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Zilch's AK Design Collaborative - Econowave Speaker

Nice publicity for a great project that, by the way, nearly anyone can do...

WTG!
 
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djnagle said:
Good job Ross. With that, I think this thread will stay open longer.
Click to expand...

I have no idea how this will affect the thread, but I've been sitting on this news since June.

The paper issue will hit the news stands on 11/17 and I urge AK-ers to check it out. This magazine is like Popular Electronics, Popular Mechanics and a science textbook on steroids.

http://makezine.com/magazine/

http://makermedia.createsend.com/T/ViewEmail/r/6FB4B6F20764A504/269FA68AE305A82E44D0DD5392A9C75A

I'll have more to say later, but right now I have a fever & have to go work some overtime.
 
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After 1 1/2 years of trying to find the right "standard" speakers to build and almost putting my $1K down to do it, I found Zilch's ewave post on the PE forum. Just finished reading the 8,003 posts here (whew :eek:), finally a design that is low cost, with big woofers instead of 5-8 incher's, and seemingly great mid/high's.

Thanks Zilch and jackgiff and all you contributors here! Off to the thrift stores...:D.

Rob
 
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They are just sitting on the furniture dollys...from Harbor Freight. Too much crap in the garage/brewery/woodshop to not have most of it on wheels.
 
Econowave's, HT, and CD

While reading the 500+ pages here, it seems the overwhelming majority here use econowaves for music, and only some for HT usage. Some say the imaging/detail of these is great and no center is needed, others here have built some beautiful centers to run HT.

My HT setup is centered around a 60" DLP set (whose screen is 18" away from the wall), flanked closely by my current Paradigm Monitor 5's on each side (speakers have a 5" gap to the side edges of TV, the speaker fronts are 27" away from wall, toed in slightly in hopes of minimizing reflections off the TV). Room size dictates this setup (10.5' x 11.5', with doors and computer hutches etc to dodge). I am also currently using a center channel speaker.

I think it might be difficult to implement a econowave type center in my setup, the TV resides on a stand with ~15-16" of vertical space to play with (unless I place the ewave on top of the set, not sure I want to do that though :no:). Maybe a 10" wide woofer/box placed with the long side horizontal, and the waveguide set on top, would work (ala valvtubehead)?

With the Econowave, and its CD dispersion, what say 'ye on using them with with said TV? Recommended placement? Can/will the recommended toeing in (crossing just in front of the listening area) create a lot of reflections off the screen? Or nothing to worry about? Phantom center or econowave center?

Maybe I need to just buy a wall mount big screen, but I am just recovering from my first ever layoff I don't think that's gonna' happen right now :thumbsdn:. Thanks guys, all experience and ideas and opinions welcomed.

Rob
 
I have been enjoying the LR4 B&C speakers for the last day, playing vinyl through them. Pretty nice sound. Awesome sound, in fact. Even in my garage, which is a very hard environment. Thought maybe it is time for a schematic of the Xover as it is today. There might be some slight changes in values, but this is very close.
 

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Envision for the moment and the sake of conceptualization that the eWave dispersion pattern is a hard an absolute 90°. Toed in the Geddes extreme 45°, it's easily seen that the outer edges of the sound field are parallel to the screen and side walls, and do not reflect off them. In this deployment, with listeners seated outside of the triangle apex, the image rendition zone is very wide and stable, so phantom center works extremely well.

I suggest trying it this way to determine whether a center channel is warranted in your space; it may still be, for other reasons. You can also adjust the balance between imaging and soundstage by varying the amount of toe-in. :thmbsp:

Bauhausler said:
LR4 means Linkwitz Reilly 4th order topology, right?
Click to expand...
Yup; says so on Jack's schematic.... :yes:
 
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Make Magazine article

Here's how the article happened. Back when WiredBecker's video on Econowaves appeared in Wired I emailed links to it to several bloggers that I intermittently correspond with. One was Mr. Jalopy, who runs the great blog Hooptyrides. Mr Jalopy also partners with Mark Frauenfelder in the awesome blog Dinosaurs and Robots
Among other things, Mark is co-founder of uber blog bOING bOING and the managing Editor of Make Magazine.
Mark asked me to write up my Utility Large Advent build as an article for the magazine. I agreed but decided to do an all new build with Original Large Advents, better parts and step by step pictures.
I completed the project and article in a couple of weeks, documenting some of the work in this thread. It was submitted in early July.
Jackgiff and Zilch knew this was going on and provided guidance and advice. We've been waiting to spill the beans to the Ewave readership because we knew everyone would be really pleased by the exposure.
 
I couldn't get the schem to download at first. Maybe Adobe's nagging is right and I do need to upgrade to a new version.

Jack;
What are the advantages of the more complex LR4 crossover over the original ewave circuit?
 
Bauhausler said:
I couldn't get the schem to download at first. Maybe Adobe's nagging is right and I do need to upgrade to a new version.

Jack;
What are the advantages of the more complex LR4 crossover over the original ewave circuit?
Click to expand...

Hi Ross,

First of all, Congratulations on the excellent article in Make. Setting on that for so long had to be difficult to do.

There was a Rane paper referred to a few (several?) pages ago which got me thinking of trying the L/R 4th order. It details far better than I can the advantages of the technology. Plus, there were several notes about time delay compensation for delaying either the tweet or the woof. I figured it might be fun to try doing them in conjunction with the LR4 Xover. Turns out delay wasn't necessary, at least not yet. I will try to find the link to the RaneNote, and include it here.

http://www.rane.com/note160.html

I feel that the faster transition through the crossover region yields better sound, but that is difficult to prove. I can seemingly hear it on the B&C pair, but really won't know for sure till I get one E'Wave xover on one side, and one LR4 on the other, and do the A/B thing.

I really need to get a better CAD program for drawing schematics. Circuit Maker is hardly adequate today, since the version I have is about ten or fifteen years old. And the Australian company that wrote it apparently went out of business.
 
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rvsixer said:
After 1 1/2 years of trying to find the right "standard" speakers to build and almost putting my $1K down to do it, I found Zilch's ewave post on the PE forum. Just finished reading the 8,003 posts here (whew :eek:), finally a design that is low cost, with big woofers instead of 5-8 incher's, and seemingly great mid/high's.

Thanks Zilch and jackgiff and all you contributors here! Off to the thrift stores...:D.

Rob
Click to expand...

This project is a great example of proving that it isn't what you spend, it is what you get that matters. :yes:

Any bozo can can spend thousands of $ on stuff. It doesn't take much skill to hand over a credit card. Making a couple hundred $ sound (or work or drive or whatever) like a couple thousand $, now that is something to be proud of :thmbsp:. Even if it doesn't sound like you spent 10X $, at least you didn't waste your time watching some mindless crap on TV.

Recycling a 50's or 60's era furniture-speaker is pretty cool too if you go that way.

Don
 
jackgiff said:
Hi Ross,

First of all, Congratulations on the excellent article in Make. Setting on that for so long had to be difficult to do.

There was a Rane paper referred to a few (several?) pages ago which got me thinking of trying the L/R 4th order. It details far better than I can the advantages of the technology. Plus, there were several notes about time delay compensation for delaying either the tweet or the woof. I figured it might be fun to try doing them in conjunction with the LR4 Xover. Turns out delay wasn't necessary, at least not yet. I will try to find the link to the RaneNote, and include it here.

http://www.rane.com/note160.html

I feel that the faster transition through the crossover region yields better sound, but that is difficult to prove. I can seemingly hear it on the B&C pair, but really won't know for sure till I get one E'Wave xover on one side, and one LR4 on the other, and do the A/B thing.

I really need to get a better CAD program for drawing schematics. Circuit Maker is hardly adequate today, since the version I have is about ten or fifteen years old. And the Australian company that wrote it apparently went out of business.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Jack. The build and the article really stretched my abilities and taught me things. Nothing clarifies a subject like having to explain it to a stranger.

According to convention, the standard LR4 crossover delays the woofer signal 360 degrees. At a 1600 hz crossover point that's about 8 inches so the drivers will be in phase at the crossover frequency directly in front if the woofer's center of radiation is 8" closer to the listener than the compression driver's. In most cases the difference in depth won't be that much, meaning the in phase angle will be pointed 'upwards' with the woofer below the waveguide. That works to our advantage for floor standing speakers.
I assume you did some fiddling with component values to alter the delay for your purposes.
 
Bauhausler said:
I assume you did some fiddling with component values to alter the delay for your purposes.
Click to expand...

No fiddling with component values for time delay, as of yet. The schematic shows a couple of jumper connections in the terminating component of each driver. JH1 and JH2 are the two connections for the Hi pass, and JL1 and JL2 are for the low pass. A tank circuit, inserted between either of these two connections can be used to delay the response of the selected driver. There is lots for me to learn about doing this correctly, and eventually it will be done.

The delay was roughly a bit over 4 inches, which only required reversing the HF connections to time it correctly. Maybe when I hook up the E'Wave xover, it will require some correction.
 
It would see to me that having the drivers in the same effective acoustic polarity would be preferable (regardless of delay) and correcting whatever delay by appropriate relative driver distance positioning, so that a single polarized pulse will reproduce correctly as such at the listening position as would with a single near-full-range driver. This should help assure accurate sonic reproduction, right? I recall being perplexed by Paul Klipch recommending I reverse the mid polarity of my Hereseys to adjust a glitch in the x-over region, I was not comfortable with that as a matter of logic.
You guys are the experts, I'm merely an interested student observer.
 
chicks said:
Ya mean the article about toilet-training yer cat? :scratch2: :D
Click to expand...

Honestly, getting the cat to drop a deuce in the can is far more impressive than than building a pair of eWaves. After 10 years our cat has been trained to get water from the bathroom sink. It jumps into bed and climbs on top of us until we get out of bed and turn on the water for it.

Back to the topic at hand - nearing completion of low power testing...the 35 wpc Denon in the garage is a lot louder than I remember...the bottom end is weak as expected...ZZ Top's "My Head's in Mississippi" comes across as loud and nasty as any sane person would want...from only 35 watts. The high power test (250-300 wpc) should be a blast.:D
 
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