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February 2004
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PROJECT MAY
Sponsored by
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February 16 -
Mr. Widget
The purpose of this entry is to distill the
ideas from Project May team discussions regarding the project
requirements. In particular, it focuses on concepts that would make best
use of the donated components that we will be using in the Project May
speakers in conjunction with the design goals put forth by Don McRitchie.
The Electro-Acoustic Design and Industrial (Aesthetic) Design will
undoubtedly affect each other with the Electro-Acoustic Design taking
the initial lead. This does not mean that general design solutions,
materials, fabrication techniques, and the like can not be discussed
before the conclusion of rough prototype construction and testing.
Currently there are three Electro-Acoustic Designs that are being
considered. All three feature the same components. Twin 1500AL woofers
and a 435Be compression driver on a custom horn that incorporates the
045Be UHF compression driver. (The final external design and material of
these horns is yet to be determined.) I will be machining them using
JBL's geometry from the K2-S9800. This will allow us the flexibility of
adjusting the external surfaces for ease of assembly within the woofer
module or modules and making modifications for aesthetic purposes as
dictated by the industrial design.
The three Electro-Acoustic Design directions are as follows:
The first choice is an MTM design with both woofers working in parallel
up to the crossover point. We will need to play with the woofer spacing
to try to minimize the inevitable comb filter effects that might create
undesirable sonic anomalies. Most successful MTM designs use 6.5" or
smaller woofers crossed over above 2KHz. This places the two woofers
very close together. The large woofer diameter of the 1500AL as well as
the significantly lower 750-800Hz crossover frequency require that our
woofers be spaced further apart. There are numerous successful examples
of tower designs with widely spaced woofers, but it will certainly give
the Electro-Acoustic Design team a bit of a challenge.
The second choice is a tower layout that is visually identical to the
MTM designs but electrically one woofer is used only as a helper woofer
below 100Hz or so in a fashion similar to the JBL 4435.
The third choice is electrically the same as the last choice but with
both woofers placed vertically near each other below the HF units.
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February 16 -
Mr. Widget
The following two drawings show the
practical range of woofer spacing distances. Using MTM theory we would
like the two woofers to be 36" apart based on out crossover frequency.
If this proves less than satisfactory we can close the gap but due to
the UHF driver the closest we can push the woofers is 28.25" center to
center. Both drawings make the assumption that we would like to maintain
the center of the mid horn near Don's seated ear level of approximately
40" from the floor.
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February 16 -
Mr. Widget
This drawing shows two potential top views
for the system. The mid horn will be about 17.5" wide. Based on Don's
requirements for minimal diffraction effects the baffle is extended
beyond the horn either with 45 degree chamfers or large radii curves.
All of these drawings are to be considered as basic schematics. These
are not designs, rather they are "package drawings" showing the
locations or proposed locations of the basic components. Additionally
each woofer will need a 4.5 to 5 cu. ft. enclosure. With this
information I hope that the members of the team will bring forth
creative design solutions toward a final design for a pair of speakers
that are acoustically as near ideal as possible, reasonable to produce,
aesthetically beautiful, and able to be shipped to Winnipeg.
I hope this is enough information to get the Design and Fabrication Team
started and aid the Electro-Acoustic Design team in determining some of
their dimensions for the initial prototype.
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February 18 -
TimG
The following are
simulations of an MTM response for various Project May configurations:
MTM model, 2 15" woofers, 36"
center-to-center spacing, vertical response graph
15" MTM model, 28.25" center-to-center
spacing, vertical response graph
MTM plot, 28.25 inch spacing, 800Hz LR 4th
order low pass xover, summed response on design axis of 39 inches.
Vertical off axis plot of drivers and
crossover mentioned in plot directly above.
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February 18 -
TimG
And here are some TMM
response simulations for various Project May configurations:
15" TMM design, woofer centers 11" and
26.25" below midrange horn, drivers wired in parallel, vertical response
graph.
TMM using 2 15" drivers. This graph shows
the summed response with a 2nd order Butterworth crossover at 150hz with
the polarity on the bottom driver reversed. The top driver has standard
polarity and has a low pass 4th order LR network at 800hz.
Here is the vertical off axis plot for the
drivers and crossover in the above image.
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February 19 -
TimG
The following is the list of equipment that
I am using for the prototype simulations and measurements.
Software
SoundEasy v8.0
http://www.interdomain.net.au/~bodzio/
$225, updates are $25
There is a link to a valuable user guide towards the bottom of the home
page written by John Kreskovsky.
User group at Yahoo
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SoundEasyuserslist/
LspCAD Standard, build 5.25
http://www.ijdata.com/
$129, updates have been free, but the
designer is talking about a major upgrade soon, price unknown. LspCAD
pro has additional features for $495, the most useful being the
crossover emulator. Here is a design walkthrough
http://www.ijdata.com/ugly_duckling.pdf
Both programs are very powerful, but LspCAD still seems to have a faster
learning curve versus SoundEasy. For the features provided, SoundEasy is
competitive with LspCAD Pro, and is currently a better bargain for the
price. Both programs should provide comparable results for the final
crossover.
One of the most important features of any good CAD program is the
optimizer, which allows the program to adjust component values to meet a
specific acoustic response target. This is something you just cannot do
quickly with cookbook formulas and a hand calculator.
UniBox is a very useful box design shareware progam written by Kristian
Ougaard. I highly recommend this free download. Get this for yourself
and save a lot of time answering box tuning questions
http://www.danbbs.dk/~ko/ubmodel.htm
Hardware
Computer:
Home made Windows XP system
with Celeron 1700 and 256MB Ram with an ASUS motherboard.
Sound Cards:
Creative SoundBlaster 5.1, soon to be replaced by
card below.
M-Audio Delta 410, $113-200 on clearance, 4 input, 8 output sound card,
recently discontinued by the manufacturer. I chose this card because it
has been shown to work well with both of my CAD programs. M-Audio still
offers more expensive cards like the Delta 1010LT and Delta 66 with PCI
interface but they are in the $400 price range. The Delta 410 can still
be found at some audio stores and on ebay. Since it is a discontinued
model, the company may stop upgrading the program files.
If you have a powerful laptop, and can afford it, an alternative that
would allow building a completely portable measurement system would be
the Firewire 410 for $400. I would like to try this option but do not
have this kind of discretionary funds.
http://www.m-audio.net/index.php?do...11119907053a313
http://www.m-audio.net/index.php?do...D=pciinterfaces
Preamp:
Bamberg Lab Microphone Pre-amp Probe, $110 fully
assembled and tested. This is a microphone preamp with a power supply
for the Panasonic mic capsules and it includes probes for testing
purposes
http://www.bamberglab.com/BESL_MPP.htm
Microphones:
Panasonic capsule microphone with calibration file
provided by Kim Giardin $32
Capsules similar to these are used in the Liberty instruments Mitey
Mikes.
Contact
[email protected]
http://www.panasonic.com/industrial...m61_a_b_dne.pdf
Uncalibrated capsules can be purchased from
http://www.digikey.com
There are many other sources for preamplifiers and microphones, the best
place to start your search is always JPO's links list
http://members.chello.se/jpo/
Amplifiers:
Adcom GFA-555 and
GFA-2535. Discontinued Adcom models, these were purchased on ebay.
Assorted connection cables, probe wires, and batteries were purchased at
my local Radio Shack.
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February 23 -
TimG
I have the cabinets set up with detachable
front baffles but none of the new equipment I ordered has arrived yet.
The Delta 410 is now back ordered until 3/8. The test jig and a test
jig/mic preamp, were shipped on Friday and should arrive this week.
I posted a model of a 3-way crossover using the S9800 components.
Someone mentioned that we could have system sensitivity as high as
99dB/1Watt/1M, but it is clear that this isn't going to happen. The
system sensitivity is determined by the lowest sensitivity driver, in
this case it appears to be the 045Be supertweeter.
All I can do right now are some amplitude measures but I'm concerned
about the weight of the woofers after talking to Steve. He said the
1500AL's weigh close to 40lbs each, so I think I may need to laminate
another 3/4" sheet onto my front baffles to support all the weight. I
certainly don't want one of Don's woofers to tear itself out of the
cabinet and bend the frame, or worse. Is there a trick to mounting
woofers without marring the frame with screw marks? I'm using 2 1/2
screws and t-nuts.
I need to clear the memory card on my digital camera and start taking
some pictures as well so we can have documentation at every stage. I'm
really impressed with the Kreg pocket hole jig. Using the screws and
glue in one step, rather than biscuits and clamps to glue every joint is
saving me immense amounts of time as I can glue multiple joint at one
time now rather than only 2 panels at a time.
I will try to build a baffle to put between the 2 bass cabinets today or
tomorrow so that I can try out various horns in the gap between them. I
will make it big enough to accommodate my 2380 horn, 11" x 18", so that
I can try out some 2" compression drivers as well as my 1" drivers. It
looks like I'm going to have amplitude measurements before I get the TS
measurements on these drivers. I really want to wait until my jig
arrives before starting on TS measures. I'll try to post some pics and
measurements as soon as possible to stir up some discussion.
The woofers are going to arrive Tuesday morning at my office so things
are going to start happening fast now. I sent a request for funds to buy
MDF last week, to an address Ian sent me, and haven't received an
acknowledgement of my request. Do you know anything about how the fund
drive is going or should I contact Mike Baker? The cabinets I have will
work for testing a mono speaker MTM but not so well for the TMM array.
Since my wife is still unemployed I can't afford to spend another $100
on MDF.
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February 26 -
Mr. Widget
The mid horn prototype is being manufactured
using a CNC machine. The one we have is a 3 axis servo controlled
router. What this means is that when we program it, we can control x, y,
and z simultaneously. The result is we can sculpt any shape as long as
there aren't any under cuts. (The motor and cutter only goes straight up
and down. It won't twist or cut from under the part.) The tools (mill
bits) we use come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but the most
commonly used ones are either flat bottomed (Flat End Mill) or rounded
(Ball End Mill). We use the flat ones to cut out a shape or to create a
flat surface and we use the ball end mills to machine a curved surface.
Here is a front view of the horn. The red line indicates where we will
have to make the horn in two halves and glue them together. In the 2397
horns we cut the top and bottom as separate parts and put them together
with the side walls. Since there are curved surfaces that blend the horn
top and bottom surface with the sides (not shown in this early model) we
will most likely want to machine those surfaces with the sides at one
time.
This is a top view of one half. The blue
area is the part that we can make in any shape desirable for ease of
manufacture and assembly as well as blending into the baffle. Note the
right side is different from the left showing one possible solution.
Here is a wire frame of the lower half of
the horn. The green line shows where the surface blend between the face
and side walls will be.
A side view.
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