MC, before you put the xovers into the cabinet, could you post a couple of pictures of the modified xovers on your system page? Looks to be a fun project.
Millercarbon's Mega Moab Mod Meander
One of the all time great automotive engineers, Norbert Singer, was a key player in every one of the 16 Porsche LeMans victories from 1970 to 1998. His dominance was such that at one point Porsche had won LeMans more than all other marques combined. This was all accomplished by building on the already solid foundation of Porsche production models. The air cooled flat 12 in the 917 was really two flat sixes combined to make 12. This car so dominated motorsport the rules had to be changed to stop it!
So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.
I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!
The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.
My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.
This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.
Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.
So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.
That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!
The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.
I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!
The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.
My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.
This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.
Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.
So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.
That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!
The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
- ...
- 185 posts total
millercarbon I had a flexible car that I autocrossed at Porsche meets in Tennessee. The track was a highly banked oval with cones down the straights, and a big drop off into the center X section that made it a figure eight. My Supercharged MR2 actually wore the paint off of the door sills, because the body flexed so much that the door rubbed on it. This was the bane of the SC MR2, because they only came with T-tops. BTW, I did have a fast time of the day in my Turbo MR2. My boy had a 90 advertised hp Subaru GL with the huge Buick Riviera type rear hatch window. It beat a third of the Porsches. That was fun. |
Upgrading the passive crossover components is an excellent idea. It’s always resulted in substantive gains in my experience. But the ultimate upgrade would be an active crossover. That presents a whole new level of complication and expense (like the need for a channel of amplification for each transducer section of each speaker) but results in significant improvement in sound vs passive in my experience. I’ve only played with this on two-way speakers, but I’m sure it will show even more of a difference in 3+ crossover section speakers. What I built for my experiment is a DIY system designed by Nelson Pass. https://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_diy%20biamp_6-24_%20crossover.pdf https://diyaudiostore.com/products/diy-biamp-6-24-crossoverYou can add additional crossover points by using multiple boards and interconnecting them. That’s going to be my next experiment. Now, if I am ever brave enough to attempt this on my Ulfs remains to be seen. Not because I would be afraid to do it... I would be afraid my wife would divorce me if I touched those speakers! Great work Millercarbon. Kudos to you for taking this leap. |
danvignau, One of my best students, Mark Dennie, had a 79 Targa that was his daily and track car. It remained his daily for more than a decade of autocross and track. I hope to move to TN one day. No worries tespilot, there would already be photo's if this site made it easy to put em up when posting. I have one of the parts laid out all nice and new, and will take another before installing, when they are all wrapped in goo. The only thing about doing it this way, honestly don't know which will be the greater effect, the caps, resistors and inductors or the Quantum of Solace Krissy TDF? Either way it is hard to imagine anything but awesomeness coming out of the Mighty Moabs after this! I look forward to standing corrected, rushfan71, because if you are right astonished it will be. Awesome is overrated and overused anyway. ;) pet60, thanks for reading. That was back when I was putting even more energy into Porsche and being a skilled driver than goes today into audio and being a skilled listener. Both are perishable commodities, something my 911 lets me know real quick every time we go out after too long apart. |
bullitt5094, Ulf would be a much bigger project. Mine with the new parts will barely fit back in. Pretty sure a little cutting will be called for. My bet would be Eric follows the same pattern and you will find yours behind whichever driver is across from the terminals on the back. I have never seriously considered active because every time it runs into the stone wall of reality. Active means more amps, more power cords, more interconnects, more speaker cables. Every single one of these incredibly important they be done right. It just seems way too easy to give up more than you gain, and that is even before considering money. The parts for this will be almost $2k. The improvement should be staggering. But $2k will not be enough to cover even one good amp if I went active. A good thought experiment. But there is a reason we almost never see anyone doing this at a high level. So don't let imaginary perfection hold you back from making real progress. Even just replacing the resistors in there would no doubt be a big improvement. They are relatively inexpensive too- and might actually fit! ;) |
- 185 posts total