Proposed New Version of the Finalist

[csmielke]

Hoping to get some feedback on a modified version of Jim's Finalist loudspeakers. I picked up some Wavecor PR223BD01 PRs last year when Solen was closing them out. I modeled using a pair per monitor with the RS225-8 and in 31 liters come up with a nice almost QB3 looking alignment with a -3db response in the low 30s. So the plan is to use this alignment in an enclosure that will be a little smaller in height than the original. I also plan to change out the original midrange for the HiVi L6-4R 4 ohms mid-woofer. It has been used in a couple of resent designs and is used commercially in the Endeavor Acoustics E-3 and E-5 models. I can't seem to locate any distortion measurements anywhere but the E-5 which uses a pair of them in MTM fashion retails for over $20K. Perhaps a little leap of faith here but it is one of the coolest looking drivers with it's carbon fiber cone and phase plug. I do have a concern that I am pushing the 6" tunnel for the mid a bit with this 6 1/2" mid-woofer. I will be asking for input on changes to the cross-over with the new driver. I have attached the modeled response of RS225-8 below.
Thanks

[JonMarsh]

Going to a PR on the bottom end is probably fine- changing the midrange driver is a whole other ball of wax, though, and could require significant crossover adjustments. Do you have measurement equipment and crossover modeling software? If so, it could be a great learning experience. But whether Jim and Curt would be willing to help out in that, I can't predict- try PM'ing Jim.

[csmielke]

John,
Thanks for the response and I was hoping Jim would see the post. If not I will pm him to see if there is any interest. I don't have any measurement equipment though I have a copy of Jeff Bagby's software but have not tried using the cross-over functionality. Without measurement capabilities probably for naught. Both drivers are 4 ohm and similar in sensitivity. I'm sure there is a lot more to consider when incorporating the change.
Chris

[Jim Holtz]

I should clarify from the start of this post that Curt is the crossover guru. I just come up with design ideas that interest me for personal use and then build them once Curt has finessed the design and eliminated as many issues as possible before designing the crossover and voicing the speaker.

As Jon says, adding a PR and changing cabinet volume would be fine. However, changing the mid changes everything. It's the same as starting over.

Curt tested the Hi-Vi driver you're interested in and passed on using it due to higher distortion than we find acceptable in the critical midrange. It's not a bad sounding driver, its just not a great sounding driver. I've heard it in other designs. All of our most recent designs have focused on the best mids possible at the price point we were shooting for and the NE149 is really, really nice and compares favorably with much higher cost drivers.



If you want to do a PR version of the Finalists using the NE149's as designed, it wouldn't hurt a thing as long as the cabinet width an depth remains within 90% of the original design.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Jim

[csmielke]

Jim,
Thanks on a couple of counts - first for the quick reply and second for sharing the distortion performance on the L6-4R. I had not been able to locate any measurements. My fall back position balancing price vs. performance was to use the SB Acoustics SB15NRX (the coated 4 ohm version) you and Curt used in the Anthology design. Any thoughts on it's use? Thanks again for all you and Curt do to make this hobby interesting and enjoyable for many of us.
Chris

[Jim Holtz]

Jim,
Thanks on a couple of counts - first for the quick reply and second for sharing the distortion performance on the L6-4R. I had not been able to locate any measurements. My fall back position balancing price vs. performance was to use the SB Acoustics SB15NRX (the coated 4 ohm version) you and Curt used in the Anthology design. Any thoughts on it's use? Thanks again for all you and Curt do to make this hobby interesting and enjoyable for many of us.
Chris

Hi Chris,

I like the SB15 a lot. It measures very well and sounds excellent. Is it the best there is? No, buts its very good and I enjoy listening to the Anthology's as much as the Statements II's. They each have their own character but more similarities than differences. However, you're still starting over with the crossover again. Once you change a woofer or a mid, its a new speaker design. A tweeter not so much, unless it's really radical. The difference in cost between the SB15 and the NE149 is about $75 or $150 for the pair. Sounds like a lot of work to me. :W

BTW, we used the 8 ohm version of the SB15 in the Anthology's rather than 4 ohm.

Jim

[csmielke]

Hey Jim, thanks again. I didn't make it clear that I knew you guys used a pair of 8 ohm drivers. I was hoping the use of the SB15 wouldn't be that radical a change if I stuck to the 4 ohm version and tried to match sensitivity by adjusting the series resistance. Not sure if Curt monitors the site much to weigh in. Trying to stay under the wife units radar screen while still getting good performance. If it must be the NE149 it must be.
Chris

[Jim Holtz]

Hey Jim, thanks again. I didn't make it clear that I knew you guys used a pair of 8 ohm drivers. I was hoping the use of the SB15 wouldn't be that radical a change if I stuck to the 4 ohm version and tried to match sensitivity by adjusting the series resistance. Not sure if Curt monitors the site much to weigh in. Trying to stay under the wife units radar screen while still getting good performance. If it must be the NE149 it must be.
Chris

Hi Chris,

Now I understand. The only thing I can suggest is to send Curt an email explaining what you're thinking and see what his response is.

The thing is, a really accomplished speaker design requires hands on development with lots of measurements and lots and lots of listening and tweaking to get the sound just right. That is the problem.

Jim

[csmielke]

Jim,
Thanks, is the best way to reach Curt via his website or does he maintain a presence here?
Chris

[Jim Holtz]

Jim,
Thanks, is the best way to reach Curt via his website or does he maintain a presence here?
Chris

Hi Chris,

Curt doesn't spend much if any time in the forums these days. I'd suggest an email on his website for the quickest path to reach him.

Jim

[mordikai]

Don't bug the poor guy. Build it as designed or look for a different design. Not trying to be jerk but everyone is being to much a gentleman and politely discouraging you and your not getting it. These guys have put a ton of time and effort in what are truly great designs, respect that.

[Pknaz]

... Trying to stay under the wife units radar screen while still getting good performance...

Do what I'm doing, buy the parts over a period of time. I bought the knock down kit first, started working on it, then bought the kit from Meniscus a few weeks later (Statement Monitors, but the concept is the same)

You could take this a step further and buy the crossover parts separate from the drivers!

[csmielke]

Jim,
Thanks for your help and if my questions have been out of line I apologize. I really do appreciate what you guys have contributed to the hobby and this website. I also find this website very helpful, informative and fun. I hope I am in a position in the future to be able to make more of a contribution to others.
Take care,
Chris

[Jim Holtz]

Jim,
Thanks for your help and if my questions have been out of line I apologize. I really do appreciate what you guys have contributed to the hobby and this website. I also find this website very helpful, informative and fun. I hope I am in a position in the future to be able to make more of a contribution to others.
Take care,
Chris

Hi Chris,

No worries! You are not the 1st to look at one of our designs and think, I really like that but I want a different driver(s) not realizing changing a driver is a very big deal in speaker design IF you want it to perform the best it can. My suggestion would be to explore the accomplished designs at Meniscus, Madisound, PE and some of the others that have them available, find one that closely fits your needs and budget then build it and get some experience before starting on a custom design. Another option is to contact Selah Audio (Rick Craig) for custom design crossovers. Rick charges of course but he can pull together designs based on the drivers you want to use.

Good luck with what ever you decide to build!

Jim

[5th element]

What mordikai says is really correct in this instance, it's harsh but it's the truth. The difference in driver costs for you is peanuts when you consider how much you'd need to pay the designer in man hours to redesign the loudspeaker for the driver change.

The above aside, the NE149 is really the heart of the Finalists. If anything it is the one driver that you wouldn't want to change in this design, unless you were wanting to change it for something like the MW13P from SB Acoustics. No doubt the MW13P would have been considered had it been available at the time of the drivers considerations for the Finalists but it wasn't.

Of the available 5" soft cone drivers though the NE149 is one of the best currently available and comes at a price significantly lower than it could have cost. The MW13P is potentially better but it comes with its own issues. Both the NE149 and MW13P have extremely low distortion but the MW13P has that rather pronounced cone edge/surround resonance that the NE149 does not, or at least not to anywhere near the same degree.

[csmielke]

Thanks Jim for your understanding. Matt, I was only thinking along the lines of the poor man's Ardent version and changing out the mid as they did there making the design more affordable to a wider group of folks. I thought, maybe in error it would encourage more people like me to take the plunge and try something a bit beyond their current skill set and grow the website following. I do see your point of view with respect to the mid being the centerpiece of this design and respect your expertise in this hobby. I really respect those like you, Jim and Jon who take the time to help those of us who are new to grow our skill sets and become contributors. Thanks for everyone's input.
Chris

[5th element]

Well the Ardent itself uses very costly drivers from the top to the bottom. The Finalists do not. The RS225s are unparalleled in the 8" value bass category and even then you need to spend scanspeak dollars to really better it. Spend less and you end up with rubbish.

The tweeter is a similar affair especially as the design uses a 2nd order acoustic filter and requires something a little more robust than the standard 4th order stuff we're used to seeing. You could save here for European customers because the RS28F is a lot more expensive over here than in the US. We're talking 60 Euros. Whereas the robust soft domes from SEAS/Scanspeak discovery and SB Acoustics are 40.

The poor man's Ardent is a joke of a thread imo as it's anything but that. The point of the original Ardent was to use rigid cone drivers that show no signs of cone breakup throughout their used pass bands, most notably the Accuton midrange. The poor man Ardent doesn't even stick to this and still uses top line drivers from Scanspeak? Poor man what?

The real poor man's would use a ZA14 or maybe Eton 3-400/A8/25MG for the midrange, SEAS 27TBFC/G or SB Acoustics SB26ADC for the tweeter and RS225s for the bass.

I guess I am being a little too harsh though, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask questions, especially when you don't realise quite how critical individual drivers are for designs to function properly. The truth is though that designers spend quite a lot of time fine tuning the tonal balance of their loudspeakers and even small 0.5-1dB variations over the originals, with drivers that have exactly the same frequency response otherwise, can turn an excellent loudspeaker into one that would be fatiguing to listen to for extended periods. Let alone trying to substitute in another driver entirely! Sometimes this works, but it's usually only with tweeters grown from the same stable and both in same product family.

[csmielke]

I give up and hoist the white flag.
Chris

[BobEllis]

Fifth, I think you're confusing my Poor Man's Ardent with Renron's mid price build. I'm using the drivers you suggest, although I had considered using the scan 6600. I've decided against it after spending so much on veneer and vacuum pressing equipment for my full Ardent build. I'm waiting for warmer weather to restart the project.

The mid-priced Ardent build will save around $800 on drivers compared to the original design, significant but still a high dollar build. In addition to the midrange swap he's using the Scan 6600 tweeter. I suspect Ron will also choose some of the more moderately priced caps for further savings.

Different choices. I know I had a hard time clicking the buy button on the C79s and again when I bought the 6640s. I have more money in veneer for my full Ardent build than I have in total in my next most expensive build. 8O

[5th element]

Well I usually think of cabinet complexity vs driver costs. The Ardent is a very complex, expensive and time/energy consuming build. I would only want to put the best drivers into that cabinet if I were to build it and would save for them to make that possible. Putting anything less than the best in would seem like a waste but I appreciate that's not possible for everyone. Of course one can make the cabinet far less expensively just by using MDF and paint.

I must say I didn't realise how many different builds there were bunched up into the poor man's thread. The ZA14 build passed me by. But it's good that it's still being considered. A direct comparison to the full Ardent would be interesting indeed.

[BobEllis]

I started out planning the poor man build as my final but as you point out the cabinet work is significant and mission creep set in. I'd been away from woodworking long enough that I decided to do the poor man build as practice for the full build. Both cabinets are assembled. The poor man's ardent will be paint over mdf once it gets warm enough to paint. Yes, I'm looking forward to a comparison, too.

Sorry for the thread jack. Back to topic.

[JonMarsh]

Fifth, I think you're confusing my Poor Man's Ardent with Renron's mid price build. I'm using the drivers you suggest, although I had considered using the scan 6600. I've decided against it after spending so much on veneer and vacuum pressing equipment for my full Ardent build. I'm waiting for warmer weather to restart the project.

The mid-priced Ardent build will save around $800 on drivers compared to the original design, significant but still a high dollar build. In addition to the midrange swap he's using the Scan 6600 tweeter. I suspect Ron will also choose some of the more moderately priced caps for further savings.

Different choices. I know I had a hard time clicking the buy button on the C79s and again when I bought the 6640s. I have more money in veneer for my full Ardent build than I have in total in my next most expensive build. 8O

Touch base with me when you're ready to restart the poor man's with ZA14- I have those drivers and measurement data, I can do something similar to what I did for Ron and get things in the ballpark fairly easily- I also have data on the RS225's. I'll have to be a bit extra careful about levels and all, since I won't be setup to actually build and measure it.

[BobEllis]

Will do. Thanks Jon.