You Cant Buy It but you Can Build It


One of the things, well the primary audio thing that fascinates and pleases me to no end is superlative hand built systems. Not from boutique vendors but from audiophiles who want something they can't find on a shelf or buy.

  I am a minimalist and figure the fewer devices needed to get to great fidelity the better. I am in the camp that feels if you have to have a lot of devices or fancy exotic things in your audio stream then you began with the wrong speakers.

 My system consists of a Dell Workstation PC with the hi def Realtek driver installed. 1/8" jack out to XLR to either a Xilica XP3060 if the speakers need DSP and bi-amping or straight to the amp. From the Crown XLI800 amps to the speakers and that is it. 12gage zip cord from amps to speakers and crimp fork end connectors.

  The speakers are two way and consist of the following. A Klipsch K-402 horn with Klipsch 1132 drivers with the latest version phase plugs is the HF side of things. crossover point is 650 and 12db Linkwitz Riley with four PEQ's and gain set in the Xilica. Driver is full output to just over 18khz which is past where most of us can hear anyway.

 The LF bass bin is a horn derived from the Klipsch MCM 1900 MWM single fold bass bin. This bin was altered to have a 60" depth and 60" mouth (minus 17" in the middle for the woofer plenum)  and 18" chamber ht ID and to have a true 108" throat depth. Constructed out of 25mm Baltic Birch. Has a single K-43-K Klipsch woofer in there and goes down to 27hz before serious drop off starts. I have not figured out the exact DB efficiency of this system but figure it is somewhere north of 105db. There are four PEQ's and gain setting from the xilica for this bass bin also.

 

  What started this whole thing was I wanted to hear Bach Pipe Organ music like I was right there and the same for Cello chamber music. Or Japanese Fireworks or any thing else I could find of high fidelity that interested me. I have grown to like most things recorded well that I can find. Key here was life like reproduction as close as I could get using things I have heard in person as reference points. If the fireworks would impact me in person with a felt boom along with sound I wanted that. If the 32' pipe made things move around on table tops I wanted that. Now I rarely play at those volumes but if I want to I can. But I also wanted the true to life definition that would have accompanied this just like real life. I did not want someones idea of signature sound I wanted realism. Once the PEQ's are set I do not fiddle with PC EQ and leave it flat all the time.

 

  As a pure all horn system sound reproduction is effortless and the headroom creates superb sound at 75db as well as 105db and up if you care to go there. The Crown XLI800's are solid state and 200 watts per channel. I leave them up half way and adjust the rest with the PC sound card control which rarely goes above 50%. 

Total cost to build using todays prices and all new components would be about $7400. Frugal shopping for electronics will save you off that. My actual cost after hunting for a year of so was under $4000.

 Now a word about tube amps and DACs and all that stuff. The Xilica has the ability to basically tailor sound for almost any effect, if you take the time to learn to do so. Along the way you end up having to get Room Equalizer Wizard, or REW, which is free software for analyzing sound using your laptop and a calibrated UMike. These active DSP systems are NOT plug and play.

  Not all PC's will give you great fidelity. My Dell happens to be one of those fortunately. If you go this route make sure you download the latest Hi-Def driver for your sound card. If I was not happy with the sound card, or suspected it to not be good, I would get an aftermarket one.

 Peer validation is always nice and the stream of repeat visitors I have lets me know the pieces to this puzzle worked out well. I quit my search for better when I got these dialed in.

 

mahlman

While it does use large excursion woofers from Tang Band, Danley makes a sub that goes down to 17hz with 8" woofers. THSpud | Danley Sound Labs, Inc.

There are plans to build these out there and the one I have which was given to me unfinished remains that way since real deep bass does not interest me much. Horn subs operate by different rules and what you need is a proper design. To go down low with small excursion woofers in subs means much more box volume and some pretty good length.

As Phusis says low excursion works just fine in the right horn for low bass. The Danley is a pretty small box so it has to have large excursion woofers to work.

I don't think you can get great sound from an internal sound card.  My system is also pc based- converted my best vinyl to 24-bit/192 kHz on a decent system (Benz Ref cartridge; Graham Mk 2 tonearm; Sota Cosmos w/ vacuum; Blue Electric Virus phono stage or Audio Research SP10 Mk 2 Preamplifier; RME Babyface A/D; to  Adobe Audition).  Played back directly from the PC they suck.  Played back via a decent USB DAC I can't tell the difference and haven't found anyone who can.

You can indeed get great sound but perhaps not from them all. The key as far as I am concerned is did you download the Hi-Def driver to use with y6our card? Made a really big difference for me.

  @jssmith  suggested this site and my experience with Realtak sound cards on my PC agrees with the Tom's review. Audiophile PC Sound - The Real Cost of Hi-Fi - Tom’s Hardware | Tom's Hardware

  What sound card and PC did you try?

@mahlman , you have to be very careful with specs when it comes to bass. What a speaker does at 1 meter is a far cry from what it would do in a room at 3 meters. Most woofers can move fine at 20 Hz but it does not mean they are actually radiating the sound with any authority.

@phusis ,I am honored that you would spend so much time analyzing my post.

It sounds like we are on the same side of the ile. We both use computer audio and not dedicated music streamers like an Aurender. I suspect you are a PC guy and I have to admit that my computer knowledge is somewhat lacking. But, the sound cards I have heard, and I have not heard all of them did not sound as good as an Apple driving a Berkley Alpha USB. They were obviously veiled for some reason and I suspect why many dis computer audio. I would not go any other way.

My point about brains is that each brain has it's own way of interpreting it's senses. Some interpretations are better than others. Just because someone thinks a certain something sounds better does not mean it will to other people. You can only trust the opinion of other people who interpret sound the way you do. I have two such people in my life. A multitude of issues will determine sound interpretation, looks and price are the two big ones. In my world they do not count one iota other than there are certain pieces of equipment I like that I can not afford, at least for the time being. 

You are quite correct. Horn loaded drivers do not have to work near as hard because they are impedance matched to the air. Very few people use subwoofer horns because they are extremely large and they tend to have their own resonance problems. Forgetting about horns everything else I said is true. Someone mentioned foam surrounds as being best. It depends on the design and intension of the driver. I will say if you see a subwoofer with a foam surround, run away. I have seen to many of them fail including the Velodynes I ran for a decade or so. One of them is now the base for a fish tank. The vast majority of sub drivers are made with butyl rubber surrounds for a reason. 

Take any pair of 12" or 15" sub drivers in an appropriate sealed enclosures. Put them in a 15' X 30' room, cue up a 20 Hz test tone and turn it up to 90 dB. What you will see are cones flying in approximately a 1" blur, a little less for the 15 cone. What you will hear is your whole house rattling. This is not my local context or my opinion. If you do not know this it is because you have not built enough subwoofers. What is "local" is that I only expect dynamic drivers to make noise below 100 Hz. Most residential folded horns run up to 350 Hz. K horns used to be 500 Hz. That is not bass anymore. Middle C is 256 hz. It is well into the midrange.Then you are faced with another huge problem. A large chunk of your midrange is five feet behind the rest of your speaker. That is a 5 ms group delay! In order to make that work you will have to biamp the speaker and put a 5 ms delay on the high frequency drivers using DSP. I always wanted to try that with K horns to see what you would get. I have another local problem. I use Line source loudspeakers. In order to match their radiation characteristics I had to create a line source subwoofer array using 4 subwoofers. On a 16 foot wall 4 subwoofer horns would be a site to see. I am working on a new system with 8 subwoofers. The four 12" subs I am using right now are working too hard and on occasion I run them into their bump stops. They have a X max of 19 mm. That is a 38 mm excursion. In a 16 foot wide room.  It takes a lot to make powerful sub bass, a lot more than most people think. I do not have any problem with multiple drivers. I would use larger ones but then the size of the enclosures would be prohibitive in my "local" situation.