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Which 15" reflex

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JBK View Drop Down
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    Posted: 06 February 2018 at 1:02pm
Greetings,

I come for 15" enclosure suggestions to play above 18" superscoopers and under 12" (beyma 12mi100) in closed enclosure, covering the 80 - 250 frequency range (ideally they should play flat up to 300hz)
We play reggae & dub mainly, in rooms of different sizes, or outdoors.
For now we have 2 gsubs (so 4 18" drivers) covering this frequency band but I think they lack a bit of punch, and lack on the upper frequencies/won't go high enough in order to meet our 12" drivers (and may not sound best for the low mid range of the music, voice insruments) However the current configuration sounds pretty good to many people (we had an amazing night friday with the King Earthquake @ La Rodia with a lot of compliments on sound quality)
Also it's a bit overkill to have 18" drivers and it would be more managable (size, load, amp power etc) to have 15" instead of 18".
I'm thinking reflex over other types of enclosures, because it allows to have a wide frequency range, especially going up enough to meet our high med drivers while keeping a good audio quality. Also (but i consider this optional) with reflex we can more easily use them under full range boxes for little setups (and one or a few 15" could fit in a car, not a gsub)
Why change now? we currently have 6 scoops, 2 gsubs, 2 double 12" boxes (and compressions + tweeters) and we plan to scale up to 8 scoops, 8 15" reflex drivers, 8 12" (still in closed enclosure for now, then straight horns) so instead of building 2 more gsubs, we build a full section of (8 singles or 4 double) reflexes.
Based on my experience I would go for this box : http://boomboomcollective.free.fr/site_downloads/BBC.BR215.MidBass_Speaker_Design.pdf loaded with rcf L15P530 as I've heard it played by several sounds (this box is pretty popular here in france) and it seems to fit nicely over scoops. also the rcf drivers are easily avaialble from France at a nice price.
I know that reflex boxes are the most simple to design and simulate, but as much as I would like to design my own box I won't be able to build test boxes and adjust them via trial and error, so I need a free design who will work for sure.
Single or doubles, we don't really care, we are used to move scoops and gsubs, so a double 15 certainly won't be as big/heavy.
I made this thread for suggestions, I guess I pretty much explained our situation, please have a go if you think that a driver / plan combo would suit our needs better than the bbc
Thanks!

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hemisphere Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 February 2018 at 1:59pm
You can tune ports without building a test box.

For 15" reflex covering 80Hz and up you should be able to get away with stock plastic round ports, flared on one end, trim on the other until you get the tuning you were aiming for.

I can't see any disadvantage to doing it that way besides the benefit of the reputation of a specific box design, but with reflex it's just as easy to track down the reputation of a specific driver, and then you could choose one based on other factors relevant to you like price, weight, weatherproofing, power handling etc. Or if you have some drivers to hand you could use them.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JBK Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 February 2018 at 2:10pm
Thanks a lot for your answer!
Mmmh I may search a bit more on designing a BR, if it's just a matter of changing pipes I may try that.
Regarding the reputation of the box, we really don't care as we don't rent our sound and don't plan to sell them soon :)

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hemisphere Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 February 2018 at 7:45pm
No problem.

The benefit of reputation I meant was that it helps you to pick a box (or driver) well known for delivering what you require.

The other benefit of a more established box design is they sometimes have well documented build threads available, but those can be a good starting point for your own developments.

Edited by Hemisphere - 06 February 2018 at 8:00pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JBK Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 February 2018 at 9:32am
Yes, that's what I thought also.
So I'll try to simulate the bbc, and find other suitable drivers and try simulate boxes to see what changes, for now my default option stays the bbc
I've found a few threads on this already but this one stays open for suggestions on drivers and/or plans as old threads may miss new drivers, may talk about discontinued ones, also a lot of photos missing etc...


Edited by JBK - 08 February 2018 at 9:33am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Prizefighter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 February 2018 at 8:27pm
Will the BBC design be large enough to stack your mid/tops on? I would assume so, as it's a fairly large box (not as large as a G sub, though). 

I just wanted to throw that out there, as sometimes I find myself getting too focused on the technical aspects of a design and completely forget about the simple question: "will this box fit?" Big smile
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JBK Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 February 2018 at 11:29am
Thanks for the reminder :)
Yes the box will fit
the final plan is to have 2 scoops for 1 BBC and 1 double 12", they are not the same size but each box is smaller than the box it's over, you can have a look at the current congif on this thread where I posted it, 4th post of the thread :
https://forum.speakerplans.com/scoop-porn-part-2_topic46967_page219.html

Take this stack, remove 2 scoops, replace the gsubs by 2 BBC and put the 12" medium in horns -> our final plan is to have 2 stacks like that,


Edited by JBK - 11 February 2018 at 11:40am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hemisphere Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 February 2018 at 11:41am
Such a shame to have to change that stack. Looks great as it is! 

Are you sure you're not just lacking in output on the kick band? 4 reflex drivers above 6 scoops will really struggle to keep up. There may be some viable options available by rejigging your g-sub and 12" driver selection - playing the 12" lower, running less scoops per g-sub and finding an 18 that will take more juice, then you could keep the styling as it is and avoid building new boxes altogether.

You talk about horn loading the 12's, presumably for more output, but I think even with your plan as stated your bottleneck for output will be in the kick band not the mids - even if it feels like your music program has less kick and more mids to it, that's partly a trick of the ear as it's more sensitive in that region - Decent closed box mids will certainly be fine 1 to 1 with a reflex kick.


Edited by Hemisphere - 11 February 2018 at 12:08pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JBK Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 February 2018 at 7:37am
Quote Such a shame to have to change that stack. Looks great as it is!

Smile Thanks! And it sounds great already (we have made a lot of progress over the years)
 We'll take the same wood for future builds to keep the visual integrity

Quote Are you sure you're not just lacking in output on the kick band? 4 reflex drivers above 6 scoops will really struggle to keep up. There may be some viable options available by rejigging your g-sub and 12" driver selection - playing the 12" lower, running less scoops per g-sub and finding an 18 that will take more juice, then you could keep the styling as it is and avoid building new boxes altogether.

For now I don't really find we lack output in the kick, it's more that the higher frequencies do not sound super nice (I guess that xould be 150-250) I would say they sound a bit "forced" (talking about the lowend of certain vocals, or some instruments, but that's not drastic at all) and we can't really lower the 12" cutoff (the 12" do not sound good down low)

The final stacks as I was talking about (maybe not clearly enough, sorry english is not my native langage Embarrassed) will have 1xscoop / 1x15" reflex / 1x12" / 1xcomp / 2xtweets ratio, ultimately. (2 stacks of 4 scoops) pretty much what we have now when we take out "only" 4 scoops, I find this sounds balanced in terms of power between each frequency band.

Any way we'll need to build more boxes so building 4 bbc instead of 2 gsubs is not the biggest issue/investment we have now, and we will save money by needing less amplification with the 4 bbc compared to 4 gsubs

I'm not hoping for drastically increase how this stack sounds by doing this (I'm waiting to increase quality not quantity), but also reducing the overall size (and things like be able to lift 1 kick box over the scoops by ony 2 people), amp power needed for the kicks.

Also we use the same 18" drivers for kicks and scoops so the unused drivers won't be a waste.

Quote You talk about horn loading the 12's, presumably for more output, but I think even with your plan as stated your bottleneck for output will be in the kick band not the mids - even if it feels like your music program has less kick and more mids to it, that's partly a trick of the ear as it's more sensitive in that region - Decent closed box mids will certainly be fine 1 to 1 with a reflex kick.


For putting the mids in horns, it's more about having a better dispertion and high frequency cutoff to better match our compression driver than increasing the output as they play loud enough, but we don't plan to do this for now, as we have already the closed boxes for the new mids

Anyway thanks to make me think again through all this, I find this always a good exercise to question the serious decisions we'll take


Edited by JBK - 12 February 2018 at 9:45am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JonB67 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 February 2018 at 9:10am
Hi,

I built a pair of subs from some bms 15n630s

They're really good but im considering building a double 18 inch sub and rebuilding these as a compact 15 inch gsub style double and using as kicks. I think they would be fantastic for that. Compared to my old peavey subs and even tuned to 40hz the punch and clarity from them is remarkable. I havent simmed them for a dedicated kick yet though.... next job!

15"sub build
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