I'm not familiar with the Triangles, so I am only commenting on what could be happening. Unless you listen at volume levels that can cause amp clipping, you should not be saturating cores... First, do you know that the cores are iron for sure or another material? The Madisound rep was incorrect. When a core saturates, the inductance changes, thus the frequency of the driver that it is in series with will also change, the top end can fade away. This will most likely be a mid or woofer, a tweeter would not use a inductor in series. Overall, most good cored inductors are rated to handle 300 plus watts before saturating. Even though possible, it is not likely that is the issue. As far as some sort of switch.... I have use a type of thermistor as well as low voltage bulbs that will bleed off excessive current during amplifier clipping. I've not seen anyone else do this. It isn't rocket science, I've just not seen it used out there, they do hurt the sound quality of the driver that they are on. I had to stop a kid from blowing stuff up. As far as your own build. I would recommend some pro parts or at least something with some high sensitivity so that you won't necessarily drive your amp so hard. Good luck. I hope this helps in some way. Tim
Build or buy, speaker options
I have a pair of Triangle Volante 260 speakers which I love dearly most of the time. The times that don’t love them dearly are the Fridays when I get home from work and want to shed the stress of the week with a little high energy wall of sound type tunes. As mentioned before in this forum, the midrange and high end quickly fade out after a short while at high volume, then fade back in when I turn the volume down. Georgehifi posited that it could be iron core inductors in the crossovers getting saturated, and that sounded feasible. But, in an email conversation with Madisound, their tech indicated that he’d never experienced such a behavior, and that saturated inductors were more likely to exhibit distortion. The tech ask for some photos of the crossover, but I wasn’t able to get a clear shot of one of them, and trying to remove one from the cabinet proved much more involved than I thought it would. No good photos, but I did see iron core inductors, for sure. The Madisound tech thought “Maybe they are using poly switches that close when the power is too high, putting the speakers through a resistor”. This is something I’ve never heard of, so I’m totally unfamiliar with poly switches or what they might look like. It’s looking like I may not be able to solve this problem.
The options I’m considering are selling the Triangles, and purchasing used market speakers, or building my dream speakers.
If purchasing used, the qualities I like in a speaker are: detail, frequency balanced but leaning slightly toward warmth, tight punchy bass with authority, and higher frequencies that are truthful and never screeching. They would also need to handle a fair amount of SPL without strain. Amplifiers are Parasound JC 1’s.
If making my own, I’d be shooting for the same qualities. With that in mind, I’m considering a sealed cabinet design for two 8” woofers. Separate cabinets for midrange and tweeters, also sealed. I think I’ve decided on the drivers for the bass cabinets, the Morel CAW938 9" Woofer, which is an excellent driver for sealed design. The midrange, I’m considering either one or two drivers per cabinet, the reason for two would be power handling, although I’m also thinking that this may be overkill, and that one driver per, with good power handling may be the ticket. Manufacturers I’m considering for midrange are Morel, Seas, and ScanSpeak. Tweeters are yet another big question, but the more I research the topic, the more I lean toward soft domes, same manufacturers as the midrange.
Crossovers are yet another War and Peace length set of considerations, but I am thinking about active crossover between the bass cabinets and the mid/tweeter cabinets, a passive crossover between the mids/tweeters. Amps for the bass cabinets would be newly acquired D class, possibly in the 500 wpc range. I’d use the JC’s for the mid/tweeters cabinets.
I’d be interested in any advice, comments, experiences of others, as long as they aren’t overtly rude. Budget for either purchased or built would be in the $4000-$6000 range.
And, I’ve been following with interest a thread on this forum regarding the merits/drawbacks of sealed and ported systems. Some interesting observations and opinions.
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Thanks for the input, Tim. I’m not certain that the inductor cores are iron, that was my assumption as I’m not familiar with other core material possibilities. They are for sure, cored inductors. Possibly laminated steel? As for clipping, the amps are not getting to that point, at least audibly. There’s really no hint of distortion at the volume level at which this phenomenon occurs. I know clipping when I hear it, as I was once a teenager with a series of cheap receivers. I don’t think it’s the amps, and the phenomenon is affecting the midrange. If it is the inductors saturating, how would I go about finding the offending inductors values if I wanted to replace them with air cores? Will air cores be less prone to saturation? If I can modify the crossovers to solve this problem, it would by far be the most cost effective option. Much thanks, Dave |
If you are at all considering DIY, I'd highly recommend watching the series of Youtube videos that Danny Ritchie from GR Research has put together. Tons of great information on what makes a good speaker and a lot of useful practical information about building them. I'd start with the Tuesday Tech Talks, but the other videos are also very useful. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv9fK2dmpIVbmaTh4yUJzMqNM3ttUoAJg |
Thats so strange, that issue you are having... based on the look of those triangles I would expect them to rock out. I would contact triangle and ask them... As for Diy, Morel, Scan Speak, and Seas are all awesome. I’ve recently become a big fan of the paper Scan Speak Revelators. They have awesome tone and you can crank the s..t out of them with no fatigue on either the drivers or your ears. They really invite you to turn it up |
Lots of things can be DIY, but only a very few DIY can be done as cost-effectively as buying. Equipment racks and stands, because the best ones are massive you have an edge in cost over shipping. Acoustic panels, the raw materials are so dirt cheap you have an edge in being able to experiment in your own room with your own ears. That’s about it. Everything else is so much more technical than you ever imagined, and the professionals making the stuff so light years far beyond your understanding let alone abilities, its not even close. That’s not to say there’s not a lot of room for tweaks and mods. But tweaks and mods are totally different than DIY. Beware DIYers with designs telling you how easy it is to do better than professionals. Ask them this simple question: if your DIY (fill in the blank) really is as good or better than (fill in the blank) and for less money, then why aren’t you selling it to make a profit? The answer is they don’t. Because they can’t. Because it isn’t. |
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