Sound dampening foam, is it needed?

[MissileCrisis]

Thank you but my issue (since I am already modeling it in Bassbox pro) which handles the following amounts of dampening : light, heavy, none, is not that I can't see how it affects the tuning of the box, electrical/mech power handling/excursion/phase/vent velocity but rather how it affects the (ignored by the model) midrange as Bill mentioned. I will try taking away stuffing until it sounds right.

New question: How can I tell what frequency crossover will strain a tweeter? I've always used the rule of thumb that 1k above the resonant frequency, 3rd order or higher , should be alright? But someone on Parts Express responded to my question saying he wouldn't use any lower than a third order at 2800 for that tweeter else midrange distortion. (1500 above RS freq). This doesn't exactly work with the tweeter I picked . I think my best bet is to either return the tweeter (not looking forward to return shipping to PE) or try 4th order at the 2300 Hz mark and pray.

[Grant Bunter]

Thank you but my issue (since I am already modeling it in Bassbox pro) which handles the following amounts of dampening : light, heavy, none, is not that I can't see how it affects the tuning of the box, electrical/mech power handling/excursion/phase/vent velocity but rather how it affects the (ignored by the model) midrange as Bill mentioned. I will try taking away stuffing until it sounds right.

Bill answered that on page 1 for you

Cabinet damping is absolutely mandatory. Failure to do so will result in reflected waves going out the port and also going back to the cone, causing major peaks and dips in response.

New question: How can I tell what frequency crossover will strain a tweeter? I've always used the rule of thumb that 1k above the resonant frequency, 3rd order or higher , should be alright? But someone on Parts Express responded to my question saying he wouldn't use any lower than a third order at 2800 for that tweeter else midrange distortion. (1500 above RS freq). This doesn't exactly work with the tweeter I picked . I think my best bet is to either return the tweeter (not looking forward to return shipping to PE) or try 4th order at the 2300 Hz mark and pray.

My (simple) understanding of selecting crossover points is that you select the point for a given speaker/driver, based on the analysing SPL and impedance plots.

[Charles Jenkinson]

Eminence Has a speaker design software program.

The software itself is an abomination and even needs the CD rom to function... and only worked on 1 of my 4 PC's... and the support people suck giant donkey balls. Hopefully they wind up reading this...

YOU SUCK!!! ...... BIG HAIRY DONKEY BALLS!!!

LOL!

I'm pretty sure this eclipses my Driverack PA+ rant. They're not owned by Harman are they?

[MissileCrisis]

Whats wrong with the pa+? A fellow forum member mentioned that he wanted someone to help him set has up. I know full well how to use my behringer 2496 but are there any quirks about this unit I need to know?

[Bruce Weldy]

Whats wrong with the pa+? A fellow forum member mentioned that he wanted someone to help him set has up. I know full well how to use my behringer 2496 but are there any quirks about this unit I need to know?

No quirks, but not the greatest manual. Too many assumptions and not enough real world "here's how you do this" kinda' stuff.

BTW, that's something that Presonus does a good job with - giving you the why you use something and how.

[Charles Jenkinson]

I started using my PA+ yesterday for the first time. I set the crossovers, limiters and did auto-eq, but every screen I looked at on the display, I was looking at for the first time, and there are no screen images in the manual to explain what parameters are what and where on the screen. I did not find the display layouts intuitive, and only managed to dial in 15volts of limiting (from 50 down to 35, to be 'safe') sort of by accident, because the starting value of threshold was 12. I was expecting zero as a starting point. When I took it down to 8, the voltage went down from 50v to about 35. I appreciate even these words here are awkward without images and explanations - I need to figure out a way forward - it's not acceptable.

Note, there is an HML symbol in the top left of the screen. I have not seen anywhere where that was explained to be high, mid and low, and that the screens cycle through these, in accordance with whether you have a 2 or 3 way set up.

Bah humbug.

[Bruce Weldy]

The folks at dbx are assuming a certain amount of expertise and experience in using their product. As they offer lower-priced models, they should realize that the market they are selling to will most likely have less expertise than those who have historically been purchasing the high-end processors.

It's still a great product and not that tough to use if you have some knowledge of system setup. And if not, just ask.

Of course, since there are a lot of people who buy 'em and never understand 'em, there are a lot on the used market for pretty cheap - so maybe those bad manuals are a good thing after all......