High-End Speaker Design Project (underway!)

GordonW

Speakerfixer
Subscriber
The postings on coax drivers here recently, made me realize I should post what I'm currently working on:

This is the kind of thing any speaker designer lives for...

Was commissioned by a client (here at Audio Atlanta), to design and build a truly cost-nearly-no-object, high-performance loudspeaker system, this month. This is for a person, who has great familiarity with high-end products- in fact, the system this is replacing, was purchased in 1957, and consisted of McIntosh MC30 monoblocks, a Thorens TD124 turntable, a Mc preamp, and custom speakers built around the JBL D130/075/N2400 kit of the day. In that day, these were $750 speakers... which would correlate today, to about $8000-9000. In 1957, this is just about as good as it got... and we're attempting to reach correlating levels of relative quality using modern gear, with the system we're constructing now.

In essence, we're BUILDING him what SHOULD be pretty much state-of-the-art for $10000 for a pair of speakers, today. A dual-concentric 8" midbass/treble driver, with a high-excursion, low-distortion (shorting ring motor) 12" bass driver on the front of the cabinet, with a 15" extreme-high-excursion passive radiator and a plate amplifier (including staggerable crossovers and 2-band parametric EQ built in!) on the rear of the cabinet. If shown desirable, we may also add on a supertweeter setup, to extend the response past 30KHz on the top end, should listening tests justify the addition.

Now, this is part new-build, and part re-build... the customer has stipulated that we build this system INTO THE ORIGINAL CABINET that his JBL system was mounted in. This will require baffle reconstruction, extensive bracing, damping and sealing... but in the end, it will look NO DIFFERENT from the front, than it did in 1957. However, if this speaker sounds as good as we expect (basically, our goals are to meet or exceed the sonics of a Tannoy TD8 on mid/highs, and meet/exceed the bass definition, clarity and output of a Vandersteen 5 on bass), we will seriously start looking at getting more "modern-mode" cabinets constructed, and possibly start SELLING this as a product from our store... and possibly selling it to other stores, fates willing, at some time in the future. This will be a speaker that will sell, probably, somewhere in the $9000-12000 range... but, realistically... will have some of the VERY BEST characteristics possible... near point-source imaging/coherence, almost distortion-free bass with extension down to 17 Hz or lower FLAT, and the capability of playing at levels approaching or exceeding 115 dB in-roon, at any frequency, without appreciable distortion.

Here is a sketch of the current design, as will go into the original cabinets. If we go for a "store model", the cabinet will undoubtedly be taller and thinner, with possibly two 12" passive radiators instead of 1 15"...
 
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