e-Lips

[tmazz]

Sand is 1600kg/m^3, Quicrete is 2050kg/m^3. So I'll probably use that.  

I hope you plan to mix the Quicrete and pour it into the base, because powdered Quicrete will find a way to leak out of the base and get all over everything, thereby incurring the wrath of the other half.  

And as someone who dam near killed himself moving a pair of Thiel CS-6s into the basement, I can attest first hand to the density of pored cement.  

[richidoo]

If I want to keep it dry I'll just use sand. But I'll caulk the inside joints prior to doing either.

Did the Thiels have concrete in them?

I just finished building one of the base boxes, it is extremely light weight wood. The concrete pavers I was going to use (wife's idea after I already cut the wood parts) are a smidge too tall to fit two stacked.  I extended the base so less weight will be needed to stabilize the rocking motion. It's also bigger, to hold more weight if needed.

The baffles are laminated together, and I have one more base box to build, then make the rear brace. I laid down the baffle between two chairs and set the drivers in. It looks really good.  Tom, make sure the obstetrician is on call. 

[tmazz]

Tom, make sure the obstetrician is on call. 

Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard. 

[tmazz]

Did the Thiels have concrete in them?

The CS6 drivers are mounted on a 2-inch thick steel reinforced concrete acoustic baffle. The Baffle weighs 66 pounds (the completed speakers weigh in at 175 each) and is manufactured by injection molding a mixture of concrete and fiberglass. Steel reinforcement provides the required tensile strength, so that the baffle will not be damaged during shipping.


http://www.thielaudio.com/THIEL_Site05/PDF_files/PDF_reviews/CS6R_pdf/6R_stereoplay.pdf

[richidoo]

Today the baffles got their driver mounting holes drilled, spike holes drilled in bases, and baffles attached to base. With any luck I can make some noise later tonight.   I mean musical noise, not sander noise...   Still need rear braces and paint, but I can't wait anymore for a sample of the sound.


Coming together...


Feastrex D5nf Driver

[tmazz]

Today the baffles got their driver mounting holes drilled, spike holes drilled in bases, and baffles attached to base. With any luck I can make some noise later tonight.   I mean musical noise, not sander noise...   Still need rear braces and paint, but I can't wait anymore for a sample of the sound.

Wow, Those bases are a lot deeper than I had pictured them in my mind. But I guess they have to be in order to stabilize a baffle of that height. The picture just caught me a little off guard. What kind of finish are you planning on using?

I hope you don't read this until morning because you are now lost in the beuatiful sounds of your new creation.  



Edit: Hey I just noticed, this is my millennium post!

[richidoo]

Congrats Tom! You hit one 1 kilopost

False alarm - I did not get them playing today. I watch DWTS with my daughter instead.

I extended the bases bigger than the drawing so I can make sure I have enough stability to evaluate the low frequency transient performance. I also made it flat top instead of slanted, to make more volume to hold more concrete. It is not as pretty as the original design, but that will be steel, and much heavier and stiffer.

I have been thinking a lot about finish. I'm not quite sure what I will do yet, but I have to decide quickly. The initial listening will help me decide.  

[Scott F.]

Hi Rich,

Your build looks really cool 

I'm really curious your impressions on OB bass (depth and quality). I've held off on doing it myself. I've heard it done fairly well and not-so-well.

[richidoo]

Hi Scott,  I'll write about the sound as I work through the setup and tuning.  My expectations revolve around everyone that I have spoken to who has heard the Granada's bass has praised it, sometimes profusely. These are the same drivers, so it should be in the same universe, once EQ and correction are applied. I'm more concerned whether the Feastrex can keep up with the bass in volume and clarity while playing big symphony passages and stuff like that.

I will have the speakers playing today, but I also will attend my oldest son's baseball game tonight. He is just starting to play catcher and he loves it.
Rich

[Barry (NJ)]

Looks fantastic Rich!

I'll have to have Mike fill me in on their sound after your gathering.

[richidoo]

Thanks BarrY!!

I got all the drivers hooked up. I played music from the feastrex earlier today, sounds nice but wimpy in the OB. Tonight I got the bass drivers connected series / parallel to net 8ohms at the amp. They have two 8ohm coils on each driver. then I ran an impedance sweep to make sure. 8ohms under 300Hz, plus a resonance hump, but everything is as expected.

For kicks I played a few tracks woofers only, since the manufacturer claims they can play up very high, and are frequently crossed over to ribbon tweeters without a midrange. Sure enough, they play really high, it's very easy to listen to the song, and ignore the lack of high freqs. But the upper mids are a little weird spatially, as expected from the beaming and large paper cones aren't exactly pistonic at high freqs, but the drivers do make those freqs, no doubt, thanks to the extremely low inductance of the motors.  The huge overlap between the mid and bass will allow experimenting with shallower crossover slopes, maybe even 2nd order passive crossover sometime.

Sol's i60 had plenty of power to play loud without bass boost.  The bass does play low, I could hear some very low warble tones from stereophile test disk, and BISL's Bromberg CD sounded good - with NO correction or EQ. Another design characteristic of these drivers is the high Qts, allowing low frequency efficiency without boost. But the bass will need some boosting with EQ to get the bottom really slammin and flat to 30Hz. We'll see how the i60 does then, but I am confident. At CES these woofers played strong (with correction) on Pass XA30.5.

Tomorrow I'll get them playing together with the foobar digital crossover. I'm certainly looking forward to that with great anticipation!!!!   Still much left to do. Rear brace, base weight, spikes, paint, crossover, placement.   

[Rob S.]

Wow!   

[Barry (NJ)]

Wow!   

Took the word right out of my mouth!!!

[tmazz]

Loooking Gooood! 

Let the music begin! 

[richidoo]

They live! I struggled for 30 minutes this morning trying to make the Feastrex driver make sound. It is using the SPDIF output on my soundcard, for the first time since I owned it. Of course I thought it was defect. Turns out the amp wasn't plugged in. 

Kids have commandeered them 1st night. Baby Baby Baby!!

The bass is infinite speed, violent transients, plenty of slam. Seems to be hardly using any power. Volume setting for dance level loudness is less than normal listening level for the ushers, using same amp. 

The crossover sounds great, no hint of phase or volume issues at the crossover. The overall cleanness and low distortion is very seductive. The music is totally see through, but it is also solid and bass especially is very penetrating.

But the foobar chokes once in a while sounding like a stuttering CDP. the foobar process peaks at 4% CPU using 10MB, even with max 16 second buffer and running crossover and EQ plugins.  I am running it off my laptop via firewire, with virus protect and everything running. There are occasional dropouts, because it's not configured for audio. Just a rough setup for now. 

The bass drivers are definitely outplaying the Feastrex driver now for a couple reasons. First is the midrange acoustic echo that screws up every high performance speaker in this room. The small diy single driver speakers never push the room to the point of it fighting back, but these OBs do. Hopefully the acoustic treatments will cure that. EQ will help to smooth out the driver. But right now, it has some wizzer zing, which eq helps a lot, but it needs tweaking time.  Actually I keep forgetting I'm listening to Justin Bieber so the zing is there on purpose. It will soon be bedtime when the monsters come out to play.

The bass in my room is always pretty good, no matter what speaker. But the Quads were definitely less room mode problems than the Ushers, maybe for same reason as the mids, less modal excitement, but in any case, the bass sounds excellent now.

I played a few CDs today, the audiophile quality recordings sound incredible. The biggest impression I have is the incredible dynamics. Psycho effects on pop records really get your head spinning. Everything is more intense than I have ever heard, intense like MBL radialstrahler. Hopefully it can be dialed back a little, I'm not sure I can take this all the time. Audio Crack!  I'm still using the current source chip amp on the Feastrex, once I get things settled I'll put the 300Bs in, I think that will have a nice effect

The i60 is more than enough power for the bass. It really slams, and the detail is unbelievable. BISLs Brian Bromberg CD "Wood" was incredible, I think that was a the second CD I played after NYP Grieg's Peer Gynt Suites which happen to be on top of the pile. The old recordings sound fine, but they don't have the dynamics to take full advantage of the speakers. I guess that means they are audiophile speakers. The tail wags the dog. Music picked for max adrenaline squeeze. haha   That's OK, I can use some of that for a while. But being totally controlled by PC, it can be adjusted with compression to chill out or kill it.    I will endeavor to chill it just a bit for rock and jazz and my 24/7 Pandora feeds, but the extreme dynamic mode will be awesome on symphonies.

Today I drew the template for the rear brace. Tomorrow I will cut the parts and hopefully glue them on which will finish the construction.  But even playing loud dance music, there is very little vibration on the baffle. If I flick it like a spring from the top, it will oscillate 2" pp at 3Hz.  With steel and wood composite baffle there would be no need for rear brace.  Actually I think there is no need for weight in the base either. They just don't vibrate. Maybe because it's OB? Doesn't make sense, but it's good.

So far, even with this basic setup, and no fine tuning of the EQ or crossover they are better insome ways than any other speakers I have had before. I can recommend the AE Dipole series of drivers without reservation. There is a lot more refinement to be found in the mids and treble. Hopefully the Feastrex can travel the whole distance with me and keep up with the AEs. Time will tell. It's easy to back off, but it's impossible to add dynamics and detail.

My wife told me a few times today how great they sound. The clarity and dynamics are obviously better than what we're used to. I don't think she ever volunteered to say that unsolicited about speakers before. Although I know she loved the Legacys.
Rich