Listening and Crossover Notes
This Section Last Updated: 2-21-2005
I was anxious to start listening to the speaker so i built X-Over 2 and wired it up. After building the crossovers the speakers sounded good. Not great, just good. I have been listening to Vifa MTMs with a silk tweeter for the last 6 years. There is a big difference in sound quality between a silk tweeter and the ribbon. At first I started thinking the tweeter was too much and I was going to get tired of listening to it. Cheryl Crows vocals in her latest album jumped out in front of the instruments on the track 'Steve McQueen'. I doubt that is the way they recorded it. The ribbon also moves a lot of air! I was surprised to be able to feel the air on my hand when I got close. Also the vertical axis is very limited. I could move my listen position about 10-15 degrees below the center point of the speakers and you could hear a drop off. The horizontal axis is fine. I am going to try some jazz vocals and instruments like Dianna Krall,
Patricia Barber and Wynton Marsalis tonight. I will be interested how the trumpet is going to sound. The low end was great! Nice and smooth. Fast response.
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I listened to the speakers all weekend and i still think they are strong on the high end, or lacking on the mid. So tonight i take the assembly and measure the total response of crossover and woofer and tweeter. I am VERY impressed with the results of SE! Actually i am pretty blown away! The picture above is a comparison of the the modeled response of the crossover with the Silver Flute Drivers v.s. the actual response of the Silver Flute drivers with the crossover measured with a microphone. RED is the modeled response. BLUE is measured response (forgive the typo in the image) :) |
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This picture is a modified measurement response. I moved the measured response up in dB and i will be damned if it does not matched the modeled response.
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Here is crossover number 3! I used an LCR filter in series before the tweeter to knock down my 5k hump. I then raised the value of L9 to get the 5k-20k range to drop a couple dB. |
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Here is a picture that compares the modeled response of the crossover in SE, and the actual measured response. Once again SE blew me away with how accurate it is. After initial listening i think it is perfect. The highs are not so loud and the overall response seems to be well matched. I will be listening for a few more days with different music and report back in, but i really think this is a great crossover. |
Listening Notes 2-21-2005. It has been a few months of listening and i will say that this setup needs a mid-woofer. The 8" SF driver and the Ribbon tweeter just don't match up very well. They both struggle to get to the crossover point. I still like the over all sound, but if you want a better speaker plan on integrating a mid range driver into this box. If you are looking for a SF driver based project i highly recommend one of the loudspeakers i made in another project i called "Silver Flute 5.5 Home Theater System". The MTM is my favorite.
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Project Sections:
Silver Flute 2 Way
1. Silver Flute Project Measurements
2. Silver Flute Crossover Notes
3. Listening and Crossover Notes
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