Upgrade compression driver?
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Category: General
Forum Name: General Forum
Forum Description: Open Discussion / Questions
URL: https://forum.speakerplans.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=107160
Printed Date: 19 April 2024 at 12:11pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.06 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Upgrade compression driver?
Posted By: immortal
Subject: Upgrade compression driver?
Date Posted: 22 June 2022 at 10:00am
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I currently have a unity horn with a 1.4" P-Audio BMD740. It sounds amazing but the compression driver starts distorting before the rest at high volume. I was wondering how much of an improvement upgrading this would be? What drivers would you recommend? The rest of the drivers are faital pro 3" and 6"  ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Replies:
Posted By: Conanski
Date Posted: 22 June 2022 at 3:35pm
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Nice looking stack. What is the crossover frequency for those and what other processing is applied?
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Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 22 June 2022 at 4:26pm
Thanks  On the horn it's: 150 - 510 bass 510 - 1190 mid 1190+ top On the comp I have this EQ: 1.47khz -4db Q: 1.6 20khz +3db Q: 1.6 ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 22 June 2022 at 4:46pm
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I found a post on DIYAudio where someone recorded quite a few compression drivers for comparison. It sounds like the B&C DE82TN would definitely be a big upgrade so I might go for that. Has anyone used the DE980TN vs the DE82TN, would it be worth going for that although it is around twice the price? Edit: the DE980TN isn't in stock. Seems like they are newer and have a better high frequency response so I might go for the DE780TN
------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Posted By: smitske96
Date Posted: 22 June 2022 at 7:03pm
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The 780TN is comparable to the DE900 regarding its sound characteristic. DE82TN is also 4.5kg compared to the 980's 2.3kg. If you want something similar to the 980, you could look at the 880. It is basically the same driver, however the 980 has a bigger magnet which gives it a higher efficiency. |
Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 23 June 2022 at 12:26am
Thanks for the reply. I saw the 880 but it is also out of stock on bluearan and estimated 3-5 months. How is the 780TN compared to the DE82TN in regards to sound? ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
smitske96 wrote:Posted By: snowflake
Date Posted: 23 June 2022 at 7:59am
| FaitalPro HF146 is what I put in my unity horns. Doesn't distort at hight volume like the P-Audio driver does - I did try them both. Sure the B&C drivers will be good but I think I chose the Fatial because it had a lower resonance frequency that didn't interfere with the crossover too badly. |
Posted By: smitske96
Date Posted: 23 June 2022 at 8:33am
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I don't have any experience with the 82TN but do have with the DE800 (which is nice). In my latest 12" BR +HF I also use de HF146, very nice driver but definitely different due to the diaphragm material.
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Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 23 June 2022 at 9:33am
That is a good shout, I have ordered a HF146. I think the recommended crossover frequency on the B&C would possibly be a bit high ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Posted By: CastanedaZarate
Date Posted: 24 June 2022 at 3:08am
| Thanks for sharing of such a vivid photo! |
Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 24 June 2022 at 2:29pm
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The driver has arrived today, I will hopefully fit it tomorrow. Will see how it does and hopefully post some measurements of it ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Posted By: Line Array
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 5:39am
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i don't believe in unity horns. point sources are for low output systems. line arrays for high output systems. unity horns try to get high output from a point source. in my experience they are used primarily by amateurs who have been brainwashed on internet forums which ban anybody who criticizes Danley. if you aren't getting enough clean output from a point source learn the science of line arrays and get / build a line array. a point source appears to be good for up to about two 15" woofers. anything over that seems to require more than one compression driver.
------------- best place on the internet >>> https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net |
Posted By: csg
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 6:33am
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You do love a definitive statement don’t you. I have built several, high end, no compromise custom systems over the years that will use a single (admittedly coaxial) compression driver per side to cover 1000 people with ease. Sure, a line array can provide a more scalable system for certain applications but we all managed to provide high quality audio for very large audiences before V-DOSC came along. I was there. We carry both line array and point source in our inventory. In a great number of applications point source provides superior results. It’s about using the best system design and equipment for the job, not making meaningless definitive statements that show a huge lack of knowledge and appreciation for other peoples circumstances. ------------- “The fact is this is about identifying what we do best and finding more ways of doing less of it better” |
Posted By: njw
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 8:42am
I had to quote that before it gets deleted/edited...
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Posted By: Line Array
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 8:59am
point sources like piezo tweeters are cost effective ... this makes them tempting. it may be the right solution ... or maybe you just want to believe it's the right solution because if it was it would make your life easier. i do have a psychological inclination for overkill ... i have a "better safe than sorry" mentality ... i'm just expressing my opinions not telling anybody what to do. i don't listen to anybody and don't expect anybody to listen to me. ------------- best place on the internet >>> https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net |
Posted By: FOO
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 9:00am
| What about this http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=RCFND840" rel="nofollow - http://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=RCFND840 |
Posted By: toastyghost
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 9:51am
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I think we have a new ’most misinformed user’ on this forum. High accolade for here! I have personally covered 50,000 people in a 125m x 125m area over multiple years with just four Synergy Horn devices, amongst many other shows across multiple continents. Perhaps you don’t ‘believe’ in the technology because you don’t understand it? After all, several of your other threads and posts indicate that you might be a bit of an ‘amateur’ yourself.
You should put this in your signature. It’d save us all a lot of reading and typing. Every day is a school day. |
Posted By: immortal
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 10:32am
I have replaced it with a HF146 and it sounds much nicer and cleaner, that comp I had before was just low quality. Also that rig only has two subs and two kicks so not exactly large enough to recommend I build a line array for it haha. I think synergy horns sound really nice and have heard large synergy horns at festivals. Also saying you need more than one compression driver, don't the bigger Danley synergy horns have more than one compression driver in anyway if that is your problem? edit: added a picture  ------------- Cemetery Sounds |
Posted By: Robbo
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 11:45am
| I was hoping that Kyle would turn up on this thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
Posted By: Phil B
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 12:31pm
Think Toasty has covered most of the ground but I'll just add..... I've heard and worked with most line arrays out there from L'Acoustics, D&B etc and I'll take my own take on Unity horns any day for the small gigs I do. Line arrays have their particular use and excel in some places BUT they are not the holy grail of sound re-inforcement. Back to you Toasty .p. ------------- Mostly harmless.... except if catering is shut. Solar Sound System Shennanigans.. http://diyhifi.biz/" rel="nofollow - http://diyhifi.biz/ |
Posted By: snowflake
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 1:59pm
| what happened to the Danley Exodus array? doesn't seem to be listed on their website |
Posted By: Xoc1
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 8:30pm
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Having listened to a lot of line arrays in the last week - Which would include top systems from Martin audio - D&B audiotechnik - Void etc I can confirm that they still sound crap in a crosswind. |
Posted By: Line Array
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 8:56pm
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perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that unity horn type speakers occupy a certain middle ground between regular boxes and line arrays ... they provide more output with more directivity control than a regular box ... but not as much output or directivity control as a line array ... unfortunately their SIZE / WEIGHT is on the higher end of the spectrum rather than in the middle ... i think this is why serious manufacturers seem to have little interest in them ... and conversely why DIYers love them ... DIYers love gigantic boxes because that's where a DIYer can realize the biggest cost savings versus a commercial box ... you're not going to save ANYTHING by DIYing a tiny bluetooth speaker but you will save thousands by DIYing a box that weighs 200 lbs or more. but then ... what sense does it make to spend thousands to save ~ 50 lbs on amplifiers by switching to Powersoft and then add hundreds of pounds to your speakers ? JBL about a month ago came out with SRX900 arrays which are plastic box miniature arrays using woofers as small as 6.5" ... now that admittedly may be getting a little silly ... $2,500 for a speaker with two 6.5" woofers is in the same territory as that Powersoft X4 where you pay ( in USA ) ~ $10,000 for an amp with two 40 mm fans. on other hand a unity horn is a bit like that Crest 10001 ... makes equally little sense but from the other end of the spectrum ... if your unity horns work for you - great. if you want to DIY some you should also get a good bang for the buck provided you are able to properly design and build them and you don't need to move them too often. but generally speaking the range of applications for them is getting squeezed as people are looking for smaller, lighter systems with more output ... the new JBL line array element is about 50 lbs and that's with a built in amplifier. JBL makes unity-horn type speakers but they're all in the install category because they can't compete with arrays on performance to weight basis, nor are they as configurable / scalable for people who must be able to adapt their system to different venues. i'm glad the OP was able to resolve his issue and apologize for plugging line arrays instead of trying to help him. ------------- best place on the internet >>> https://dissidentsound.discoursehosting.net |
Posted By: snowflake
Date Posted: 29 June 2022 at 10:48pm
| synergy system will outperform a line array that is far bigger in total weight. and the line array system has a minimum weight due to line length far in excess of the smallest synergy configurations. yes there are some huge synergy boxes but they are lighter than the biggest line arrays. you can also do some pretty impressive ground-stacked synergy whereas line array always needs a lot of rigging. |
Posted By: Earplug
Date Posted: 30 June 2022 at 7:50am
Exactly my experience. And they will also flap around in any wind, destroying their phasing, etc. I worked at one event just before the lockdown, where one stage had 4 MT4 stacks on each side and another a DAS line array with about 20 cabs/per side plus the subs on the ground. Besides total weight of each system being a moot point, the MT4 pissed over the DAS. Absolutely no contest. ------------- Earplugs Are For Wimps! |
Posted By: tramuntana75
Date Posted: 30 June 2022 at 6:21pm
| please don"t forget that those big names was starting as DIY too......... |
Posted By: Mark James
Date Posted: 05 July 2022 at 10:07pm
nah im still lurking no one takes my crown that easily ------------- me so horny me love you long throw horn loaded for her pleasure |
Posted By: toastyghost
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 3:55pm
I actually got to hear the EM Acoustics HALO-A in very high winds - so much that the hangs were visibly rotating - at the Acoustic Stage and there was little to no audible problems. In fact, it sounded bloody great, and I made sure I told them as much. I don’t know what their waveguide looks like, but that box doesn’t use AMT drivers like the smaller boxes in the HALO range. It could well be more like several of the other best-sounding line arrays in the business, such as Meyer’s LEO & newer, which don’t use the classic multi-path waveguide style. In fact, if you do their advanced training and review their processing algorithms, you might be surprised to find that the best of the best treat their systems as a vertical array of close-coupled point sources… and also arrange their drivers, waveguides and such in formats that are oddly close to the principles behind Unity and Synergy horns. So much, that several of them even cite Tom’s patents as well as the same prior art from the likes of Czerwinski et al. Even the patent for the F1 Vero waveguide lists Meyer’s waveguide as prior art. Others have already mentioned that while a single box is heavy, it's no heavier than a cart of even mid-format line array cabinets, yet does the job of many of those. A typical hang of J3-94 and SH96HO underhung for a main stage is <400kg, with hardware included. The new Meyer Panther is the first system I've seen which really tackles the weight side of things for line arrays. It's insanely light, especially for a powered box. The Exodus line from Danley was shelved, but the narrow coverage box is still available as the SH62. The vertical hang concept is still being batted about, to allow for Far/Mid/Near hangs now that we've proven it can do the job at gigs. But it's not something that should be rushed, and frankly, there's just not that much cash in the live sound market. Check the cap against any other pro audio sector, it's surprisingly small. Personally, I spitballed some doodles for a modular system based on the SF-1 Sharc Fin, and discussed that with Tom a while back, but I doubt it'll ever go anywhere. Simpler is often better. |
Posted By: Xoc1
Date Posted: 08 July 2022 at 7:41pm
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At Glastonbury 22, I experienced significant loss of vocals when listening to the Pyramid - Martin Audio system and The Other Stage - D&B audiotechnik. Both when there was a fairly strong crosswind. So this really is about the largest scale systems on site. This has been apparent to me ever since Line array systems appeared & does not seem to appreciably improved. I suppose I was fairly spoilt by the Turbosound Flashlight systems in use up to the turn of the century although you could not concider them perfect, too many bass interference nulls from the stereo type LF setup. I do especially concider the D&B Audiotechnik system as used on the Other Stage to be superb performing system. But still the same performance problems prevail at the extremities of the audience area with a crosswind.
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Posted By: Earplug
Date Posted: 09 July 2022 at 10:25am
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Ok - some systems must be better than others in the wind - or dealing with hang-angles, etc. Anyone here have any experience with the EV X-Line System? Maybe it was an early system, but one of my first experiences with a line array was setting up one of those. And in a large marquee - no winds, but it was still a nightmare. We had a tech/IT guy there that had been on a course to set the thing up (Lake processors), but no way could he get it to sound any good. We had a couple of ropes attached to each side to stabilise the hangs - and at one point one of the roadies went and tightened up one of the ropes - and VUALA - everything clicked into phase. It was bloody hilarious. ------------- Earplugs Are For Wimps! |
Posted By: toastyghost
Date Posted: 09 July 2022 at 1:57pm
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Having looked up Ed at EM’s patent for the HALO A and B waveguide, it’s not unsurprising to see that it isn’t massively dissimilar to the arrangement used in the newer Jericho cabinets. https://patents.google.com/patent/GB2583075A/" rel="nofollow - https://patents.google.com/patent/GB2583075A/ The stated goals and reasonings are the same, and the path configurations are equivalent except for the end result of a planar wavefront at the exit, versus Tom’s desired curved wavefront to match the stepped conical flare of a Synergy Horn. Open the PDF for the drawings, and by all means follow the prior cited works from L’Acoustics, JBL and Clair. The ‘wind thing’ has some interesting causes. The sound isn’t ‘blown away’ although that’s what it feels like. While there don’t seem to be specific studies into the ‘why’, the issue seems to be the change in velocity and pressure of the fluid medium and the effect on a ‘squished’ wavefront. Throw in some auditory masking effects - not too dissimilar to that used in MP3 and other lossy compression techniques, and boom the vocal’s gone. Annoyingly, this utterly ruined one of the few sets at Glasto I could make time for - Wet Leg at the Park. Martin Longbow rig, big area, barely audible even at the console. What’s more interesting to me is that these issues appear to be worst after the critical distance is reached. That’s the ‘d-border’ in Fresnel parlance, where the sources transition to point-source behaviour. It is frequency-dependent, based on line length and curvature, but unless the hang is VERY long, it's not a line array (near field behaviour) much past the typical FOH position. So the comparison becomes more curious - even without the array processing that treats the systems as coupled point sources - we're comparing things that acoustically should be 'the same'... |
Posted By: Earplug
Date Posted: 09 July 2022 at 3:15pm
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The "wind thing" seems to involve the lateral twisting or movement of the hang, which somehow compromises the phasing/summation of the system. I have experienced this several times now over the years - including the one I mention above with X-Line. The company I was working for there had all the EV systems - MT2/4, X-Array, Deltamax, etc., etc. - and I think that was the first time out for the X-Line. I think that they had tested it in the warehouse, but maybe not well enough. They would have saved a lot of time and stress just putting up their MT4.  ------------- Earplugs Are For Wimps! |
Posted By: toastyghost
Date Posted: 09 July 2022 at 6:37pm
Even if the hang itself doesn’t physically move much, the issues occur. A rotation of the entire hang’s azimuth won’t create that much of a phase cancellation with the opposite side, because the systems aren’t usually designed to do ‘stereo’ anyway 🤫 If you observe the 1/3 octave band ‘slices’ for the coverage of a line array in the vocal range in software that isn’t heavily smoothed, you’ll see that there is comb filtering occurring. The thing is, humans are quite good at picking out things we ‘know’ in that situation because lots of comb filters occur in nature - from our environment, other sources of noise, even our own bloody heads in the HF range. That’s harder to do when the interference isn’t ‘stationary’ though. I think the ‘win’ for Synergy style boxes (including the big format point source ‘alikes’ such as Fulcrum’s great stuff, the new Community, EV, JBL and others) in this situation is partly the fact there are fewer sources, and the coverage area is more homogenous rather than being ‘sliced up’ with devices that don’t have the same polar patterns across the frequency range. Even so, the EM HALO A rig was visibly twisting in the wind, that’s how blowy as f*ck it was up in the tent. Still sounded belting. Same for the big modern Meyer arrays I’ve heard, but their weight always scuppered their use in the UK’s theatre venues. The new Panther really seems to have targeted that. |
Posted By: madboffin
Date Posted: 14 July 2022 at 4:10pm
That's a very important point. Everything we listen to indoors is heavily comb filtered due to reflections, and we accept it as a natural process. You will only notice it when you move around, and rarely when listening to music because of the continually varying frequency spectrum. But play pink noise or a continuous tone and even a small movement of your head will make it obvious. -------- Line arrays can be heavily compromised by wind blowing to or from the direction of the stage. Consider how they are specifically designed to give a tight beam of full-range coverage in the vertical plane, but with the side-effect of quite severe comb filtering and mushiness above and below it. The wind has the same effect as randomly tilting the array up and down - even though the array, hopefully, isn't actually moving. This is even worse than a crosswind, and there's nothing you can do about it (unlike the effect of a layer of warm air over the audience, which can be compensated for by tilting the whole array downwards). |