C1's + 13
- Thread starter heeman
- Start date
Isolation material/foam. This is just a trial. Final configuration will be a clean package.
There was not much vibration however the designer specified this.
Two thumbs up. Life is grand when you don't constrict yourself to societal norms. The beautiful thing about this is it probably sounds amazing. Conventional speaker designers would probably shun this design because it might not have good WAF. Unless you are married to a totally cool chick named Barb who totally accepts and embraces this.
I know exactly what that's like. Thankfully.
The C1's would be more stable if you moved the foam strips to the outer edges of the board they support, leaving the middle area clear.
I got a bunch of private questions about stability of the C1s sitting on those huge woofer enclosures. Here's my general response to that concern:
- The C1s have a base which is designed to be stable even without the matching stands. They should not themselves have any issues with sitting on a solid surface.
- Those bass cabinets are huge. The average weight of a single sheet of 3/4" MDF is about 80 lbs, and each cabinets used about 2/3 of a sheet. So in wood alone the cabinets weigh at least 54 lbs. The speaker weighs about 20 lbs, so at a minimum each cabinet weighs about 75 lbs. That makes for something which will be difficult to shake or wobble because...
- The base of the cabinet is 16" X 24", and the height is 20". That makes the base deeper than the height and increases stability even when the woofer is pounding away.
Ultimately these are incredibly stable speakers before you put the C1 on top. Now, isolating the C1 by using foam strips is not an unproven solution. Many of us have purchased Auralex MoPads for our stand mounted speakers and studio monitors and they are still very stable. Applying isolation like foam has many benefits to the sound quality of the speakers (and I am recommending Heeman put foam strips under the bass cabinets as well). Benefits include lower IMD and THD, faster decay (measured in waterfall plots), and more. Why is this? Woofers generate a ton of mechanical energy which is transferred into the cabinet as vibration, and cabinets generally do not absorb that vibration and merely bounce it around the dense cabinet walls at high speed (the speed of sound in MDF is much faster than in air), and it returns back into the cone of the woofer. There are losses in the woofer's surround and spider, but those vibrations still have an impact on the distortion levels coming out of the woofer cone.
By isolating with a lossy suspension like the right kind of foam or rubber or really great stuff like the sticky/messy sorbothane, those vibrations get absorbed and turned into heat and larger physical motion. That is good! Now, put a delicate midrange and even more delicate tweeter on top of a massively powerful woofer and the benefits of isolating those smaller midrange and tweeter drivers is even more critical. The woofer is transmitting lots of energy into its cabinet, so it makes a different if you can isolate the smaller cabinet sitting on top of it.
Now, you could put the C1 on the dedicated stands and the woofer cabinets next to them, but that introduces other issues of source alignment in stereo listening. You really do want all the drivers in a stereo speaker aligned vertically.
So, that's what Heeman is doing and it is a great solution where the detriments are minor and the benefits are massive.
They are very stable with the 4 pc's of foam. When I build the finished platform for the C1's to sit on, there will be very little overhang. This pc of MDF is just a pc I had sitting around, I was to lazy to cut it. You should see the other one, it is sitting on 2 of the circles that were cut from the MDF for the drivers.
This has been a GREAT project and the performance is just drop dead awesome...........
Flint will help me with the final fine tuning sometime in the next couple of months.
Barb is so support of this, but asks WAY TO MANY QUESTIONS, but she is great!! I have been truly blessed.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and Happy New Year to all my friends and there families here on The Audio Annex!!
This has been a GREAT project and the performance is just drop dead awesome...........
Flint will help me with the final fine tuning sometime in the next couple of months.
Barb is so support of this, but asks WAY TO MANY QUESTIONS, but she is great!! I have been truly blessed.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and Happy New Year to all my friends and there families here on The Audio Annex!!
You've not told me how Barb likes the sound. I know she enjoys that system too. I have visions of her down in the HT rocking out like it's the 1980s while you are waltzing around LA acting like a VIP!
Barb absolutely loves the sound. When ever she comes down to listen to some music, it is difficult to get her to stop. Just one more song turns into 10.
For movies, it is just killer........... She loves it!
Unfortunately she doesn't use the HT when I am not home. She doesn't like being down there alone.
She has been very supportive because she knows my passion/illness and wants me to be happy, totally happy.................one problem, I always want it to be better!!!
For movies, it is just killer........... She loves it!
Unfortunately she doesn't use the HT when I am not home. She doesn't like being down there alone.
She has been very supportive because she knows my passion/illness and wants me to be happy, totally happy.................one problem, I always want it to be better!!!
team_tsp
Active Member
Amazing job @heeman and @Flint !! As a fellow C1 owner, I'm jealous!
I see you're using the analog inputs/outputs of the miniDSP, I'm guessing you have the line-level analog outputs of your pre/pro going to the miniDSP?
In this situation, I'm assuming the miniDSP does analog-to-digital conversion of the input signal, then does the crossover functionality in the digital domain, and then does digital-to-analog conversion for the output, right? Was there any concern on the impact the two steps of conversion might have on audio quality? Or is it negligible?
I see you're using the analog inputs/outputs of the miniDSP, I'm guessing you have the line-level analog outputs of your pre/pro going to the miniDSP?
In this situation, I'm assuming the miniDSP does analog-to-digital conversion of the input signal, then does the crossover functionality in the digital domain, and then does digital-to-analog conversion for the output, right? Was there any concern on the impact the two steps of conversion might have on audio quality? Or is it negligible?
Analog outputs from the Pre/Pro is correct.
I do not hear any negative effects to the sound.
The system is kicking ass!
God!!! I love that workshop!!! It has always been my dream being a little bit of a handyman myself to have one like it. I am drooling over those clamps!
team_tsp
Active Member
Glad to hear there aren't any negative effects of the ADC and DAC conversions!
I too am jealous of the workmanship of the cabinets, I'm not very handy with woodworking at all
Any update on whether you're going to paint them?
