Grant and/or ADTG, if the amp is 12 channels, and you have 6 channels to power . . well, couldn't a 7ch amp have fit the bill, or are these 12 channels able to be bridged down to 6 or something . . . ? Thanks.
Orion uses 8 channels, and the other four channels are supposedly for 2-way active surrounds (IE Linkwitz Pluto) for a 4.0 system. Linkwitz doesn't believe music NEEDs the addition of subs for the bottom octave (the thor) or center channels (which distract him visually
) and has "no interest in moving pictures".
btw, that's a pretty intense looking xover! Do people DIY that (or just the speaker, and xover is bought as prebuilt)?
It can be DIYed like anything else. Printed Circuit Boards are sold, and most of what's on there is caps and opamps, though it's more complex than most passive circuits. Linkwitz even has a "Orion Challenge" on his website where he basically gives you enough information details to design an Orion yourself. Otherwise you can purchase plans. Otherwise you can purchase kits including ready made circuit boards and even flat packs. Otherwise you can purchase the full made Orion or Pluto. It's pretty well marketed, all things considered.
2) I imagine all sorts of things must be so different with dipole design, but I am curious how this design gets away with a relatively low xover point of 1.4khz for tweeter/mid. (I am under the impression that for best dialogue intelligibility, at least with typical boxed speakers, the xover point should be somewhere between the 2k-4k range.) I don't expect you to know ADTG, but I'm hoping someone has a bit of light to shed.
The Seas Millenium is one of the few 1.25" drivers out there that can play down to 1.4khz with a 4th order crossover cleanly. The Excel W22 likely needed to be crossed this low because its magnesium cone breakup is
intense around 4khz.
I think you don't want to hear crossover artifacts in the midrange. Now in my opinion this is probably because most people design crossovers based on on-axis response. The problem with this is that an 8" woofer and a 1" tweeter are not going to have matching OFF axis response. So you "hear" the difference between the drivers. You also hear the vertical cancelations in the form of ceiling/floor reflections in the crossover region (Most of us should really treat our ceilings with diffusion to take that reflection away... just MTMs likely can't quite do the trick) That's why I think the best speaker would have a DEQX. It can do a linear phase, finite impulse response 300db/octave filter. It's such a sharp filter that the crossover region becomes tiny enough that it's negligible. The most well known speakers to do this are the Focal SM11 Monitors and the NHT XDs system. I believe Seaton's Catalysts also use similar filters but I can't confirm it. But the graphs of FIR crossovers like the DEQX look a lot better than even the best analog crossovers, passive or active. Just being digital doesn't make it FIR, but FIR must be digital to my understanding. Audessey EQ also uses FIR filters when it EQs. It can apply many many filters without introducing ringing to the overall sound. That's why audessey EQ'd bass is good IMO, not bad.
From what I've read, the power response of the Orion in the crossover region really isn't anything to write home about strictly
in a crossover sense...
A speaker like the Revel Salon2
likely has a superior midrange, because the drivers are chosen specifically to mate to one another as far as 60 degrees off axis, radiating uniformly. The end result there unfortunately is a complex 4-way speaker.
Orion does have excellent power response relative to 95% of speakers in the world, so this is just picking at nits. Because the Orion is a dipole, much of the side wall, ceiling, and floor reflections are canceled out. It's almost like a speaker that "Treats the room by itself" by taking away the most undesirable, dissimilar off axis response (it is "canceled") without taking away life from the room sound (those walls can still be reflective with later reflections, starting with the returning of rearwards sound waves)
What do I know though, I just read **** online without hearing it
so don't take my word on it, ADTG actually owns the things
Where dipoles like the Orion
also excel is midbass. The rear waves and the forward waves sort of act as "multiple subs". That means everywhere from 100hz to 500hz where we can't use subs but still have room effects, the orions should have smoothed out response. I've seen some waterfall graphs of rooms with dipoles and they're ridiculously good compared to monopoles. To match that type of waterfall with monopoles, you would likely need CLD walls, tons of diffusion panels, and a speaker with narrow directivity to avoid early, early reflections without absorbing most reflections (a horn, basically).
If I were purchasing a dipole, I would get a Nao Note. its radiation is a lot more uniform, more similar to the revel speaker. I don't think the drivers are as super ultra high end, and some of the crossovers used are passive (it is a hybrid speaker, with active equalization and low end crossovers but passive on the higher end) but I think its design is probably better overall. at $2000 just to
build one, though, that's still way too hella expensive for me
but I think it's probably like, the speaker I want.
Another cooler, more expensive, needs a person to actually do some design work, option for a dipole would be a huge 18" oblate spheriod waveguide with a JBL berylium compression driver, also a dipole, with a 15" acoustic elegance mid, and some TC sounds woofers... all dipole... and crossed 200db/octave below 1khz wherever the off axis works best... actively FIR with a DEQX
but that's also uber expensive.
I've gone off on a tangent, haven't I?
3) Hey, where is that second tweeter located?
The
original orions didn't have rear tweeters. IT was added afterwards, when Linkwitz realized that dipole figure 8 radiation shouldn't just be for the woofer, but for as much of the passband as possible to improve the uniformity of radiation into the room.
I want to know if Q (of all types) become transient perfect at 0.5, because then your drivers are transient perfect.
I don't think transient perfect is the right word... "Critically Damped" Q = .5 to me implies that there is completely negligible resonance or spring loading of the woofer. Basically, when it pushes into the box, the box never pushes back (no ringing as it pushes the cone after). Of course for an open baffle speaker that's obvious anyways, free air won't push back. But even a big box can be critical enough that it won't push back unless you're.... like me. I built a sealed maelstrom and my box Q was only .577... and the box is
HUGE if you haven't seen it. But if you think about it, an air spring loaded box, IE Q = .8 will often have better "transient" than a low Q box because the spring pushes it back when it pushes in, and sucks it in when it pushes out. It will have worse decay but would in theory have less overhang if a driver has a poor motor.
Q is not only mechanical but also electrical (yes..analog filters can also "ring").
Critically Damped Q with sealed or dipole designs means you don't hear any box effects... hence the most natural, tight, but "invisible" bass. The drawback is that the drivers will reach maximum excursion with much ease. It's a lot easier to bottom a woofer in free air like AtiLinkwitzGuy's Orion's Peerless woofers than it is to bottom those same woofers inside a box with Q = .707 for example.
That's why the Orion is only 60 wpc. It's efficient at low frequencies, to the point where more power would just bottom the drivers. It has decent output, but it has its limiations unless you add monopole subs (Thor) below 40hz to reduce excursion.
That's also why I think TLS Guy likes transmission lines and why I want to build one. A half wave pipe reduces excursion compared to sealed or free air if the driver is placed correctly, but is basically a critically damped "enclosure". You get deep bass but it's tight just like a critically damped box, and less distortion from over excursion. I don't know if the bass is deeper than the equivalent sealed or infinite baffle driver, but in a half wave pipe it is 12db/octave dropoff, or so they say.
Ported speakers don't normally easily get critically damped. I think a good, huge, extended bass shelf vented box can truly be such with the correct drivers, but I'm not the type to put it to the test. Mass Loaded Transmission Lines like the Dennis Murphy ER18s and Salk HT2-TLs are essentially like this. Ported Boxes whose resonances have been damped (with stuffing according to martin J king's transmission line models) for a clean, natural sound rather than the traditional "vented" sound.
Probably though you want to tune any ported speaker below 16hz though. This will get group delay so low it sounds just like sealed. And you would need a great subwoofer like an LMS-R or Maelstrom to do it. Warpdrv wouldn't approve of any helmholtz resonator though
But I think critically damped with ported is possible is the gist of it, giving more output down low (for huge rooms which don't add low end gain). You could then EQ it down for flat room response, rather than EQ it up and compromise headroom. Tuning it based on your room gain, you could get flat response as low as 12hz
But back to AtiLinkwitzGuy's speakers. We're waiting for juicy pics, buddy
