away from the stairs/door to avoid blocking those areas with the mouths pointed into the corners. Mirror them on the left wall, again with the mouths pointed into the corners.

Several home theater build have had very good results with four subs placed in the four corners of a rectangular room.

Just a heads-up, the prices of the Dayton woofers just went up 8%.

Oh, I noticed you edited your build post on the first page to include more recent pictures. As for your 1/8", is it because the board is warped or because the board in the mouth of the horn that it's glued to wasn't cut right?

Sweet! Let us know how it turns out!

if your barn doors are ever open (no pun intended), this will still certainly help out with preserving the cabs for a much longer time than leaving them Nekkid

Slightly joking. With it being a "reception" area, wasnt sure whether it would have free air moving through it during events. In that case, the benefit of extra protection would be nice

There was a lot more discussion of highpasses than I really thought necessary in the original F-20 thread. My opinion is that quite simply - asking a bandwidth-limited sub to perform outside of its intended bandwidth is a bad idea. At a minimum, distortion increases. In some cases, driver excursion increases.

Simple way around it? Only amplify the signal that the sub can reproduce.

While I am not going to argue the presence of recorded information well into the single digits (I know it is there, I have measured it) in some source material, you've got to decide where to get off the train. That means leaving something on the table, it is all about what represents an acceptable compromise. As you've chosen the F-20, I'd suggest that the appropriate station for you to get off the train is 20 Hz.

Seriously, while there is content below 20 Hz in some signals, and the driver will not likely damage itself trying to reproduce it at reasonable levels, the nature of a horn is such that it increases the distortion level to where distortion equals the fundamental within ~1/2 octave below the tuning point. As I am after low distortion reproduction of the original signal, I'd rather not have the speaker distorting unnecessarily. This is my personal preference and opinion, based on measurements I have collected.

How to go about it depends a lot on the rest of the equipment. Plate amps will often have a suitable highpass built in, several have been recommended in this and the original F-20 thread. Rack-mount or pro amps often do not, but there are suitable alternatives. I like the MiniDSP. No, it is not perfect, but it sure is cool. In addition to highpass, it provides a lot of equalization to help fix room problems.

If you're planning to run pro amps (which I'd strongly suggest), the Behringer iNuke DSP series (I'm not making this name up) offers a combination amp/crossover/EQ solution that may be perfect, but they are still vaporware - I have not actually seen one or read an end-user review yet. They are due to be released shortly. Unless something has changed recently, the DSP in the Crown XTi and Peavey IPR series of amps does not offer a low enough highpass for home theater use.

In a nutshell - I choose to highpass my subs that have limited bandwidth (to be honest, that includes nearly everything I have built in the last 25 years...). I typically do so with the filter in the plate amplifier or an outboard DSP solution. I place and phase the subs to minimize nulls in the response. Finally, I EQ the sub to correct room issues to the degree possible by shaving off the peaks in the response.

Measurements of your subs in your room are a fundamental part of this process.

Just to make things complicated, a person could use a dynamic EQ, which would change the amount of cut depending on the volume (in/output voltage of the pre/pro). At low volumes, there may be no cut or highpassing at all. At ever increasing levels, the amount of cut would increase proportionately. This could be used for <20hz and the 35-45hz area where excursion would be a problem with a lot of power.

The DEQ2496 has this feature, but I have never used it as an ever increasing amount of slope below 20hz, so I don't know how that would work. I'm sure with enough fiddling, a person could make it work.

Pics on FB are elegant, clicked the "Like" button

That's likely something you'll have to experiment with. 60hz, 70hz, 80? Try them each and see which one integrates the best.

Hey guys, sorry about any confusion here. I had eD originially groove out the F-20's like the DTS-10's so I could easily line up the panels for a quick install. I then changed my mind and had them just build them for me. I have finished putting them together and all I had to do was screw in the woofer, wire it to the binding post, and screw in the panel, done!!!! Again, sorry for any confusion. I was trying to get this F-20 like a dts-10 kit which I owned.

the four pi's should be fine down to any of those but the higher the setting, the better I would say, that is up till the 80's where then you start getting into a large response dip between 90-100 on the f-20. Ive got mine at 79hz and feel it is a perfect xover point for my particular combo.

BTW, I have 4 f-20's and had 2 dts-10's, I will measure and let you guys know which one does what better!!!