Looking to upgrade to horns

[J!m]

I vote 8 as well.

Particularly with horns, nominal power is low, but transients (like cymbal crash) need plenty in reserve. Ten watts into horns is a lot but you may need as much as 100 watts to cover transients without clipping.

Are you planning to horn load the 18’s? The throat will be the size of a garage... Which I fully endorse.

 

[roccus]

I vote 8 as well.

Particularly with horns, nominal power is low, but transients (like cymbal crash) need plenty in reserve. Ten watts into horns is a lot but you may need as much as 100 watts to cover transients without clipping.

Are you planning to horn load the 18’s? The throat will be the size of a garage... Which I fully endorse.

I am powering the HF horns with 35W per ch.... the mids with my WOPL 400 and the subs with a crown cl1 225W per ch for now. I will be pulling the WOPL out of the system and put a carver pm 600 in it's palce it is 200W per ch and will add another crown cl1 and run them both in mono for the subs I still need to get another one of those....

No horn for the subs, you can see the frames I built that I will enclose for the 18" speakers... I did mock ups to decide square vs round ports


I picked this up a few weeks ago for $25, they said only one channel worked on it... as I suspected they did not know anything and the amp was set to run mono, a switch of the switch and wala both channels work great... have it connected to my little bose 301's and it is a pretty sweet sounding amp...

 

[62vauxhall]

Before scrolling down the picture, I though $25 was for that roll of paper towels. Ersatz toilet paper.

 

[J!m]

Cool.

I have a program for designing horns based on input data on the desired speaker. I helped a friend make a folded horn loaded 15 for his bass rig... That was a collection of some crazy compound angles being cut.

 

[roccus]

Cool.

I have a program for designing horns based on input data on the desired speaker. I helped a friend make a folded horn loaded 15 for his bass rig... That was a collection of some crazy compound angles being cut.

I like the looks of the square ports better but I am not set up very well for wood work, I am a metal auto body fabricator/welder so all I have for wood working is a cheap table saw, a skill saw, and a hand jig saw. So I want to keep it simple and just inclose the frames I have. I have about 7.644 CF but I need to subtrack fooor bracing I will be putting in there.... not sure on insulation, some say pack it and it does not factor in CF but then I have also read it does. I have not selected the woofers I will use yet.

 

[J!m]

If you haven’t picked woofers, you might find some that will work with your current volume.

Or, add lengths of pvc pipe with caps on the end. That will increase internal volume though they might resonate...

 

[AngrySailor]

So it is getting time to get back out in the shop, one of my bucket list things to do this summer is build the subs. I built the frames I will use for the subs so will use 3/4 MDF to enclose the frames. I want to use 18" speakers. I decided to go with simple round port vs square ones. I have not picket ut the speakers yet I was going back and forth trying to decide 8 ohm vs 4 ohm. 4 ohm you get all the hp out of the amp and hp is good but from what I have read @ 4 ohm you give away all your head room, @ 8 ohm the amp has head room... so the question is, full throttle with lots of hp vs 1/2 throttle but with a bunch of reserve power. I'm thinking you would get a full smoother sound with 1/2 throttle @8 ohm. NO?

If you hold
Off on the speakers for a a little longer I’ll have mine built and let you know what I think

 

[AngrySailor]

Stuffing a ported enclosure is or more so lining its walls with damping material is used to remove frequency spikes from standing waves. Stuffing a sealed box lowers its resonance by increasing the effective volume. You probably won’t need any camping materials depending how high you want to run the speaker frequency wise. If it’s only running to say 100hz, there’s not a lot of chance for standing waves and there’s not many octaves/multiples of frequencies being played by the speaker.

Why are you going to surround that frame? Seems to me it might be potential for vibrations? I would just glue and screw. All I’m using for tools is a straight edge and skil saw for the panels, hole saw for the ports and maybe get fancy with a router for the speaker boards.

 

[roccus]

Well got all my projects caught up was supposed to get a 55 nomad to do but the virus put the owner out of work so it will not happen this summer. I did a face lift on the cabinet it looks way better than it did. I am going to start doing up my subs withing the next week or so... Decided to make things easy on myself and just go with the round port I think 5" will work out good, think I will go with the 18" Rockville drivers, I like the price of them.

 

[roccus]

So working on sub design.... think I narrowed it down to 2 choices, round port or square port, what you guys thing?

 

[VSAT88]

Like the square here. Matches with the top end speakers.

 

[roccus]

Like the square here. Matches with the top end speakers.

Kind of what I was thinking as well... I was going with round hole for woofer and build custom grills. I plan on painting the front baffle with the gun metal grey and put the 3/4 angle aluminum trim around the edges to match the mid cabs to make them look a bit like they go with the altec mids. Then I thought maybe if I make the baffle overlap the edges of the woofer a bit like the altecs that would make them look to be a better match so I did that mock up which I liked but not sure the round port was best to go for appearance, then got to thinking, why not move the woofer to center of cab and put ports on each side so I did that mock up as well.....

 

[roccus]

Before scrolling down the picture, I though $25 was for that roll of paper towels. Ersatz toilet paper.

Just went to store and picked up a 6 pack of PT's yesterday..... $8.89 for the cheapest pack, big name brand over $11

 

[VSAT88]

That gun metal gray is kicking brother. Really like the finish.

 

[roccus]

This is why I am a bit reluctant to go with square...... I think what I would be building here would be called a square port where I will use the interior side of the cab for one wall of the port then make a 3 sided piece the length and depth of the port, I think a slotted port is where you build a 4 sided box and stick in the cab not using any of the cab interior walls as part of the port.... after watching this my head is spinnng

 

[roccus]

Anyone know if a port is ok to face down, that would be down firing, or to the back of the cab back? Why does it have to face the front where it is said you can place a sub anywhere in a room?

 

[VSAT88]

Hell why not try it there and let us know what happens ? It could also be made adjustable if you wanted it to be that way. I personally see no reason it has to point front or back. Restriction from the floor below might be a problem but I suppose you would have that covered already in your design using casters, stands or spikes of some sort. Check this out..

https://forums.audioholics.com/foru...fferent situation and can have less clearance.

 

[Wheel-right]

Not a port speaker person but the few small ones I use in my shop and bedroom were front firing until I got a set of little Panasonics that were back ported and they sounded so much better without the hollow sound I don't like about ported speakers that I ended up moving the ports to the back on a set of Polk R15s, and two sets of Tannoys, plugged the front holes and was much happier with them. Many Sub woofers down fire but I don't use them so I have no idea how it works.

 

[roccus]

Hell why not try it there and let us know what happens ? It could also be made adjustable if you wanted it to be that way. I personally see no reason it has to point front or back. Restriction from the floor below might be a problem but I suppose you would have that covered already in your design using casters, stands or spikes of some sort. Check this out..

https://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/down-firing-port-clearance.53328/#:~:text=If a port is downfiring, it is a,bit different situation and can have less clearance.

The height could be an issue for me.... they say the distance from the port to the floor should be equal to the diameter of the port. have 6" ports and with the casters under the cabs I have 3 1/2" clearance so that will make me 2 1/2" shy of what they say I should have. There is no way I want to go any higher with these cabs. To me the HF horns and Mid cabs are perfect height for listening while sitting. As it it I will be adding 1 1/2" to the height to them when I put the 3/4" MDF siding on..... something else to think about

 

[roccus]

Not a port speaker person but the few small ones I use in my shop and bedroom were front firing until I got a set of little Panasonics that were back ported and they sounded so much better without the hollow sound I don't like about ported speakers that I ended up moving the ports to the back on a set of Polk R15s, and two sets of Tannoys, plugged the front holes and was much happier with them. Many Sub woofers down fire but I don't use them so I have no idea how it works.

I may end up doing rear facing... I guess as long as I am 6" away from the wall would work. But the thing about that is most I read the port should be as close as possible to the woofer... a port at the back makes it almost the furthest away from the woofer. So ..... wish I had a speaker designer in the family!!! lol