Dance of the Seven Veils

Merlin, I took the post in the manner appropriate to having just consumed a bottle of red at the neighbours barbie.

You have to remember that the ultimate constraint on my design is size. I'm not alone in this. There's a few of us who have come to the conclusion that we have to sell the damn things.

I merely said: "A smaller long-throw driver ... is often as good or better than a 12" driver which doesn't have such cone excursion. It will probably take a much smaller box too."

If you disagree with this then let's agree to disagree. I'm going to have a beer with the wife and listen to some music.

Steve

Actually, I thought my non-considered response was quite amusing.

 

Steve,

No problems Obviously using larger drivers in a domestically acceptable enclosure requires a ported design. Maybe we can try your sats crossed over to my subs at say 300hz in the future. Just to give an idea

 

What about directionality with the subs at 300Hz?

 

Ah my little box of trick sill take care of that Seriously the main reason for directionality seems to be the impulse response of the sub's driver, provided the distance from sub to sat is not that great. Running bass units designed to crossover in the midrange and midrange units designed to produce bass below 80hz seems to reduce the apparent discontinuity.

Oh and time alignment of course

 

I guess the only disadvantage with sealed boxes is that they demand a great deal of driving power (wattage) from the partnering amp to get decent SPL levels, otherwise, they would seem to offer the best control I guess. Was going to ask your thoughts on TL's and why you went sealed box instead of TL? I'd not heard a good TL until I heard a few of the Meadowlark speakers, a friend had a pair of TDL RTL 3's and the bass from those sounded as if they were coming from a car driving past in the street outside instead of from the actual speaker along with the rest of the music! :SLEEP:

I reckon the 8 inch long throw woofer in my Verity's would certainly be more than adequate in a different, read smaller (?) room. They are certainly quite capable of what I term as "obvious" bass, but the do appear to me to be lacking in subtle texture, or low level harmonics which say add to recording venue ambience, the overtones on brass or wood wind instruments, or skin/body reasonaces on timpani drums say. They also need to be played at quite highish levels to drive the room. Was very pleased to have the active subs back in today, they added exactly what I thought to be missing but not in ways that many think might be obvious, and were able to add weight, body and scale at lower volumes which meant less need for winding up the wick - but I still did anyway as it was so much fun - a bit like eating health food for a week and then getting to tuck into your first plate of fish and chips! :JOEL:

You'd be more than welcome to come over for a listen Steve. Just depends if you fancy travelling all the way down to east Devon, I know it's a bit of trek from where you are.

I'd rather get rid of the doors all together actually and have a good solid wall put up instead! The rattling was from a set of sliding doors which partitions the kitchen from the lounge/diner (the hi-fi is in the lounge). Looks like a shody piece of DIY from the previous owner's of this place!

 

Ah that'll be the distortion than

Seroiusly Henry, anything can give the "impression" of sufficient bass, even LS3/5A's for christ's sake.

But to get proper delineation and timbral acuracy requires low distortion drivers IMHO. Most Mid Woofers simply don't cut it here for me I'm afraid, although musically they can be most entertaining.

 

If anything, it sounds more like a lack of distortion to me, IMO the Verity's usually like to play it safe and can sound a bit over damped in certain areas in the bass region at times (or is that my room ). Having said that, I can get them to audibly port chuff (on the bass module) with one or two discs in my collection at moderate to high volume levels.

Depends what you call bass I guess. LS3/5A's are certainly very linear and do a very good job at covering the frequency band they were designed for and no more, which IMO is the best policy. Always better to perform very well for a given set of criteria or range, than try and do everything half as well or even fail miserably at others. You can't ask an LS3/5A to play loud or let their hair down (dynamically/scale-wise) though, so mid-bass within reason I'd say.

 

Henry,

to me, lack of timbral definition in the bass is the result of distortion, or accentuation of a fequency due to room nodes. I agree that a lack of distortion in the bass can give the impression that there is actually less bass. But definition is a welcome reward

Yep LS3/5A's juice up the midbass. Nought wrong with that, unless you listen to modern electronica or at realistic levels

 

Size considerations is all. For the future, I could go the TL route or do a 15" Bandor driver in a sealed box (flat right down to Blue Whale range). That'd keep Merlin quiet for a while.

The thing is that the Little Awesomes are matched to the Nonsuch 4s. The bigger sub would be for a bigger main system. To build this while remaining true to Seventh Veil principals needs new (and revolutionary) drive units. Doreen and I are working on these but no details. It's completely hush-hush for now.

I'd love to come down. Bring my speakers? I do get down to Somerset from time to time. That's a good part of the way, isn't it?

I should work out a way of doing road-shows - demos in specific areas. Hiring a room in a hotel would be easy (though not ideal mains-wise, all you Spurs fans). The tricky bit would be to find a way of advertising to bring a few prospective customers in. Then I'd be able to visit you guys and do some bizz at the same time. :boogie:

 

All very interesting stuff, especially the 15" sealed box idea. Would it be passive or active?

No problem at all Steve, your speakers are welcome as well of course. I guess I'm about 25 minutes drive west from Taunton if that gives you a better idea, straight down the M5.

Tricky indeed... Guess you could stick up some posts on the hi-fi (and a/v?) forums which have no commercial connections like here or Pink Fish maybe. Not sure what places like Hi-Fi Choice or Naim, for example, would make of such a thing though. Probably best venue for this (south west) part of the country would be Bristol, but any further west probably wouldn't be fruitful as you'd be trying to sell to farmer Giles and co - not many Audiophile down here which is why I end up travelling eastwards mostly to hear other kit/systems.