Interesting post Sean.
I made a pair of Voigt pipes and
I was using them with a pair of Fostex Sigma 208s. The sound was fast, but a tad lean. I later found out that the Voigt cabinets themselves, because of their narrow fronts, tend to eliminate some lower frequency extension of any fullrange driver used. This was something I found out while writing back and forth with TWL, another member who has a Voigt pipe with Lowther EX-3 or 4 drivers. He found a way of remediating this.
Before you go to his thread, I think I understand why the speaker and its narrow front baffle eliminated some lower frequency. If you think of the fullrange driver as the beginning of a ripple, in order for it to expand exponentially, you will need a large area. Think the image of a pond. Nevertheless, because the Voigt pipes are narrow, as the sound waves propagate, their ripples tend to become cut off, expecially towards the sides of the cabinet, I think this is what causes the loss of lower frequencies.
Tom Lyons, AKA:TWL, came out with an ingenious solution. He added "wings" to the sides of his cabinets, if the front was 12", he added 12" wings to each side, that are hinged with some piano hinges. They can be in a plane with the front baffle or angled backwards, depending of the effect that was needed. For what it seems to be, his system must sound glorious.
I myself, cannibalized the Voigt pipes and have placed the Fostex in a folded horn cabinet, a Zhorn that Tom Zuworsky made for me...because I wanted some lows. On top of that, I added a powered subwoofer for even a more pronounced lower end.
I am happy with the sound I get now.
The Voigt pipes, with the winged mods should not be hard to make. It took me about a day to get the pieces cut. You need some room to manouver the sides and the front...if you have the space and one helper, I think you can make them for about $450, with ply and drivers included. They do sound dynamic, better than a 3.5 K commercial pair of speakers that I still have around.
PS: With the winged mods, I am sure that the Voigts will sound explosive by themselves.
Before you go to his thread, I think I understand why the speaker and its narrow front baffle eliminated some lower frequency. If you think of the fullrange driver as the beginning of a ripple, in order for it to expand exponentially, you will need a large area. Think the image of a pond. Nevertheless, because the Voigt pipes are narrow, as the sound waves propagate, their ripples tend to become cut off, expecially towards the sides of the cabinet, I think this is what causes the loss of lower frequencies.
Tom Lyons, AKA:TWL, came out with an ingenious solution. He added "wings" to the sides of his cabinets, if the front was 12", he added 12" wings to each side, that are hinged with some piano hinges. They can be in a plane with the front baffle or angled backwards, depending of the effect that was needed. For what it seems to be, his system must sound glorious.
I myself, cannibalized the Voigt pipes and have placed the Fostex in a folded horn cabinet, a Zhorn that Tom Zuworsky made for me...because I wanted some lows. On top of that, I added a powered subwoofer for even a more pronounced lower end.
I am happy with the sound I get now.
The Voigt pipes, with the winged mods should not be hard to make. It took me about a day to get the pieces cut. You need some room to manouver the sides and the front...if you have the space and one helper, I think you can make them for about $450, with ply and drivers included. They do sound dynamic, better than a 3.5 K commercial pair of speakers that I still have around.
PS: With the winged mods, I am sure that the Voigts will sound explosive by themselves.
- ...
- 13 posts total
Viggen: Pretty interesting stuff. For those that want to check it out and are lazy, here ya go : ) http://tweakstore.com/index.html Cdc: Did i "do good" on this one? I actually presented usable information with a technical explanation while praising multiple manufacturers. I did all of this without clobbering any other manufacturers or products in specific. Sean > |
Hey Sean, I thought that was great! I've read pieces of what you explained here and there over the years but you tied a lot of info together nicely, and I appreciated how you pointed out parallel (or almost) effects of some differing methods. Maybe old hat for some, but for this enthusiastic tweaker/non-engineer it hit the spot. |
Sean, was that your website or someone else's? It was very nicely done. What I would like to see are some specific diagrams for easy making of the main speaker enclosure. I have been also attracted to the Jordan drivers, mainly because of the cost, but their sensitivity is mediocre and might need more than some SET amp can provide, beyond horn territory. Nevertheless, I am interested to see what the enclosure construction entails. PAUL |
Shirasagi: I do what i can and am glad that this helped your understanding a bit. As i've mentioned before, if you really want to learn, you've got to do it yourself. I'd be glad to recommend some books if you're really interested. Personal experimentation with stuff like this also helps : ) Bemopti: I had nothing to do with that website. I know just enough about computers to annoy the hell out of you folks, let alone try to figure out how to put up a website like that. I simply reposted the same link that Viggen had provided, but did so in "clickable" form. I agree that it was a nice site / good "find" on Viggen's part and wanted to encourage others to visit it to see what we were talking about here. Viggen's "legwork" provided some great visualization aids to this thread. With that in mind, this specific set looks beautiful. Don't know how well they work, but they look nice : ) Why not try emailing the guy that has the website? With all of the work that he's put into this project, i'm sure that he'd like to hear from someone that finds it interesting. One thing that i would add is that you can use lightweight materials to form the wings ( easier to bend / conform to shape ) and then damp / brace them as needed. Starting off with something thin and easy to work with and then applying layers of other materials once you've achieved the shapes that you want would probably provide the easiest and least resonant path possible. Believe it or not, "paneling" can be great for something like this. It is both cheap and easily bent. On top of that, if you can get the type with staggered width vertical lines cut into it, this can help break up standing waves along the surface of the baffle / wing. This can smooth the response even further. Sean > PS... The longer that you make the "wings", the more effective they are at lower frequencies. Shorter "wings" work best at higher frequencies and would be best suited for upper midrange and tweeter arrays. |
- 13 posts total