Lindsayt wrote: ↑Sat Sep 04, 2021 12:40 am
SteveS57 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:55 am
Hi lindsay, nice to see you starting this project, I know you don't live too far from me, if you want to visit me.
your more than welcome.
Or anything you want to ask just say
Cheers
It's a very slow burning project. One that I started over a year ago. And may well take a year or two or three before I get something that I will play music through.
Do you know of any woofers that will extend down to 40hz before hitting the -3db figure in a sealed box / semi infinite baffle and that would be 96 or more dbs efficient?
Also, looking ahead to the crossovers. Any recommendations on capacitors, inductors, resistors to use? Something that will sound decent but isn't stupid money.
...And yes Docfoster, when I've listened to music in rooms I've been decorating it has sounded very echoey. Sticking all the furniture and clutter back in makes a significant sonic difference.
Indeed. Although I think the points I wanted to make, and which I was insufficiently clear about, were more general than that: That each listening environment probably has its own EQ and sonic signature (reverb, etc.,...) and; that home demoing / tweaking / DIY is the route most likely to arrive at kit that will suit one's tastes.
As an aside, my system did sound echoey, but it was worse than that. It was all midrange! (Possibly because those were the frequencies that echoed most.)
On the subject of capacitors I usually use Monacor (they make great drivers too) or Mundorf. I tend to source them from
https://willys-hifi.com/ , simply because I find that online shop convenient, efficient and friendly. There may be cheaper alternatives.
I'm not sure about a driver that meets your requirements. When building my current bass cabinet my initial ambition was for a sealed cab, but I could not find a dual voice coil driver that could get down low enough in a sealed cabinet (like you, I wanted to achieve 40Hz, but for me, having a single DVC bass driver was
more non-negotiable than having a sealed cabinet.) It may be that there's more chance of sourcing a driver that meets your frequency requirements in a sealed box if you're looking at more usual single coil drivers.
Finally, I agree that introducing any design feature (e.g. a port) does introduce the possibility of that feature being done badly. I have heard many ported speakers that sound terrible, probably because of a badly / lazily / cheaply designed port (some seem to be simply a drilled hole). But in larger cabinets with large bass drivers in which the port is not being asked to do all the heavy lifting, I'm unsure that ports are necessary bad.
I am a lover of sealed cabinets (NVA cube 1, Goodmans Goodwood and Magister, various old JPWs and my own sealed designs) but I am pretty pleased with the sound of my current DIY main speakers and the bass cabinet (all have rear-firing ports (that I like to think I took a lot of time to get right...I am in no way a physics expert but there are lots of free online tools that can help with designing a port that meets the symbiotic requirements of driver and cabinet.))
If one can avoid a port, then all things being equal, it's best to. Why introduce a design feature that one doesn't need? So, if you can find a driver that meets your requirements in a sealed box then you should definitely go for it. But, if you can't, then I'd be confident that with the size of driver and cabinet you are implying, a well designed port would be a perfectly acceptable contribution to achieving the bass you want.
System 1: JRiver MC24 > Dell Latitude 7270 > Asus Xonar Essence One Muses Edition DAC & pre- > One4 Class A power amp (with Dynamic PSU boards) > DIY Monacor SP-310CX speakers & DIY Dayton Audio SD315A-88 bass cab.
LC Audio Technology mains DC filter > Sovereign MTBPS balanced power supply
TQ (Wonfor) Ultra Black cables.
System 2: Anything with a headphone socket > Inca Tech Claymore > DIY Monacor SP-308CX speakers