Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Dedicated to those large boxes at one end of the room
Cressy Snr
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#16 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

steve s wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 1:02 am No problem Steve
The little ? speakers sounded great today I was really impressed. I don't think you could wring any more than you have done from those drivers. They had an impressive bass considering the size but the star of the day for me was your amplifier, it was really good.
Lush, detailed and just so easy to listen too. I thought it was easily your best yet.. quite an achievement Steve

I was also impressed with Ed's old amp, it sounded great on Steve's new speakers too
A great day
Aye, it was a good day.
Ed's nearfield monitoring amp was great after it had warmed up. It took hold of my speakers and showed them who was boss. Excellent top detail and a fine overall balance, very like the A20.

Highlights for me were the Chi-Lites, doing "Have You Seen Her" Hadn't played that for years and TBH, it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to put it on. Didn't realise what an awesomely good recording it is.

Wish I'd had the foresight to play it through your speakers later on. I've made a note to bring that disc to Owston as one of my three.

Another highlight was Scott's "WTF is this?" expression when I put on "Water" by Geno Washington and his Ram Jam Band; a bit like my expression is at Owston when King Crimson gets played. After the initial shock, he was tapping his foot though. :lol:

I think that the way my amp sounds now, has a lot to do with Nick's advice on the grounding scheme. It is now on a completely different level to what it was before, as you guys heard. The lushness and tonal colour saturation is probably down to it being three stages, and using a power valve to drive the output stage; that and the Hammond 1627SE output transformers.

Hammonds are often looked down on and regarded more as a "get you going" transformer than a proper. Indeed, they were only intended to get my 2A3 amp going, as I had sold off all my SE iron, but they're very very good for the money and wonderfully musical devices.

Will was always an advocate of three stage amps.

I'm trying out the Sylvania 6V6 you tested for me. They are not substantially different to the French Mazda, early 50s ones I was using at your place, which is as we suspected. Both those valves are great sounding drivers for 2A3s. Bet they'd be good with 300Bs too.
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#17 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by ed »

Many thanks for the hospitality Steve, superb as usual, and I wasn't expecting any more of those scones......phwoarrr

The 2a3 was awesome. I'm absolutely sure it's picked up those tinkly bits that were absent in the last incarnation, and I'm in agreement, the best yet. Please don't fiddle with it.

The speakers were a surprise for me. Completely different sound scape to the previous omnis. Just complete music, top to bottom. The pairing of amp and speakers did seem perfect, and although there was no image or stage the instrument separation was immaculate.

a superb day, thanks chaps.
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#18 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

ed wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:59 am
The speakers were a surprise for me. Completely different sound scape to the previous omnis. Just complete music, top to bottom. The pairing of amp and speakers did seem perfect, and although there was no image or stage the instrument separation was immaculate.
Now then.. :)
The image and stage question is a bit vexing with omnis, as we all know. I was searching this morning using the key words "omnidirectional" and "imaging" and came across Siegfried Linkwitz's site. Plenty of great stuff on there about both baffles and omni speakers, the omnis in question being the "Pluto".... a strange looking thing made out of a pipe, with an up-firing bass/mid with a little arm on the top to hold the forward-firing tweeter.

His explanation of the working of the Pluto was intriguing, seemed entirely logical, fitted with my own way of thinking about speakers, and looking at my speakers and the Pluto I decided they had quite a lot in common, though they look entirely different. So I decided to put my speakers about 18" out into in the room, like the photograph of the Pluto, just to see what would happen.
Image
Firing up "Summer Wind" from Frank Sinatra's 1967 "Strangers in the Night" album, the sound that erupted into the room was quite remarkable. Frank dead centre, the correct height for a grown man, with the orchestra arranged in a wide arc behind and to the sides. Close your eyes and convincing facsimilies of Frank himself and Billy May's band were paying a visit to your living room.

Dean Martin, Matt Monro, Bert Kaempfert, Petula Clark, Shirley Bassey, and their respective backing bands all paid me a visit too, during the time the speakers were out in the room. I deliberately chose these 1960s big band backed productions as they are exemplars of how to record stereo.

So these things actually do image, as Linkwitz's similar Plutos do.
Alas I will never be able to experience that thrill, given my tiny roomed domestic circumstances, but it's enough for me to know that they can do it and I'm playing in the same ballpark as Linkwitz

Wahey! :D
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#19 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by ed »

It's a real pity we didn't try moving them into the room yesterday. I was tempted on one or two occasions to suggest it but remembering all your instruction about using bounderies I didn't mention anything, for fear of making a fool of myself.....faint heart and all(never wins the best sound) snigger.

I spent a while standing in the middle of the room to see if there was a difference in presentation...there was.... I was thinking along the lines of average dispersions because where I was standing was 45 degrees off axis for the faital and 45 degrees off for the tweeter. Again I didn't mention anything because I was not at all sure of the physics of what I was doing....it did sound different though.....but no image.
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#20 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

I didn't think to move them either as I don't do speakers in the middle of rooms.
Anyway, nice to know they can be made to image, if you don't mind tripping over them. :)
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#21 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by izzy wizzy »

Cressy Snr wrote: Sat Feb 24, 2018 3:08 pm I didn't think to move them either as I don't do speakers in the middle of rooms.
Anyway, nice to know they can be made to image, if you don't mind tripping over them. :)
Might need some wheels :)
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#22 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

Just took the tweeters down by half an ohm.
I was noticing a slight discontinuity between the bass/mid and tweeter; not enough to be a serious issue and only there on certain records. Taking the tweeter level down just a tad cured the glitch.

One really has to be careful when doing stuff like this, that it does not get overdone, as the danger is that you kill the sound completely. I think I have judged it about right as it has pulled the image right into focus. Before, there was a slight sense of the there being two drivers fighting each other in the crossover region. That has gone and as a consequence, the music is more "simply there" playing. Don't get me wrong, the fault was very subtle, but once noticed, it was identifiable.

Once the more obvious wrinkles have been ironed out, a speaker design takes a lot of living with, before the more subtle faults make themselves known. Scott and Steve, had felt that there had been something going on between the drivers, that they couldn't quite pin down. Anyway, I think I have managed to home in on the problem and sort it.

I've also gone (after a lot of thought) with Scott's controversial (in some quarters) view that an expanding quarter-wave cabinet with the driver placed in the middle of the length is basically a tapped horn, with the end closed, except for a loading mass.

Makes much more sense to me, to think of this design and the Metronome as horn hybrids. It also makes sense and gives reason for the fact that the Met and the folded omnidirectional designs are very sensitive to being fooked up completely if conventionally damped. They will be, if they are horns. Horns do not like and are not meant to have stuffing up them, if you know what I mean.

This brought a certain clarity to my thinking about the whole thing and resulted in the removal of said stuffing....Larvely :D

A straight Met with forward firing drivers does require a certain amount of cab lining behind the driver, if only due to the shallowness of the cabinet cross-section in the immediate vicinity. The folded cab with the up-firer has no such needs and can be left unstuffed with impunity.
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#23 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by pre65 »

It's funny, but only yesterday I had pen and paper out doing some rough sketches for a "room flooder" design to use my 12" drivers, then I saw the advert for the Quad ESL57s on here.

I'll come back to it one day.
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#24 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by pre65 »

As I sit further back (than you would) from where the "room flooders" would sit couldit be better to change the angle of the main driver to more like 45 degrees ?

I was thinking about whether the ceiling reflection would end up where I'm seated.
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#25 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

pre65 wrote: Sun Mar 18, 2018 3:59 pm As I sit further back (than you would) from where the "room flooders" would sit couldit be better to change the angle of the main driver to more like 45 degrees ?

I was thinking about whether the ceiling reflection would end up where I'm seated.
That would be a good move Phil.
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#26 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by DSJR »

Laugh all you like with this suggestion, but I reckon it's a good idea to have a stock pair of well liked 'classic' production speakers as a reference when setting the perceived balance and so on in kit-built speakers from scratch. I appreciate the 'different' way these speakers 'drive' the room compared to conventional types, but it wouldn't hurt just to have something older but half decent to cross-check basic sound balance. I just think it could save a lot of heartache once the initial build is done, that's all ;) One speaker I did have time for once it got to ten years old and the tweeter had finally sweetened up was the B&W 601mk1. later 601's had an eye-watering spit and fizzle for top, but the mk1's which used to be a bit splashy, mellowed beautifully I remember. Another one I loved (surprise) was the Bose 301mk IV. Foam surround paper cones (don't know if it's old enough to fail yet) and paper cone tweeter, it played music so well and nothing like the often screaming predecessors - I could listen to these on 24" stands all day on all kinds of music and systems - tweeters on the inside I seem to remember but it depended on the spread of sound the listener wanted...

Sorry for the suggestion. I can't trust my ears you see, as they change from day to day, so it's always a good idea for me at least, to have some kind of reference as a kind of back-up. Currently, my 'test' Wharfedale Diamond IV's have a distinct character which I'm not so keen on, but I know them and how they react, so I can tell if my ears are working properly or not (outer ear swellings/infections and related issues)...
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#27 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

The trouble with using classic hi-fi references is that Hi-Fi as a concept is bunk, because nobody can even agree what it is trying to be "faithful" to. The whole thing, for me, lost direction thirty odd years ago, which is why I do it myself.

I've never heard a commercial pair of speakers I could live with, apart from the most wonderful, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping set of Bose 901s in 1978 and some equally jaw-dropping Quad ESLs in 1993. Polar opposites you might argue but both, brought the music to this listener, and ironically, both became persona non-grata, once the Flat Earth marketing bullshit took hold. Everything mainstream commercial I've heard since hearing those two wonderful speakers, has sounded like total crap in comparison.

So....Bose 901 powered, vast soundscapes, combined with ESL neutrality....that's what my omni speaker ideas and aims are workng towards.
Neither of these illustrious speaker references are practical to get hold of nowadays, so all I have is my own aural memories to go on. It's taken almost a full year of painstaking development. But I believe I have succeeded in reaching, something at least resemblng the ideal that Bose 901s crossed with QUAD ESLs represent.
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#28 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by DSJR »

Not sure I agree with your pov. I owned and loved a pair of ATC 100A monitors twenty odd years ago and only sold them when I got married and we didn't have enough room for a 'pair of fridges,' as herself calls them. These were the only bit of 'gear' I wept over when they went to their new owner, writer Richard Carpenter, an old and dear friend of mine who used them daily until he passed away a few years back. With the 100A's, I was able to re-create very convincing 'live' levels on well recorded '1950's' jazz and when the neighbours were out (and once or twice when they weren't - cough - ), I easily achieved levels of 115db peaks at the listening seat - enough in my then room to re-create a proper drum kit level as stood next to.

When I used to go to jazz gigs at The Stables Wavendon before the venue was rebuilt, I sat in front of the musicians usually, not in the banks of seats to one side. The musicians played facing at me, not to the ceiling or to the back wall and believe me, I'm sure you lot have heard how a trumpet or sax can cut you dead at ten paces - I appreciate a drum kit fires off in all directions and is usually miked from above I believe.

Those ATC's transcended almost all other domestic gear at the time, making most so-called 'HiFi' sets sound weedy and imprecise. NOTHING I've used since comes anywhere near close and fortunately memories fade, so all I have is the overwhelmingly positive vibes I used to get from these speakers. They did Massive Attack LOUDLY, but could also do string quartets with a high degree of realism too. On an objective note, I also had pen plots of my particular pair (ATC kept records for themselves for better driver matching in repairs) and I actually heaved them back to the factory to be checked a few years on from new - they were unchanged..

So forgive me for possibly disagreeing. A good recording is a good recording and a good pair of speakers should make a stab at reproducing it as near as possible. the thing is, so-called 'BBC types' (Harbeth) don't seem to use much if any rock music due to the perceived limited dynamic range, so the bass of speakers like this, fine on celli or bowed basses, often fell apart on synth or electric basses. Far eastern rooms apparently absorb bass too more than 'our' structures I'm told.
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#29 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by Cressy Snr »

I've been to plenty of live jazz and have seen both jazz musicians, string quartets and brass bands perform in schools countless times.

It is impossible to reproduce this kind of sound artificially. I've sat ten feet away from the un-miked Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra at full pelt, doing a Stan Kenton tribute and no HiFi in existence could ever hope to reproduce that. Neither could you capture that experience with even state of the art studio equipment without a load of gain riding, with which you would have diluted the whole thing to fit the medium. I have heard how a sax can, as you say "cut you dead....." Why on earth, you would want this in the home however, I can't fathom. Neither do I want a live drum kit in a 12 x 12 front room.

Why in the name of bloody hell, can't people get it through their thick skulls that it is about how close to the music you can get, within the limitations of what you have and the space you have to listen in, rather than trying to recreate the impossible, and wrecking their hearing while they are at it!. :x :x :x
You work with what you have and aim to maximise the musical result/experience. It's not rocket science is it!

Yes I agree that a good recording is a good recording and that a speaker should make a good stab at reproducing it. Trouble is, most of them I've heard, make such a pigs ear, it is not even funny given the prices charged, so why reference your speaker build to imitate that load of crap?

However I fully accept that I am a lone voice shouting into a hurricane. But I'm right, the hurricane is wrong on this one I'm afraid!
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#30 Re: Burhoe Inspired Room Flooder

Post by DSJR »

But that's the point - you CAN reproduce the sound of a live unamplified jazz group artificially in a living room if the recording is good enough and the monitors powerful and 'clean' enough - and so many 1950's CD transfers are amazingly 'real.' You just need proper big monitors with clarity and a huge unfettered dynamic range to do it! I also want to hear as much of the recorded (or produced) venue as I can without the listening room adding its own crap to it, but that's my taste not necessarily shared by others here.

My 100A's were totally overshadowed by the next model up (200A), which offered more power per driver and twin 12" bass units too. The sense of dynamics was awe inspiring and made the 10A's sound small in the way the 100A's made the smaller models sound insubstantial. Maybe you can't do it with low powered valve or solid state gear, no matter how good it may be at very low volumes (how I have to listen these days). A recent experience of some large 'legacy' JBL 4367's, Levinson driven, brought it all back to me though and I'd give my right arm to spend a few years with a pair of these (JBL's then pro models couldn't be easily heard for domestic users, but the far eastern market's interest in 'retro' has brought them back as Synthesis models).

Look, I'm not able and probably now never shall be able to buy the speakers I really want (and ATC have been equalled and probably superseded today by a new breed of large pro monitor although I haven't heard many and some ATC 70A's I heard a while ago were underwhelming to my ears), let alone demonstrate what I've typed above. I'm just suggesting that there's possibly a whole tier of large-GOOD-speaker reproduction lost to domestic users now as slim towers seem to rule.

I wish I hadn't started this now. I was just worried by your constant messing with tweeter levels over the months as without some kind of reference, it's just preference which may well change with mood. Sorry if I appear to be rude in any way, I really was trying to be helpful. I'll crawl back under me stone now and shut up...
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