Speaker porn

I always thought that was a concession to limited height in soffits.

 

Probably related to space saving. Given the low frequencies directionality is not an issue.

 

Oh, nice. Yeah, Devon was mentioning this. Fostex 31" woofer, yes. It's certainly visually impressive.

According to Devon, a driver this big has lower distortion, as it doesn't need a high excursion.

 

Not sure how it would save space as it's a much larger footprint than a vertical arrangement

 

Cat beds!

 

If you use the space under floor as the enclosure no need for a big box in the room.

 

Whoa, woofer in the floor... I'd be afraid of stepping on it after a few beers.

These Japanese set-ups are pretty awesome to look at. But I still wonder if these vintage/vintage-inspired horn set-ups skew toward a darker, less obviously hi-fi sound.

Or put another way, as impressive as I've heard things like K-Horns be on *some* music, I've never quite connected with them as speakers I'd want for *all* music. I realize I'm conflating K-Horns and VOTT-inspired rigs here....

Whichever way, I'm keen to hear more of this stuff. Will have to get to Tokyo one of these days.

 

Japan would be an excellent place as I've heard there's these audiophile cafes where the main attraction is a 2 channel audio system. These are not the typical coffee shop where people chat while there's background music. Volume is louder than usual and seats are arranged facing the speakers. People are silent during playback because you are there to listen.

Setups can look as ridiculous as anything on this thread

 

Not sure if this fits in "speaker porn" category, but here's my first DIY Loudspeaker project, hence called "Saisho".
Designed from scratch because... learning and tweaking is fun!

 

If we are talking about a single cabinet speaker, the benefits are wider baffle, thus simpler crossover due to less baffle step compensation used. I haven't heard one of those speakers yet, but many people loves them due the soundstage of the wide baffle, and the superb dynamics that two very big drivers per side can give you. I think it is a very smart way to build a speaker.

 

We have a nice DIY section with a thread that specifically caters to this topic

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/speaker-building-all-by-yourself.9647/

Your speaker looks good!

 

Ok ignoring the issue of stuff falling into your woofer, I'm more concerned with how much space the entire woofer assembly must take up. This isn't just popping it into the floor; we're talking about possibly redoing some floor joists, and is this open baffle or do I have to seal a box around it underneath? I'd rather deal with a cramped space in my room than trying to redo my subfloor.

 

Probably the entire back wall behind the woofer is the cabinet. That 31' driver requires massive amounts of space for infinite baffle configuration, so it wouldn't be crazy to assume that the owner built "a wall between a wall" (or the empty room behind the wall) and used it as a cabinet for the woofer. The one in the floor probably uses an entire subfloor as a cabinet.

 

Oh you haven't seen the rest of the system. Horns so big the driver is in another room.




I'm pretty sure I remembered seeing a backloaded horn built into the floor in a japanese home but I couldn't find it.

 

I have wondered about building something like this with IB woofers.
When plan is to go all-in on the sound front, why stop with ridiculously priced/built speakers.
The room can be the speaker.

 

Horn so big the driver is in the next building. This is from 1929, the horn dumps into the ceiling of the billiard room next to his house. Second photo is the mouth of the horn, the ceiling is an octagonal slope that extends the horn even further.

 

Was this without electrical amplification and just straight from the needle?

 

Fed by a "Western Electric 555 W Receiver" which was pretty much the first commercially available compression driver. Required a 10 watt battery to power the field-coil magnet in the driver (alnico magnets didn't exist yet).

 

New plan: build a pair of wine cellars under the house that double as cabinets for my underground sub/horn/monstrosities.

 

Would the vibration ruin the wine? Keep the sediment in solution, for example.