Your thoughts on these.... 5 1/2" Silver Flutes

[smgreen20]

https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... cts_id=843

I run the 6 1/2" version of these in my truck and love them, I'm starting to piece together my new HT set up. It will be a while still, but I can start buying it piece by piece. 6 of them, 2 for the center ch, and 1 for the four corners. I don't have the room for a 7.1 set up, so I'll be sticking w/the 5.1 set up.

Haven't decided on the passive network just yet, but I'm sure it'll be from Parts-express.com Tweeters are up in the air too. Something w/a good 30* off axis FR. Oh yea, and under $50 a piece. The cheaper the better.

 

[Flint]

Tweeter:

For a tweeter with good off axis response, look into a hard dome with a narrow diameter, like 21mm.

This is a good one in your price range:
https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... ts_id=8352

This one is much better:
https://www.madisound.com/store/product ... ts_id=8695

I am not a fan of hard domes, but they do offer a better off axis response when properly designed.


Woofer:

I have never heard that mid/woofer but it looks really good on paper. If the response really is that smooth in the midrange, you could use a very basic 6dB crossover (first order), which is much easier to design and install than anything else.


Crossover:

Be careful buying a pre-built passive crossover. You will get much better results with even a rudimentary crossover built from simple calculators based on the real impedance of the drivers than you will with a fixed 8 ohm or 4 ohm pre-built crossover.

With that woofer and the second tweeter above, you could create a very simple first order crossover with only a capacitor and L-Pad resistor network (two resistors) for the tweeter and one inductor for the woofer to get a very good sound.


Enclosure:

Are you building enclosures? If you want to place these directly against the wall, a simple wide/tall enclosure is the best and they would be easy to design and built.


Center:

Why two woofers for the center? I don't recommend it.

 

[smgreen20]

Will look further into the crossovers. I chose 2 mids for the center as I see ot a lot and 75% of the front sound comes from the center when watching 5.1 , that's the only reason really.

 

[Flint]

With two woofers you have to deal with all the negative affects of dual source lobing (comb-filtering) which cannot be remedied. Just because most of the content is in the center channel, because dialog is non-stop in most shows and movies, that doesn't mean the center has to play 6dB louder than the rest of the system. In fact, it just needs to play loud enough to be heard. The really loud passages in TV and Movies tend to come from the left and right speakers - loud music, explosions, gunfire, etc. Really, the loudest stuff is left and Right, so those two should have dual woofers before the center.

One of those woofers should be capable of producing over 100dB SPL of sound over 100Hz, so two would be merely overkill, unless you intend to listen at insanely high levels. If you do intend to have insanely high levels, then put two woofers in the left and right speakers and perhaps the center.

 

[smgreen20]

When I'm alone cleaning house, its high levels of metal. So 2 mids for L/C/R it will be then.

 

[Flint]

If you really want high levels, why not the 6.5" variety?

 

[smgreen20]

They are currently out of the 4 ohm versions. I thought about using those, but I do need to sit down and figure out xover points and final impedance of each network.

 

[Flint]

For home audio there is no reason to want 4 ohm speakers. In fact, I prefer 8 ohm speakers because they present an easier load to the driving amp and the amp will tend to sound better.

 

[smgreen20]

I know. Most receivers are rated at 8 ohms, but it's the passive network I was taking into account to get the final output load of 8 ohms.

 

[Flint]

I don't follow.

An 8 ohm driver with a basic passive crossover will present as an 8 ohm load to an amp.

 

[yromj]

:text-threadjacked:

If you're going to wire 2 drivers in a single cabinet, do you wire them in series or parallel? I ask because the loading is either going to be half the load of a single driver if they're wired in parallel or double the load of a single driver if they're wired in series. I suppose you could wire them in parallel and place a resistor of the same value of the driver in series with the two driver circuit but I don't recall that being discussed before.

John

 

[heeman]

:text-threadjacked:

I ask because the loading is either going to be half the load of a single driver if they're wired in parallel or double the load of a single driver if they're wired in series.

This assumes that their resistance is the same for each driver.

If not it is the product/sum for Parallel and just the sum for series.

 

[smgreen20]

It will be a 2 way passive network. Tweet/mid.

 

[Flint]

an 8 ohm woofer with a properly designed simple crossover will present an 8 ohm load to the amp it is attached from the deepest bass up to the crossover point where the impedance go up fairly rapidly.

A 8 ohm tweeter with a similarly proper basic crossover will present an 8 ohm load to the attached amp at the highest frequencies down to the crossover point where the impedance will go up fairly quickly as tge frequency goes down.

If the crossovers are well designed, when you wire the two drivers/crossover in parallel to an amp, the average impedance will remain about 8 ohms across the entire operating range, except where resonances drive it much higher.

 

[yromj]

:text-threadjacked:

I ask because the loading is either going to be half the load of a single driver if they're wired in parallel or double the load of a single driver if they're wired in series.

This assumes that their resistance is the same for each driver.

If not it is the product/sum for Parallel and just the sum for series.

I guess I didn't make my question clear: Assuming you're using two identical drivers (such as 2 5 1/4" woofers in this poster's case) for one part of the speaker (again, such as 2 5 1/4" woofers for the mids) how do you wire those two together? I understand that if you wire them in series you get 8 + 8 = 16 Ohms. I also understand that the total resistance for a parallel network is the reciprocal of the sum of the reciprocals of each resistor (1/((1/8)+(1/8))) = (1/(1/4)) = 4 Ohms in this case.

What I don't know is how you handle the wiring of the two drivers being coupled to use as one part of the speaker.

John

 

[smgreen20]

I would order the 4 ohm versions and wire them in series for the 8 ohms.

 

[yromj]

OK, that answers the question for this specific case. I was trying to be a little more general, though.

John