What DIY or store bought towers for mid-bass punch? - Page 2

or how about a pair of 2226H's per side ala leftover Erich stock 16 ohms? That would leave them at 8 ohm stereo for all 4, but at that price, that is killer

+1 Outstanding Paul.

Bass traps, time domain, this is where it happens. Sure, capability has to be there, however most people stop there. Time domain, that's where the money is.

You did say "well integrated", but I would add acoustically optimized launch into the space. All too often in the infamous "punch" region (however one defines that), systems suffer from poorly executed SBIR ripple, or outright cancellation. 1/4 wave destructive interference can be a problem, just as nasty performance in rooms time domain.

A DSP contoured pro two way set up properly in a good room, sweet. And yes, Janowitz does know how to build a good sounding motor, no?


Thanks

If you got em', sure that would be a nice set for midbass. I'll be using four sealed per channel in my system.

Hmmm.. I didn't know Erich had extras. Yo, Erich! Why you holdin' out on me, brah?!

beast, I'm surprised to hear someone thought it was eloquent given the hour at which that was written!

I use a house curve that is applied with Behringer DCX on the input section with shelving EQ filters. Technically it could extend into the midrange. I built some bass horns recently, including an F20 and my own design T20 which is a tapped horn. With the F20 I had it running up to about 60 Hz or so and at one point I set it up by ear and ended up with it 18 db hot! With some music it sounded just right. With other music, overpowering. House curve definitely isn't one size fits all, tends to be evolutionary and personal. While I'm working on the new system I just have a 10" midwoofer running about 40 - 80 Hz. It's really more of a midrange and will go into a 10" Ewave speaker. Right now that is my quasi room curve.


SBIR is pesky to eliminate. Take all the foam that works as a nice big bass trap, line all the space between the woofer and the wall, even if it be 1m or more. SBIR persists! I think if you want to go to town on it, then the solution is the studio one - build some serious flush mounted speakers. Trouble is, I had that space in mind for big corner bass traps (1.2m wide). Another way to go is a bass horn where the mouth fills the entire corner at the bottom.

An illuminating experience for me was a blind test demo with DEQX where its group delay correction was switched in and out to see what it does. Switched with a remote in the listening position. A valve amp builder identified the non corrected version as being like "valve bass." The correction made the bass much tighter, even though the frequency response was the same. It was a real eye opener. Unfortunately most DSP does not go that far.

Drivers ... I'm a bit of a fan of B&C as I think they offer killer bang for buck. If you are patient and have serious money to spend, I'd go Acoustic Elegance TH18, it's a killer. It's definitely better than Eminence Magnum, I've compared side by side. The TD18 seems to have a shaper impulse, it's as if the Magnum is rounding off the transient peak, not in an obvious way, but it comes out in careful comparison side by side. TD18 also clearly has a lot more top end, take off the filters and you can just about listen to it fullrange without sounding awful. But it's expensive to get to Australia.

First drivers I'd go for on more of a budget would be B&C. Really nice drivers and great bang for buck.

One thing you do get with the better drivers is very low compression. Take a look at Beyma pro drivers. They show power compression, generally starting at 2 db and rising to 5 db at full rated power. Now look at JBL, 18 Sound, Precision Devices who show power compression numbers. I was looking at an 18 Sound midrange that has 1.6 db at full rated power.

Please detail me in on how to do a shelf filter on the input section of the DCX??? That interests me greatly!

My first DIY build was the f-20. I loved it, but chose to go big and sealed to chase the sub 20hz stuff... ATM i have the dcx with a pair of XXX 18's and a pair of 15cuft LLT with tempest x-2 15's running up front, but the LLT's are going to be switched out with some strong 15 or 18" pro drivers sealed for the MBM's

The group delay and time domain also interests me and Id love to know the first step to working on that considering the DCX has enough ability to at least get me there a little. I need a good sit down session with all my new EQ gear to really dial everything in, but there is still so much to learn. The SMS-1 I have still hasnt been incorporated into the chain either. Im about to start a new thread for suggestions on how to make it all work, so keep your eye out

DCX - all you have to do is cycle through the EQ filter types and you will find it, but DCX will only assign a fixed delay to each channel, it won't actually correct for group delay. For that you need something like DEQX or Bodzio Ultimate Equaliser.

4g's for the deqx, yea I dont think so at this point in time...haha but looks like a friggin sweet piece!

You don't have to worry about group delay, Beast. You own a sealed XXX18 system and a proper LLT. Group delay is good. High tuned MBM's on the other hand....

Paul's post had a lot of great points. A lot. So +1

The take aways being that a lot of the time this elusive slam or punch you are looking for might be possible from your current system (or not). These things do not come from having a flat response shape. They just don't. Not unless you can also deal with some ear bleedingly bright upper midrange and highs. You aren't going to switch out flat responding speakers with another also having a relatively flat response shape (Which is how most are designed to reproduce sound you know.) and have a dramatic increase in "punch". at least not the sound I relate to it. Think about it what are the systems where you have heard this subjective quality with drums, bass instruments and percussion? For myself they are at live concerts, or live sound of some sort pro audio systems or car audio systems. Common denominator? Lot's of firepower, and seriously boosted lower mids and bass. It has to be LOUD. The upper frequencies get uncomfortable very quickly if they are left flat with the lower registers so you have to boost the lows. It is common to have the bass set +10-20dB in a car. At live concerts the kick is usually far and away the loudest thing in the mix sometimes with peaks 10 to even 20dB higher than the average of the other instruments. As Paul says this mix is completely different from what you get on an utterly squashed commercial recording. The reason being that it would sound terrible on systems ill equiped to handle that sort of boosted bass and dynamic range.

Be careful with using house curves or other EQ with HT playback though. It is a lot hotter, deeper and has a lot more dynamic range preserved. I don't usually feel the need to boost the bass for HT playback. It can be a lot of fun with music though to get that club or live feel.

Exactly Josh, good post.

Example of what you're saying; While attending Cedia this past year, I arranged to meet Mark Seaton and get a listen of his Catalyst based 7.4 rig he provided at a Datasat product launch (high end theater processing) at the Conrad hotel on Saturday night. Well, like most anything time was tight for setup and the Datasat folks utilized Dirac automated optimization to balance and tune the rig/room.

I got a good seat up front and the reps began their presentation about this extraordinary processor. They played some various clips, including BluRay concert footage of Rush live in concert. Upon completion, they opened up for Q&A, specifically asking about our perception of the system balance, etc. I was first to respond being polite, yet trying explain that the concert clip illustrated how far off the system EQ was. The other clips I had no frame of reference. But I explained having significant FOH experience, the balance was off,...way, way off. I elaborated using terms like lifeless, and anemic. I expressed that ballpark, the range somewhere below 200hz needed a ramp up of at least 10-20dB

They offered me a chance to recalibrate the EQ curves but I deferred to others there that were also interested in reshaping the response, but they were actually interested in buying one. With limited time, I thought I'd let those with the deeper pockets play with the thing, .... at somewhere around $15k-$20k, I'll stick with Integra myself. It is a bad ass, killer piece however.

Eventually, the balance and subsequent impact was much improved over the course of the evening. The acoustics were not as good as they could have been, thus the target curve interpreted the reverberant energy in a manner whereby there wasn't nearly enough bass to the mix. I mean come on, a Catalyst based 7.4 system with four SubMersives,....not counting the (8)8's in the surrounds, the mains and subs had (6)12's and (8)15's, this thing possesses some impact,...let's hear it!

And yes, as Josh alluded to, mixing live affords one the opportunity to increase the punch, impact and overall warmth of the mix of the associated frequencies, yet retain a nice balance and smooth intelligible midband for vocals etc, with the absence of any harshness.


Here's an overview pic of that demo evening, by this time of the night, the rig sound much, much better. Problem was many people had already left. We had fun though!;



Thanks

Sounds like fun. I'd like to meet Mark.

I need to get my ass to Cedia one of these days.

Come on, I'll meet you there I'll orchestrate an AVS dinner. So far that makes two...

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Mark is something else. He's got this encyclopedic array of audio knowledge that's way beyond his years, yet he's got an approachable, amiable style that very much serves him well. We visited on two separate days at Cedia, and I've both been in contact via phone and email since. He's a good dude for sure.

I'm down. Just need to know when and where CEDIA will be this year.

September 5th, for four days, in Indianapolis.

CEDIA isn't open to the public is it?

I'll make a new company name if I have to, I'd love to check that out and meet some of you gents that otherwise might never happen sounds like the best 4 day weekend around that time that I could think of! Hope you guys like beer...

Shoot Im only 1.5 hrs away. Might have to put that on the calendar.

Thanks FOH. Make that 3, and I'll likely drag Itai from iRule with (Catalyst and prototype Terraform owner), and who knows who else. You should probably keep tabs on when the $20k+ group gather, as it's worth going if thebland or ArtSonneborn make it (or Cineramax just for comedic value!).

^^^

Sounds good Mark, will do.