Axiom 401 in a Metronome Cabinet

[Cressy Snr]

This has been coming for a while but now the missus has gotten fed up of the baffles.
By Christmas, the front room will have been decorated and she wants me to have built a new pair of speakers by then.

So this evening I have been listening to the 401s without the tweeters and I must say though they miss out on the final bit of treble extension,
they are not bad at all, unfatiguing is the word. With a crossover point around 8kHz to a helper tweeter they ought to sound very nice in a box.

I've been attempting to work out a Metronome for them and have ended up with a 5 foot tall cabinet with a 12 x 12 top, tapering out to an 18 x 18 base.
Still a big bstard but I made a couple of sides out of cardboard and actually it does not impose visually as much as the baffles do due to the taper.

Really the cab ought to be a six footer with a 20 by 20 base but that is bordering on the ridiculous, In the absence of MJKs MLTL worksheets I'm hoping that I can get away with those dimensions.
Watch for a drawing.

[Cressy Snr]

Here's an impression:

[pre65]

Would a Frugal horn mk3 not be a suitable candidate ?

My pair are not far behind my baffles in performance at home.

[andrew Ivimey]

18 inch, 20 inch footprint - whassa difference to WAF factor? go on - you know you want to The taller things get after a while actually makes the cabinets look smaller - honest ... ahem!

[Lee S]

That looks like the sh1t-brown vinyl that my old-man's 1976 Ford Consul's roof was covered with.....

[chris661]

I believe these are 12" drivers, Phil.

Not sure if they'd go in the FH3s, even if they were made wider (the depth would hinder).

I think I'd try them in a decent sized ported box tuned ~40Hz. Similar to the ones at Owston driven by the Scrap Amp.

[pre65]

I believe these are 12" drivers, Phil.

Not sure if they'd go in the FH3s, even if they were made wider (the depth would hinder).

I think I'd try them in a decent sized ported box tuned ~40Hz. Similar to the ones at Owston driven by the Scrap Amp.

I didn't mean using the Goodmans drivers silly.

Has anyone near Steve got any Frugal horn 3's ?

[Cressy Snr]

I think I'd try them in a decent sized ported box tuned ~40Hz. Similar to the ones at Owston driven by the Scrap Amp.

Hi Chris
The Metronome design is a mass loaded tapered quadratic quarter wave resonator enclosure, so it does have a port and you are on the right lines as usual!

The port is in the base and vents via arched openings on all four sides.

I designed these around five years ago around a Fostex FE108ESigma driver Then Scott and Planet10 (Dave Dlugos) developed the design into larger enclosures for a wide range of drivers.

You can read about them here
http://www.frugal-horn.com/metronome.html

There is also a long thread on diyaudio that goes from 2006 to the present.
It gives a good history of the design and there are quite a few pics of ones that folks have built.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-ran ... onome.html

[steve s]

nice one steve, i've tried quite a few goodmans 12" in ported /sealed boxes, in my experence they are more dynamic sounding in bigger boxes than smaller ones
a couple of years ago i bought a 201 in a 3 cft cab it sounded lifeless to me... off came the back, the music came to life and the bass hardly changed...
my accoustic (quad) corner ribbons, are basically 12" goodmans in horn loaded reflex ...and they sound very nice,

i would go for as big as you can squeeze in, just knock one up first, then compare to what you have.

[chris661]

Do you, per chance, have the option to measure the T/S specs of the Goodmans drivers?

Hmm, non-linear expansion rate... Reading to be done!

Watching with interest. I also note that back in 2006, you were using subwoofers.

[Cressy Snr]

Watching with interest. I also note that back in 2006, you were using subwoofers.

Yes and it is those very plate amps from those subs I had back then that provide the active bass for the present day baffles

[Cressy Snr]

This'll be a big bugger n'all missus is having second thoughts.

Still, I'll work on her

[Toppsy]

Steve,

If you can't persuade your wife to accept the large metronomes, what about something like these:



You're welcome to come over and have a listen anytime it suits.

They might just surprise you with how good they sound. But then I might be prejudiced there, hey

I also have some FH3 with Alpair7 drivers (to me the best sounding driver in this design) you could audition at the same time.

[Mike H]

This has been coming for a while but now the missus has gotten fed up of the baffles.
By Christmas, the front room will have been decorated and she wants me to have built a new pair of speakers by then.

Wot the ones with the cream-or-whatever-colour-it-is (memory is unreliable) grill cloth? Woz up wiv 'em?

[Cressy Snr]

This has been coming for a while but now the missus has gotten fed up of the baffles.
By Christmas, the front room will have been decorated and she wants me to have built a new pair of speakers by then.

Wot the ones with the cream-or-whatever-colour-it-is (memory is unreliable) grill cloth? Woz up wiv 'em?

Yep...I don't get it. She doesn't like a 4 foot by 18 inch slab staring at her
but will quite readily put up with a 5 foot high truncated pyramid. My 26 year old daughter is of the same opinion.

That's the trouble with Metronomes, Women love them. All of the wife's and my own female friends/colleagues just swoon over their looks...
no, I'm not kidding and mine were hardly done to Colin's standards. God knows what they would have thought if those speakers had been done by Colin.

The Americans who post on DIYAudio and have built them or had them built by cabinet makers, report the same highly positive reactions from their wives/partners.
One Guy, Jim Shearer has three pairs; his wife loves them and his mate Martin J King thinks they are a winning formula, both in terms of their sound and their looks.

IMO there's a vast untapped market out there for Metronomes as women usually detest speakers, but not these.
Trouble is I have neither the time, the money or the bottle to attempt to develop them beyond DIY.

I'm quite enthusiastic about either building some with the Axiom drivers or
doing a slightly smaller attempt with Fostex FF225WKs, both options with helper tweeters.


Colin:
I really can't promise anything at the moment, but there's might be a contract to build me a pair at some point in the next few months.
But you might have to keep them out of sight in case your missus falls in love with them and won't let them out of the house

Steve