marantzfan
...
My bad. Sorry.
EconoWaveguide Utility Large Advent Build Thread
- Thread starter Bauhausler
- Start date
My bad. Sorry.
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
Wrap-up on the Econowave Large Advent build.
Important points:
1) The resulting speaker sounds excellent by any standard and sounds fabulous for what it costs. You literally can't buy sound as good as the Ewave series for less dough.
2) It's dead easy. Solder up the crossovers, cut big sloppy holes in the cabinets and assemble with screws. If you can carve a turkey without a trip to the Emergency Room you can build this speaker.
3) It's forgiving. Use a different woofer, cabinet or crossover within reason and these instructions apply broadly.
4) Pride of ownership. How would you like the best sounding speaker in the house to be the ones that you built?
5) These waveguides have outstanding dispersion. This was the one big surprise in their sound. It means you can move around the room and the sound changes little, or changes in a uniform way. This made them more 'listenable' in a real room in a way I hadn't anticipated. It's a benefit that I'm now aware of after using these.
6) I made one last change. I installed a beefy handle on the back of each speaker. This accomplishes 2 things: 1) protects the Lpad knob from impact if the speaker tips over, 2) makes it much easier to lift/carry. the handles were $6.50 each and took a minute to install with an electric screwdriver. See pic.
Stuff I learned:
1) The cabinets ended up with more stuffing than I thought they would. YMMV, but I wouldn't start on the light side with tuning the cabs.
2) T-nuts on the horns are overkill. Use wood screws.
3) The 'stock' woofer choke in the ULA speaker is just about right for the EWave crossover. If I had measured it first I'd have used the stock choke rather than ordering from P-E.
4) Pay attention to driver phasing if using the Jacklab crossover boards. The markings on mine were relative to inverse polarity JBL woofers. The documentation with the boards explains this.
5) You might get away with no Lpad on these. I tried these speakers in my system with teh Lpad all the way up and they sounded fine. It's a big, open room. I ended up with the Lpad at 75% position but it doesn't make a huge difference. That would save a few bucks if you have all of the other crossover parts on hand.
6) They don't 'sound' like horns, that is they don't have the peaky, glaring, forward, harsh, bright, grainy and irritating tonality of many horns, old and new. The sound is extremely refined and smooth. Sweet and polite. They'll make you forget why you disliked horn tweeters. Until the next time you go to a wedding reception where the low bidder DJ's driving too much power through an undersized PA, but that's why there's a bar.
7) The Advent woofer sounds as good as I thought it did. I suspected this woofer was a bargain. Dahlquist used woofers in his DQ-10 and -20 that were identical or very similar to the masonite Advent woofer, which is a close relative of the metal frame Advent woofer. the woofers I used are the round magnet version sourced from Jensen. I always loved the tonality of the Large Advent speaker in the lower registers. pairing them with a good waveguide, driver and crossover brought out the best in the woofer.
Important points:
1) The resulting speaker sounds excellent by any standard and sounds fabulous for what it costs. You literally can't buy sound as good as the Ewave series for less dough.
2) It's dead easy. Solder up the crossovers, cut big sloppy holes in the cabinets and assemble with screws. If you can carve a turkey without a trip to the Emergency Room you can build this speaker.
3) It's forgiving. Use a different woofer, cabinet or crossover within reason and these instructions apply broadly.
4) Pride of ownership. How would you like the best sounding speaker in the house to be the ones that you built?
5) These waveguides have outstanding dispersion. This was the one big surprise in their sound. It means you can move around the room and the sound changes little, or changes in a uniform way. This made them more 'listenable' in a real room in a way I hadn't anticipated. It's a benefit that I'm now aware of after using these.
6) I made one last change. I installed a beefy handle on the back of each speaker. This accomplishes 2 things: 1) protects the Lpad knob from impact if the speaker tips over, 2) makes it much easier to lift/carry. the handles were $6.50 each and took a minute to install with an electric screwdriver. See pic.
Stuff I learned:
1) The cabinets ended up with more stuffing than I thought they would. YMMV, but I wouldn't start on the light side with tuning the cabs.
2) T-nuts on the horns are overkill. Use wood screws.
3) The 'stock' woofer choke in the ULA speaker is just about right for the EWave crossover. If I had measured it first I'd have used the stock choke rather than ordering from P-E.
4) Pay attention to driver phasing if using the Jacklab crossover boards. The markings on mine were relative to inverse polarity JBL woofers. The documentation with the boards explains this.
5) You might get away with no Lpad on these. I tried these speakers in my system with teh Lpad all the way up and they sounded fine. It's a big, open room. I ended up with the Lpad at 75% position but it doesn't make a huge difference. That would save a few bucks if you have all of the other crossover parts on hand.
6) They don't 'sound' like horns, that is they don't have the peaky, glaring, forward, harsh, bright, grainy and irritating tonality of many horns, old and new. The sound is extremely refined and smooth. Sweet and polite. They'll make you forget why you disliked horn tweeters. Until the next time you go to a wedding reception where the low bidder DJ's driving too much power through an undersized PA, but that's why there's a bar.
7) The Advent woofer sounds as good as I thought it did. I suspected this woofer was a bargain. Dahlquist used woofers in his DQ-10 and -20 that were identical or very similar to the masonite Advent woofer, which is a close relative of the metal frame Advent woofer. the woofers I used are the round magnet version sourced from Jensen. I always loved the tonality of the Large Advent speaker in the lower registers. pairing them with a good waveguide, driver and crossover brought out the best in the woofer.
Attachments
Paratima
E'Wavin'
Awesome report! As soon as I finish the documentation on the ZLH-17, I'll be off and running on mine. Like sfox52 above, I've got the NLA's, newly refoamed, waiting and the Seleniums and their waveguides are just sitting here, calling to me.
Thanks for the inspiration and excellent write-up. :ntwrthy: :ntwrthy: :ntwrthy:
Thanks for the inspiration and excellent write-up. :ntwrthy: :ntwrthy: :ntwrthy:
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
You're all welcome. It was truly a pleasure to do a project that was dead simple and had great results. Take some pix and post here or start your own thread when you do them. Good luck.
The Advent Loudspeaker is 12" x 23.25" x 9" = 1.4531 cuft. internal volume by my calcs.... :yes:
http://audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=131619&stc=1&d=1232943245
http://audiokarma.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=131619&stc=1&d=1232943245
bear-hifi
Well-Known Member
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
Update regarding woofers
I want to add an update regarding the Advent woofers. Since this build thread was started I've refoamed a number of Advent woofers, built another pair of ewaved Advents and measured them using Woofer Tester 3. I was surprised to find that the conventional foam surrounds sold for Advents significantly change the characteristics of the woofer. Comparing inexpensive conventional foam to the thin foam sold for Advent and Dahlquist woofers, the thicker cheap foam raises the woofer's resonance from the corect 17 hz to nearly 40 hz. This means that the woofer will lose some of its lowest bass and may have a bump in the midbass region. There's no practical way to measure the effect simply, but this is what the models predict.
Therefore I strongly suggest that woofers refoamed for this project be refoamed with correct thin foam. Kits with the correct material are available for under $25 on That Auction Site. I bought some surrounds from one of the sellers there in bulk for wha tamounted to $8 each because I have a bunch of Masonite woofers to refoam (sigh...)
Furthermore, while talking about bass I can't stress too much the use of fiberglass - and plenty of it - in place of the foam rubber cabinet stuffing found in some Advents. The bass is highly dependent on cabinet loading. Fiberglass is far more effective than the foam. Fill the cabinet with fiberglass batts but don't crowd the back of the woofer.
Following these steps will help achieve the best possible bass performance from your Advent woofers and cabinets.
I want to add an update regarding the Advent woofers. Since this build thread was started I've refoamed a number of Advent woofers, built another pair of ewaved Advents and measured them using Woofer Tester 3. I was surprised to find that the conventional foam surrounds sold for Advents significantly change the characteristics of the woofer. Comparing inexpensive conventional foam to the thin foam sold for Advent and Dahlquist woofers, the thicker cheap foam raises the woofer's resonance from the corect 17 hz to nearly 40 hz. This means that the woofer will lose some of its lowest bass and may have a bump in the midbass region. There's no practical way to measure the effect simply, but this is what the models predict.
Therefore I strongly suggest that woofers refoamed for this project be refoamed with correct thin foam. Kits with the correct material are available for under $25 on That Auction Site. I bought some surrounds from one of the sellers there in bulk for wha tamounted to $8 each because I have a bunch of Masonite woofers to refoam (sigh...)
Furthermore, while talking about bass I can't stress too much the use of fiberglass - and plenty of it - in place of the foam rubber cabinet stuffing found in some Advents. The bass is highly dependent on cabinet loading. Fiberglass is far more effective than the foam. Fill the cabinet with fiberglass batts but don't crowd the back of the woofer.
Following these steps will help achieve the best possible bass performance from your Advent woofers and cabinets.
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
Note to those considering this project
I get a lot of questions from people thinking of building these speakers or other EconoWaves. Really good questions. I'd like to answer those questions for the benefit of the largest number of people. The greatest benefit is here on the forum where the discussion is open to anyone and the results can be read by anyone in the future. To that end, I will be referring future questions on EconoWave to this or the main thread rather than responding to individuals privately.
I get a lot of questions from people thinking of building these speakers or other EconoWaves. Really good questions. I'd like to answer those questions for the benefit of the largest number of people. The greatest benefit is here on the forum where the discussion is open to anyone and the results can be read by anyone in the future. To that end, I will be referring future questions on EconoWave to this or the main thread rather than responding to individuals privately.
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
Identify the seller of the "correct" surrounds, please.
I received an inquiry a couple of days ago and said the ones sold by PE are correct, but you're saying, "Not," if I read your Post #33 correctly...?
I don't have PE surrounds here to compare to. The ones I used that performed exactly to spec were from Rick Cobb (Looneytune) in Fla and from Audio Atlanta in GA. The ones I have that resulted in an incorrect 40 hz Fs were *I think* from MAT Electronics. I have used many of their other surrounds with good results but these particular ones are very thick and stiff.
** EDIT **
In the past I've seen Advent woofers refoamed with kits that used the non-optimum thicker foams. I'd just caution anyone buying a refoam kit for Advents to determine that they are appropriate stiffness for the characteristics of this driver. If the seller does not know or will not say, look elsewhere. If anyone has personal experience with the PE foams and has measured the results, please respond here for the information of others.
Last edited:
archie2
Addicted Member
The PE surrounds that they advertise as the ones to use for the masonite Advent have a 15 mm roll. Rick Cobb (Looneytune2001) on ebay sells the original speced 17 mm roll. I have used his and it makes an audible difference. I've not tried the ones in Audio Atlanta.
AFAIK, we have the same type as Rick Cobb. Probably from the same manufacturer, though I haven't specifically verified this. They do indeed have 17mm (11/16") roll width, and the correct "soft" compliance.
And yes... it DOES make a difference. MAT surrounds on Advents or JBL 125A woofers result in a higher-than-normal resonance... boomy midbass, and a loss of low bass extension... on those, you should use the correct dedicated-manufacture surrounds (Advent or JBL 125A types, respectively)...
Regards,
Gordon.
Bauhausler
Rational Subjectivist
All of the woofers used in the Large Advents are basically interchangeable with equivalent performance.
For examples of systems built with different woofers take a look at the first page of the main EconoWave thread.
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=150939
There are 63 user-built systems shown and they're basically all different. I think some people are experimenting with a 12" from Parts Express that shows promise.
Good luck!