4 T48s and 2 Cosyne synergy horn: Canberra Oz

[marko]

Got 2 completed the other day- just working on the V plate for the pair now!

[Tom Smit]

Good job!

[Bruce Weldy]

Why is the picture in black and white?

[horizonize]

Not sure if that's sarcasm Bruce ?

We are going with a black and white paint scheme.

V plate done, sits nicely and looks good, now onto pair two.

Ordered Bunker BPD 1+ and waiting for it arrive so we can flex these.

[Bruce Weldy]

Not sure if that's sarcasm Bruce ?

We are going with a black and white paint scheme.

V plate done, sits nicely and looks good, now onto pair two.

Ordered Bunker BPD 1+ and waiting for it arrive so we can flex these.

Yep, it was a joke. The picture was in color, but the subject of the picture was black and white. Guess it ain't a good joke if you have to explain it.

[miked]

Nice-looking cabs, Marko. Well done.

[Grant Bunter]

Guys, they're looking great!

Can't wait to hear your impressions when cranked, and also about the bunker DSP...

[AussieDoof]

Wow, these look lush man... seriously sweet titans. I like the two tone.

[marko]

Thanks for the kind words folks! I'm pretty happy with how they both turned out- no major issues in the whole build so far. They both sit nicely next to each other- square, same height, parallel lines etc- I'm sure my dad would be proud (if they were not boxes designed to play my infernal robot music). Going to hook them up and give them a burl tomorrow (using normal hifi floorstanders to provide the mids and highs as we are still working on the rest of the system). Will get a pic with the V plate and maybe get a vid to show shitty phone mic quality bass fuzz for you all- but what else can you do?
Got to fix a few dodgy t nuts on the next set of driver anchors before we get stuck into making their twins. That and some synergy horn experimentation is next on our list of things to do.

Got a double date out cross country skiing this saturday/sunday so not a whole bunch will get done. Will give an update with what progress we do make.

Mark

[marko]

Bit of a hiatus from us here in chilly Canberra. Had a few mornings of -6/-7 degrees that have been painful to get through but we have been plugging away at it all on the nicer weekend weather. A few nights huddled under the warming glow of 1000 watts of halogen lamps has kept the progress moving mid week too.

So we have 2 15" Ande loaded 25" wide titan 48s complete with a v plate that we got to test out 2 weekends ago. With only some Hifi floorstanders doing mids and tops duty we got them all hooked up and thumping. No noticeable air leaks around the access cover and everything seemed pretty good. Only ended up sending about 30v of the potential 60v to them (we were still waiting on a beefier amp at this stage). They were sounding really good but we couldn't push them any harder without flooring the amp or outstripping the tops. I went for a walk around the front of the house and about 40 meters down the street and they still had a lot of clarity and carry. It was really satisfying to finally have a bit of an idea of what we were achieving with the project and it was a shame that all the motivation and energy was quickly met with the demands of another working week .

In the meantime- on a spur of the moment retail therapy moment on a mid week, cold winter night, Horizonize goes out and buys all the kit for a set of synergy horns so we shift gears and start reading up on that caper. its an attractive option because of the quick build time, the inherent qualities of the design, and the fact that we already have some w bins that we can restore to get a full system up and running quicker than building a pair of DRs.

So this past weekend we bang out a prototype of the synergy horn and set it up with a solo titan for a bit of a play. Yes there is a pretty big gap in the system as it was with no dedicated driver for the mids and our crossover setting was asking a lot of both speakers but we were really impressed with the clarity and dispersion from the horn and are looking forward to having a chance to dial it in when we have more time and more completed cabs.

Fast forward to this week and 2 18sound 15s arrive in the mail for our w bins, and we now have a QSC amp capable of getting all 4 titans to the 60v limit. Hopefully we will be able to make another matching synergy prototype and mod the w bins to fit the new drivers in time for the weekend so we can have a good play with the eq on what is almost a complete system (well, minus the other two t48s that are all cut but yet to be assembled! )

[marko]

Had a big day today finishing off the 2nd synergy horn and getting the W bins ready to accept the new drivers. Got them all set up and after a few false starts (still figuring out the processor/limiter/crossovers atm) got them all working nicely together. Could not do the Auto EQ because we didn't have the right cable for the Mic- so everything was by ear on a few of our favorite reference tracks. We were really liking it- the windows in my house that were buzzing were not...

They sound the business...now we just need to make them look that way too. Some more bracing for the W bins and a few coats of paint are definitely in order.

[escapemcp]

What frequencies are you crossing over at with the W-bins and the horns?
Also where did you get the Synergy horns from? You seemed to imply that they are a kit??

[marko]

The synergy horns are built using this spreadsheet made by Bill Waslo over on the DIY hifi forums.http://libinst.com/SynergyCalc/Synergy%20Calc%20V5.pdf
We went with a Compression driver and 4x 4" mids set up.
It is not a prescriptive build process as the BFM stuff- we had to figure some stuff out ourselves, and take a few educated guesses- but the spreadsheet gives you all the panel dimensions and angles and It is easy enough once you spend some time with it. By kit in my previous post- i meant put in an order for the required drivers from speaker hardware.com. All the panels we cut ourselves from 1/2" MDF on the table saw we got for the rest of the build. Given the patent on the Synergy stuff from Danley, I think it is unlikely anyone would be making flat pack kits- or at least for very long. Bill has arranged the spreadsheet nicely so you never have to cut any compound angles. Some glue, brads, putty an filing and you are ready to go.

As for the crossovers- I'll let Horizonize chime in with the details as he was the one working with the processor. I think it was titans 40-100hz, kicks 100-500hz, not sure what the division between the 4" mid tops and the CD was...

mark

[horizonize]

hi everyone,

just woke up after massive effort yesterday to finally make some noise.

nice noise too, fairly clean and open, but still a lot of work to be done. tops sounding a lot more coherent after spending some time puttying up and sanding back the ports and frustums

running the system three way - bunker sending one mono channel to QSC gx7 using the internal 100hz low pass to split signal to T48s and 15nlw9300 w bins, each wired in series. limited at 40v as a precaution.

w bins crossing to hi-mids at 500hz then hi-mids to BMS cd at 1000hz.

no eqing yet, just adjusting gains on amps.

the bunker sounds good, but software is quite fidlly not sure if it updates changes real time to the processor or if you have to load them over with a send command. the rs485-usb interface is also interfering with the
trackpad on the shitty asus windows laptop. some parameters seem to be drifting i.e.. set the hipass for the subs at 40hz and came back half hour later and it was stitting at 90hz. i suspect that the fact that the software operates through a communication port rather than being strictly plug n play might be causing some random cross talk commands.

does anyone with experience using the bunker have tips on usb rs485 connections?

[Grant Bunter]

does anyone with experience using the bunker have tips on usb rs485 connections?

Just a thought,
Can you programme the bunker without using a USB?
As in set,save and forget standalone?

Or, if you have to use USB, can you set then save, and then operate the unit standalone?

Overall, sounds like a RS RS485/USB driver issue...