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How do Danley speakers work?

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gen0me View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gen0me Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 8:32pm
What plans? With 10db differences in characteristics?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote snowflake Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 9:41pm
Originally posted by Hemisphere Hemisphere wrote:

Originally posted by toastyghost toastyghost wrote:

They don't hide what drivers they use, and they're all off the shelf too. The driver choice is a key part of the horn design itself, as you have to factor in the compression driver depth etc.

It's actually mostly Faital and B&C LF and HF, Eminence and Celestion sealed back mids, and the odd few BMS HF in their setups.
So are you saying there's literally nothing in the commercial designs that isn't openly available knowledge? Because every time the subject of Danley or tapped horns comes up MarjanM mentions something about a vital  but subtle distinction between the Danley boxes and the most widely available plans online, that allows the drivers to perform better at a higher power level. 


some sort of slot loading in the throat I guess
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote _djk_ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 11:09pm
"some sort of slot loading in the throat I guess"

Search for 'cone correction' at DIYaudio.

Danley prefers to use stock high-quality brand-name drivers so the user can find parts (diaphragms, re-cone kits) locally while touring.
djk
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 11:22pm
Originally posted by _djk_ _djk_ wrote:

"some sort of slot loading in the throat I guess"

Search for 'cone correction' at DIYaudio.

Danley prefers to use stock high-quality brand-name drivers so the user can find parts (diaphragms, re-cone kits) locally while touring.


There is some internal porting / re-tapping of the horn into other sections in a few of the boxes too.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kevinmcdonough Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 11:26pm
Originally posted by Hemisphere Hemisphere wrote:

Originally posted by toastyghost toastyghost wrote:

They don't hide what drivers they use, and they're all off the shelf too. The driver choice is a key part of the horn design itself, as you have to factor in the compression driver depth etc.

It's actually mostly Faital and B&C LF and HF, Eminence and Celestion sealed back mids, and the odd few BMS HF in their setups.
So are you saying there's literally nothing in the commercial designs that isn't openly available knowledge? Because every time the subject of Danley or tapped horns comes up MarjanM mentions something about a vital  but subtle distinction between the Danley boxes and the most widely available plans online, that allows the drivers to perform better at a higher power level. 

Well it's not that there is NO difference, Danley is the difference.  Years of experience, years of testing and refining and learning, years of multiple, multiple prototypes, years of refining simulation models and learning where the inaccuracies are and how to compensate for them, years of crossover design and component selection.  

Many of the DIY versions sound great of course, but don't approach the refinement of his designs.

But yes, in essence if you read through all the posts on places like DIYAudio and Soundforums, especially the posts Tom himself has made, most of the knowledge is out there to get most of the way, and then a similar process of refining and testing to get to the point he is at, learning the tips and tricks and subtleties that set his speakers apart. 

k


Edited by kevinmcdonough - 08 August 2017 at 11:27pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hemisphere Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 August 2017 at 11:41pm
Great explanation thanks Kevin. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, about that ultra-rigorous approach to optimisation.

Some of the science involved at that level is so arcane, (and anyway the desired result is a pleasing sound, not strictly a scientifically perfect device), so the bridge between simulation and reality even with best practices is a shaky one. First get a solid grasp of the theory (and with boxes like Danley's that is no small task!), then get the tools necessary to apply it, then use those tools, over and over down every conceivable avenue, closing off the duds, refining the enhancements.

If you're not on top of the theory then you won't even know where to look so you're just stabbing in the dark, but there's a lot to be said for that too.


Edited by Hemisphere - 08 August 2017 at 11:41pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote concept-10 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 August 2017 at 6:29am
Originally posted by kevinmcdonough kevinmcdonough wrote:

Originally posted by Hemisphere Hemisphere wrote:

Originally posted by toastyghost toastyghost wrote:

They don't hide what drivers they use, and they're all off the shelf too. The driver choice is a key part of the horn design itself, as you have to factor in the compression driver depth etc.

It's actually mostly Faital and B&C LF and HF, Eminence and Celestion sealed back mids, and the odd few BMS HF in their setups.
So are you saying there's literally nothing in the commercial designs that isn't openly available knowledge? Because every time the subject of Danley or tapped horns comes up MarjanM mentions something about a vital  but subtle distinction between the Danley boxes and the most widely available plans online, that allows the drivers to perform better at a higher power level. 

Well it's not that there is NO difference, Danley is the difference.  Years of experience, years of testing and refining and learning, years of multiple, multiple prototypes, years of refining simulation models and learning where the inaccuracies are and how to compensate for them, years of crossover design and component selection.  

Many of the DIY versions sound great of course, but don't approach the refinement of his designs.

But yes, in essence if you read through all the posts on places like DIYAudio and Soundforums, especially the posts Tom himself has made, most of the knowledge is out there to get most of the way, and then a similar process of refining and testing to get to the point he is at, learning the tips and tricks and subtleties that set his speakers apart. 

k

Spot on Kevin, I have built a couple of unities and a few tapped horns, they all sound good, however not as good as Tom's, he has spent years and a lot of money getting his to that level, it's easy to jump on his shoulders and get so far, but that last bit can be very difficult, Phill b on this forum has spent a lot of effort getting his to a very high standard, I have not heard them but have been told they are superb, as you say the information is out there it's just finding it all and putting it all together.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gen0me Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 August 2017 at 11:53pm
.

Edited by gen0me - 10 August 2017 at 1:12am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote toastyghost Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 August 2017 at 9:34pm
Thought you might like this response from the man himself, which hit my inbox whilst I was at Boomtown

Quote Hi Guys

I hope I am not intruding; one of the fellows at work pointed me to a thread on Rog’s old forum.



Rather than how do they work, I think it might make more sense to explain the “why” of the design.



It’s about the time component of audio, if one records a short impulsive signal like a finger snap, it exists as a single acoustic event and is preserved in time all the way to the reproduction system. While a finger snap isn’t a very important part of audio, voice intelligibility is, especially in larger rooms AND this also depends on preservation of time information.



The issue for me was that the Hopkins Stryker equation clearly points to the fact that all other things being equal, the more directivity one has and the fewer number of loudspeaker sources one has, the higher the intelligibility (as well as musical articulation).

The conventional approach for what is wrongly called a “point source” might be a 15 and a horn or maybe a 3 way design but these are 2 and 3 separate sources, not a single point of origin .



With the ubiquitous line array, when used in a large problematic room (like a stadium) and one is out in front it is often very hard to understand what is said and that is because there is radiation from each individual source arriving at a different times and it one measured the Energy Time Curve, one see’s that a short impulse used as the input, arrives spread out in time with individual packets of energy separated in time. In addition, arrays project a large amount of energy to the sides and rear, all of which are directions the people aren’t and simply adds to the destructive reverberant sound level that lowers intelligibility.

Directivity is important but to the extent one can have true “constant directivity” then one can take advantage of another cool thing, as one moves off axis, only the spl goes down, the spectrum does not change so with the proper choice of cabinet horn angle, aim angle and height, it is possible to have it “sound the same” over a LARGE area and have an spl variation of only + - 2dB over a stadium AND be very intelligible AND sound great with music.



How to radiate as a single source with multiple drivers? If you take two identical subwoofers and put them close together, you actually get 6 dB (4 times) more sound AND the two combine coherently into one new source. This happens when the sources are less than ¼ wavelength apart at the extremities, at the frequency of interest, but when the source separation reaches ½ wl then one has two independent sources which produce an interference pattern ( seen as a pattern of lobes and nulls if the polar response is measured). In th eSuynergy horns, all the drivers are less than ¼ wl apart where they interact and so there is only one arrival in time, no interference pattern of lobes and nulls. In front of a line array, what you hear and measure changes with position and distance as a result of multiple arrivals that interference pattern however that destructive interference is also why it takes so much more of everything to do a given acoustic task compared to the full range horns where all the drivers add coherently into one new source and in front, there is comparatively NO change in sound as one moves around.

It took a number of years to figure out how to extend this to multiple hf sources as they are already to large to add in the normal way but (a hobby is telescopes) I found an optical like solution in the Combiner strategy which lead to the large Jericho cabinets your playing with over there.

I am tickled these are being used here for EDM and some live sound, we pretty much wrote that area off to begin with even though a number of us were in live sound, the line array marketing seemed too much to overcome but the Stadiums where line arrays were what is installed was ripe for something better and that didn’t take any advertising, just some demo’s. We have systems in close to half of the 100,000+ seat stadiums here in just 4 years and will be more than half next year. This was not because of marketing or because we are out on tour with X,Y or Z but because it works better than the other way of doing it and it’s just principals of acoustics and physics, nothing fancy, not DSP.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gen0me Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 August 2017 at 10:37pm
So line array isnt really a line array. Doesnt work like this:

It does work like this:

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote kevinmcdonough Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 August 2017 at 10:51pm
well technically its both lol. 

At lower frequencies, the ones produced by the big cone drivers, similar to what Tom was saying the ideas is that you design them so that physically they're within 1/4 wavelengths of their neighbours (in practice, as close as can be gotten) and so they are supposed to combine together and travel from the array as a single source.  So like your second drawing, you're hearing the product of many boxes together, combining in phase (hopefully!)

At high frequencies, the wavelengths are too small combine like this, so it works a little more like the first drawing, with each box having a vertically narrow dispersion horn/waveguide for the HF and covering their own section of the audience. 

In practice, with the realworld never being perfectly in line with the theory, they both do a bit of both. Though the low frequencies are much more drawing 2, and the high frequencies much more drawing 1.

K


Edited by kevinmcdonough - 15 August 2017 at 10:55pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gen0me Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 August 2017 at 11:03pm
Yes so it means where waveguides are not yet playing there will be mountains and valleys.
Different for different listeners.
Also waveguides has different beamwidthes vertically on different frequencies

Edited by gen0me - 15 August 2017 at 11:05pm
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