PAP Trio 15 and DIY - Discussion

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by Cakecake, Apr 23, 2018.

  1. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    The notch in the TB high frequency driver is reducing a treble climb in the 10 to 20 kHz region. I absolutely agree that the Zobel is the right solution for the woofer peak.

    The other notch in the ESS is more to reduce a 5 kHz peak intrinsic to the ESS driver (according to the spec). But it might not be necessary.

    EDIT:

    The 2.5 mH coils with the 50 uF + 5 ohm should work great according to this:

    XoverTweeter_v2.PNG
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  2. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I didn't ban you.

    You are so full of shit. I've done this before. The woofer and wide-bander can sum just fine without the offset. The wavelength at 900Hz is 15" so the phase offset isn't going to be huge. And even this was a situation where the phase offsets were huge, there are other ways to make the drivers sum correctly. e.g, the knee of the crossovers can be tweaked, the HF and LF drivers can have different XO points. Heck, a 1st order Butterworth isn't going to sum right anyway. You do tricks like put the xover point where one driver has a peak and wire opposite polarity. Or use a point where there is a small dip. Or rely on an offset on a simple baffle. Lots of tricks. I mean, frick, you may as well be anal about getting exact values for capacitors, which is impossible.

    If you want to your phase coherent and time coherent approach, this is fine, but stop being all fascist Nazi and all about your perfect German approach. There are many different approaches. @ultrabike and I are just covering the basics and running through some ideas. We're just sick of you coming in and showing off how smart and how dumb you are.
     
  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Just use a simple coil up top. 0.15mH. (You know how I like to keep parts count down)

    upload_2019-3-4_0-38-48.png

    BTW, opposite polarity (from the design) is great for confirming XO point.

    upload_2019-3-4_0-41-18.png
     
  4. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    Yes. I like the 0.15 mH. It is also more elegant (had to trick the tool with the 1000 ohm resistor, it's not perfect):

    XoverTweeter_v2.PNG
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    You basically fucked up on something or didn't follow your own advice on the use of tools.
    This J. Bagby's x-over calculator has been very darn accurate for modeling IME.

    offsets.png
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  6. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    Yes! I found this a while ago, and somewhere I found another version with slightly different specs. I think there may be an older and newer version of the specs floating around. I emailed Heil about a month ago to try to get the specs directly but my request was ignored.
     
  7. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    I used the "new" specs.
     
  8. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

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    Hope this is useful to you @crazychile. Anything you want to try out from the ideas here?
     
  9. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    The info you and Marv provided has been awesome. I owe you guys a round of beers. I need to spend some time re-reading the posts from the last few days, but I think I might try to cobble a Xover together from some cheap parts to make sure it doesn't sound like ass, then build a real one with good parts if I think I can be happy with it. My back up plan will be to buy the one from PAP if all else fails, but those are expensive and I lose part of the DIY satisfaction of the project. Looking over my old emails from Ze'ev, the crossovers are actually almost $700, (not $650, like I thought they were) so that's a lot of scratch I could be putting towards other parts of the project.

    I'm still about 2-3 months away from getting the woofers. If I have a passable cheap Xover I can at least use that to break in the woofers while I decide the next step.

    About the Heils...I've had them rigged up with my Klipsch Heresys for about a month now and they have calmed down a lot. In this application I have them crossed over around 850Hz first order. I think I ended up padding them 6dB to mate with the Heresys. If I were to keep them like this I might even try attenuating them a little more to make sure I hit the sweet spot. I think with the right tweaking they could sound like a decent ribbon implementation. I was thinking yesterday how they sound a bit like the old Infinity EMIT/EMIM drivers, which weren't perfect but did a lot of things right. And of course the Heils have the dipole thing going for them.

    The Heils are really heavy. Think comparable weight to 1 or 2 paver bricks each. Then I also need to buy the Heil brackets from PAP and those are around $250. I don't really see a good way to mount them otherwise. Once I start the PAP project I'll return the Heresys to their original configuration.

    In case anyone is interested, my buddy started a thread on the Klipsch forum with his experience integrating the Heil with some Cornwalls:

    https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/180471-heil-air-motion-transformer-for-cornwalls/

    ...which is how I got started on trying them with the Heresys.
     
  10. mitochondrium

    mitochondrium Friend

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    Well that discussion turned dead serious real fast
     
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    1. Download one or both of these tools: Jeff Bagby Passive Crossover Designer spreadsheet version 7 or Windows Passive Crossover Designer program. For the XLS, be sure to read the version 7 release notes and manual (release for version 6). The Windows program is based on the spreadsheet with some things better (vertical and horizontal polar responses) and some things worse (mostly interface if you came from the spreadsheet).
    2. WinPCD will let you plot vertical polar responses. As long as you keep the drivers close, you shouldn't have a problem. Input the XYZ positions of the drivers to get an idea of how the drivers' position and offset will affect polar (vertical) response. Don't stress out when you see how bad the FR can change when not on-axis. Every speaker in the world does this. There are tricks such as tilting the baffle back a bit, leaving it up straight, offsetting driver placement L to R, etc.
    3. Use this to digitize points for the AMT. https://automeris.io/WebPlotDigitizer/ Otherwise, just hand input values to approximate the FR and use Z = 3.8-ohms throughout the entire range for something to work with for the FRD and ZMA files. The AMT impedance is mostly flat, very close to ideal. The FR not so much. You will have to do funky stuff to kill the funky plateau after 2kHz. This can be done with a high shelf filter: coil | resistor. Model for your intended listening position.
    4. After the shelf filter on the AMT, the "sensitivity" becomes 95db, the same as a single OB-a15neo. You if use two in parallel, you will have to pad the woofer down.
    5. Use 2nd order if you want a low XO point for the AMTs like 900Hz - it might sound better this way. 2nd order has other advantages: the crossover region is smaller.
    6. Use cheap electrolytic caps during development. Parallel them to get a multitude of values. Small 16V parts should be good enough. You aren't going to blast it and these drivers are efficient. If you pop them, they cost a buck or two.
    7. Get coils slightly bigger than your projected need. Unwind them to get smaller and very close to exact values (super secret speaker builder trick).
    8. The Xerxes crossover that PAP provides is a rip-off. I haven't seen a single FR plot, so for all we know, the FR might still be screwy - this acknowledging that the design is intentionally kept simple to retain "immediacy" at the expense of less than perfect FR.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2019
  12. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    @purr1n , great advice. I think I was so fixed on copying the PAP Xover exactly that I never considered they might have designed it based solely on gaining immediacy (which I like) but I do like the idea of a flatter response with the bass maximized. Most of the speakers I've owned in the past emphasized mid and tweeter resolution rather than bass and I'm ready for something that sounds like a real full range. 2nd order Xovers seemed more logical to me but I resisted it in trying to keep to the original design.

    I had come across the tools you mentioned but use a Mac at home. I guess it's time to borrow my wifes old Win 8 laptop and start experimenting.

    I used cheap electrolytics in the Xover for the Heil/Heresy implementation. I then dug some old poly caps out of the parts bin and did a bypass which seemed to tame the glare a little.

    I've read the trick about sizing down bigger coils but was never quite sure how to find the right point without going too far. Given that the wire is enameled, do you just burn off the enamel at guestimated points so you can measure before having to commit to cutting down to shorter lengths?
     
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Just unroll. The inductance is based on what is coiled. Once you perfect it, just cut.
     
  14. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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  15. skem

    skem Friend

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    I’ve been thinking of a DIY in the spirit of PAP Trio-15. I am attracted to PAP’s new horn-1, rather than using a wizzer widebander, being under the impression that the horn will be more articulate and detailed—and more compatible with nuanced biamp strategies.

    1) Does anybody here have views on PAP’s horn vs voxativ? Many reviewers seem to favor the horn.

    2) Is there a DIY horn that anybody would recommend? Are there horn specific challenges that may deter a DIYer?

    3) As for wide band 15”, many here are using the Eminence. The Faital 15PR-400 used by Troels appears on the surface to have a broader and flatter response—but I get the distinct impression I shouldn’t be reading spec sheets to choose an OB driver. What considerations am I missing?
     
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Unless someone here failed to speak up, all members' impressions of the horn at the shows is that they sucked with severe frequency response anomalies.

    Horns in a two-way arrangement like this need some response shaping, something I doubt their 4-part Xerxes series xovers would be able to do well.

    Also, the compression driver used seems to be some sort of rando brand.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2019
  17. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The Faital 15 is not a drop in replacement for the PAP baffle or similar 2 foot wide baffle designs. It's Qts is too low. Doesn't Troel's use super wide baffles and some crossover / EQ network trickery to use them?
     
  18. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    Baffles are wide, but it's an all passive XO. He does bi-amping though.

    He has mentioned repeatedly that 15" OB is the best bass he's heard. He just doesn't keep these around due to low WAF
     
  19. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    For horns, an easy choice is JBL 2426 with 2360 bi-radial horn. JBL is a high-priced choice, but costs nothing compared to audiophile gear. I like the bi-radial compared to any of the CD / constant directivity horns for home use. The 2426 driver is probably 10x better than the one that PAP uses.

    Radian 745 has a beryllium diaphragm variant that seems interesting. It's supposedly more extended with smoother highs.

    Other reputatable brands such as Selenium, B&C, Beyma, Eminence can be considered. It's all more or less the same designs dating back to Altec.

    Note response shaping will likely be necessary. Horns usually have a midrange hump that needs to be pushed down.

    Finally, if JBL, ONLY USE JBL replacement diaphragms if you buy used drivers. The imitation stuff is horrible: strange uneven FR, lacking extension, etc.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2019
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Doesn't he use a gigantic coil the size of 1000W power torroid to account for the OB rolloff? That dude has infinite money.
     

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