Nick McKinney from Lambda Acoustics is now with AE Speakers

[nickmckinney]

To my fellow speakerholics,

It is official, after a long vacation I am now back in the speaker world. I have known John at Acoustic Elegance for about 10 years now and he has been working hard to keep my original driver designs available. What better to do that to join forces and group our knowledge together. I will be handling driver design, technical help, prototyping, and assisting with sales from my Florida location. Its nice to still have a magnet charger and all the shop tools needed to build and test drivers and cabinets. Feel free to ask me any questions as that is what I am here for now, that way we can keep John busy with the production side of things.

Best regards

Nick McKinney
Acoustic Elegance

[Shonver]

Nice. You've come full circle.

[ThomasW]

Good news! and welcome back... :T

Now how about some Unity horns.... 8O :B

[Brian Bunge]

Hey Nick! Welcome!

BTW, where in FL are you located? I'm in Palm Bay on the East Coast just below Cocoa Beach and Melbourne.

[JRT]

To my fellow speakerholics,

It is official, after a long vacation I am now back in the speaker world. I have known John at Acoustic Elegance for about 10 years now and he has been working hard to keep my original driver designs available. What better to do that to join forces and group our knowledge together. I will be handling driver design, technical help, prototyping, and assisting with sales from my Florida location. Its nice to still have a magnet charger and all the shop tools needed to build and test drivers and cabinets. Feel free to ask me any questions as that is what I am here for now, that way we can keep John busy with the production side of things.

Best regards

Nick McKinney
Acoustic Elegance

Excellent bit of news, that. Congrats and welcome back. :T

[JRT]

Good news! and welcome back... :T

Now how about some Unity horns.... 8O :B

I thought the Unity Horns were Tom Danley's, or am I missing the point on an inside joke in this.

edit: I did a little looking with Google...

I see now that Nick used to offer a kit for that.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010804085248/http://diy.lambdacoustics.com/products/unity.html

http://www.soundimage.dk/Different-col/Horns.htm

Marshall Buck patented a dual range horn that made use of an acoustic low pass filter to combine the midrange horn with the high frequency horn. I think Danley's Unity horn did that (prior) with the flow restrictions imposed by the small orifices leading to the midranges.

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2003086016&DISPLAY=STATUS

http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=11190

[nickmckinney]

Hey Nick! Welcome!

BTW, where in FL are you located? I'm in Palm Bay on the East Coast just below Cocoa Beach and Melbourne.

Just north of Orlando in Casselberry. Lambda's shop used to be in Eau Gallie.

[nickmckinney]

Good news! and welcome back... :T

Now how about some Unity horns.... 8O :B

You need to talk to either Tom or Servodrive on that one :T

I still have my sets, though I have no space for them where I live.........

[Brian Bunge]

Nick,

Oh yeah?! I'm familiar with Casselberry. We lived in Oviedo for a while. My in-laws still live there.

Let me know if you need any sub enclosures built!

[ThomasW]

You need to talk to either Tom or Servodrive on that one :T

I still have my sets, though I have no space for them where I live.........

Given you your history with Danley, combined with JohnJ's CNC machine, I was hoping there might be a kit in our future.... :W

[Dennis H]

Hey Nick, ever considered building a coax, maybe based on the TD15M since it seems to be the best of the breed for HF?

[JohnL]

Welcome back Nick!

I still have my pair of TD12S's here that have been cranking away for the past several years. Best purchase I ever made.

I have a couple questions for you. Have you seen 18Sound's active impedence control, and could you comment on it? Your mantra was always to keep the Le as low as possible, AIC seems like an innovative way to do that.

Second, BMS is using triple aluminum rings in some of their woofers now. I've not heard them, but what differences do you get from going with the main ring being copper?

Also, you asked what someone would be willing to pay for a high end midrange. My application is 95db+ 8"-10" that can go in an open baffle, matched with a couple of your 15" dipole drivers. $250 wouldn't be too much for a Lambda class midrange. John would certainly know better where the market is, but I think there'll always be a market for quality.


John

[nickmckinney]

Hey Nick, ever considered building a coax, maybe based on the TD15M since it seems to be the best of the breed for HF?

Yes, basically that would be a Tannoy style design. I really like the Tannoys that I have worked with.

[nickmckinney]

Welcome back Nick!

I still have my pair of TD12S's here that have been cranking away for the past several years. Best purchase I ever made.

I have a couple questions for you. Have you seen 18Sound's active impedence control, and could you comment on it? Your mantra was always to keep the Le as low as possible, AIC seems like an innovative way to do that.

Second, BMS is using triple aluminum rings in some of their woofers now. I've not heard them, but what differences do you get from going with the main ring being copper?

Also, you asked what someone would be willing to pay for a high end midrange. My application is 95db+ 8"-10" that can go in an open baffle, matched with a couple of your 15" dipole drivers. $250 wouldn't be too much for a Lambda class midrange. John would certainly know better where the market is, but I think there'll always be a market for quality.


John

Active impedance control would work if the impedance was constant - which it is in maybe 1% of the drivers out there (Lambda, Scanning, original version Scan-Speak, some Dynaudios) In most drivers the midbass inductance is always modulating with LF excursion.

Triple rings are nothing new, its a cheaper approach that gets about 75% of a solid copper sleeve as you still have the coil gap acting as a steel core inductor. You can see it in the inductance reading. Without the copper sleeve the TD inductance would be around 4mH instead of 0.4mH A triple ring would be about 0.8mH or so I imagine. The Apollo version is a triple ring combined with a copper sleeve.

I talked with one of the original people that worked on the WE/Altec 755 cone and it looks like we can get it done. I would think the cheapest version of this wideband could be about $250 or so. Basically a ~60Hz to ~12Khz 8" I think we will offer it with a couple different sensitivity specs as well.

[DS-21]

Hey Nick, ever considered building a coax, maybe based on the TD15M since it seems to be the best of the breed for HF?

I would replace my L/C/R Tannoy System 12 DMT II's with Lambda TD-based coaxes in a heartbeat...