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Zilch's AK Design Collaborative - Econowave Speaker

Finished Econowaves

Well kinda......I'm testing them out now. I think I first posted on this thread on pg 112 somewhere around 2-3 years ago. Long journey.....I so wish Zilch could have seen these completed, he was sooo patient with me.
 

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I could use some advise on these. I tested the crossovers with the drivers installed on the baffle only (not installed in cab) sounded great! Now that I've put the cabinets together I actually seem to have less bass than with an open baffle? Did I overstuff the cabs with insulation...they are stuffed. Also, this is my first dealings with the LE14. Even at 50W program peaks the cones barely move. They sound fine and they are moving air although I don't see how.
 
fxxm747 said:
I could use some advise on these. I tested the crossovers with the drivers installed on the baffle only (not installed in cab) sounded great! Now that I've put the cabinets together I actually seem to have less bass than with an open baffle? Did I overstuff the cabs with insulation...they are stuffed. Also, this is my first dealings with the LE14. Even at 50W program peaks the cones barely move. They sound fine and they are moving air although I don't see how.
Click to expand...

Those look awesome. I think I remember the old posts because of the color of the cones. Have you tuned the box (ported) as per recommendation? What about fiberglass? If it's ported, you have maybe 3 sides lined and nothing's too close to the woofer's vent behind the magnet, or the cone?

The cone should not really move visually. Though, if the box is ported, loosely flapping cones could happen below the tuning frequency.

And then the placement. Are they along a wall for your test? Test them where you want them to be because the lows are so dependent on location. (And remember, you might by chance be listening in a null, so move around the room to get an average perspective on the bass. The nulls can deeply cut certain frequencies.)
 
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They are ALIVE! I had a "what if" moment this morning. I was testing with a spare duty amp I had laying around...on old Fisher CA-880. Decided to hook up to the amp they will be mated with so hauled the Sansui G-801 to the music room and hooked up. Whoa! Deep low and tight bass...and you can see the cones working now. Skywave I can see by your response I need to remove some insulation....I went overboard and I'll bet the woofer is choked and the port may even be blocked. Going to open them up and be reasonable with what I leave in. I truly believe these are done after that. They sound incredible! I tuned the box to 29hz which I believe was very close to the limit of the LE14 if I remember right (LOL it's been a VERY long time) Appears porting is ok, I cranked them up and loud as I could stand with no ill effects from the woof. Man these things sound delicious.
 
DJ I veneered the baffle with "beeswing" sapele. They came out just beautiful, probably took longer to do than anything else. Lots and lots of lacquer and sanding...lacquer and sanding. Did you notice the reflections in the finish? Really happy with how they turned out. Book match veneering those huge baffles presented a lot of problems...I definitely learned a lot.
 
Very, very, very nice. I tried to go back through your posts to find out more, but I got lost. What are those cabinets from? What is their volume?

And you referred to the LE14s as "Heathkits?" Did they use to come in a Heathkit kit?

Socially speaking, yours are basically huge-volume versions of the ones I built a couple of months ago, and even they have very sweet bass. I just put fiberglass in the way they were originally:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=428160
 
If thoise are the Heathkit LE14's, which I think they are. Aren't they 16ohm? Could that be the choke thats holding them back?
 
So that's what, around 4.5-5ft³? If your port tuning calc/sim was correct, you should have some real deep bass happening there. There should only be "insulation" on the walls - not lose in the cab (unless you wanted to try adding a partial "curtain" down the middle).

P.S. Nice legs.
 
Hey guys! I wanted to post my response graphs for my Standard Econowaves and have you guys tell me what you think. The sweeps were not done "properly" though, they were taken while the speakers were in the room but at a distance of 1 meter per speaker. The room is symmetrical except for the door on the right wall up by the front wall is inset a few inches. I'm sure the room is playing a part in the response but another guru tells me the response is pretty bad regardless. I don't like the rolloff in the upper spectrum but I'm not sure what else to do as far as testing. I do have superchunk bass traps in the rear corners and thought that was the culprit so I stuck thick cardboard in front and no change in the top end of the graph...

Left channel 10-20khz...

leftchannel3mdistance10hz-20khznosubs.jpg


Center Channel 10-20khz...

centerchannel3mdistance10hz-20khznosubs.jpg


Right Channel 10-20khz...

rightchannel3mdistance10hz-20khznosubs.jpg


Overlayed...

lcroverlayed10hz-20khznosubs.jpg
 
Rig includes REW, Behringer ECM8000 Mic and USB sound card with phantom power. I'll run a full sweep for my Paradigms upstairs and see what they show. I'll keep this updated. Thanks for the suggestion :)
 
Chris, you are measuring each speaker on-axis at 1 meter and only that speaker is driven, right? (If you do not mute the other channels you will get HF cancellation looking like what you show.) You are pointing the mic directly at the speaker? And at what location? On tweeter axis? Mid point between woofer and tweeter? Etc...?

You can't count on full range measurements because of reflections. It does not look like your measurements are gated to exclude the early reflections. Gating would typically make the graph good down to something like 350Hz, give or take, depending on measurement distance and boundary distance.

The low end shows room modes at different locations, I would imagine. So that's normal. Forget about measuring the bass unless you can do it nearfield or outside.

However, the HF should not be a problem to measure. So I don't know why you are getting loss in the upper end, unless it's what I mentioned earlier, or a technical issue. Have you done measurements previously with your rig?
 
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Yes first check your measurements against other known speakers.

Then if you want to try an tweak the high end it's the bypass cap
across the "series resistor" going to the tweeter you can play with.
(increase that cap and it will start the gain earlier an provide more)
(decrease that cap and only the extreme highs will be let through)

It almost looks like there is no bypass cap installed but just raw drvr:scratch2:
 
AHH, so your backing up my post of it looks like no bypass cap for the compensation an just raw driver. :dammit:
 
Don't feel bad, Kegger, I'll back you up.
:D
Anyway, Chris, you are using the standard Ewave crossover, right? Assuming that, check C3, what Kegger, then dnewma04, in that order, are talking about.
Hehehe.
 
skywave-rider said:
Don't feel bad, Kegger, I'll back you up.
:D
Anyway, Chris, you are using the standard Ewave crossover, right? Assuming that, check C3, what Kegger, then dnewma04, in that order, are talking about.
Hehehe.
Click to expand...

That's good, I like it! :)

In a best Jerry voice.. Neewwwman
 
Could be to Large a cap, but I think I'd Expect to see to much HF altogether if that were the case.
 
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