I have been an Altec fan for quite awhile. Thought I'd ask a question in the Walt Bender vain, has anyone ever tried to run the low end cabinets full range (416s) and the same thing for the large format horns? Walt was a proponent of such an approach of high quality drivers running to their natural mechanical cut-off. I understand the delta in output being anyway from 6 to 9 dB between the bottom and top, seems it would give a "fuller" midrange where both drivers are blending. It also would get rid of a bunch of stuff between the amp and speaker and possibly provide a better grip/control of each driver. Is this a totally insane idea and what are your thoughts? BTW, Walt IMHO was an incredible individual, had a heck of an ear for good tunes, always willing to talk to you and give honest appraisals, and is sorely missed. Thanks
Well, everybody has an opinion so I'll give mine...don't like the idea.
A lot of overlap also allows for a lot of phase and pattern control issues.... and to me seems exactly the opposite...with the drivers overlapping you have much less control.
All that said, whatever floats your boat. There is only one person that has to be happy with your system.
My opinions have been wrong. And more than once as the redhead is fond of reminding me.
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
I would think that running LF to the HF driver would blow it up. Either electrically or mechanically. They aren't meant to have any appreciable excersion.
I would also think the 416 would get pretty ugly sounding above about 2kHz. Very beamy.
I would think at the least, a simple 6dB/Oct crossover could be used, an inductor in series with the woof and a cap in series with the HF. Folks have done this and liked it. I tried it, and was never satisfied.
Ron
OK, i'm no expert, but here goes my 2 cents.I would think that running LF to the HF driver would blow it up. Either electrically or mechanically. They aren't meant to have any appreciable excersion.
First, i agree with you Ron, that this will run the HF driver into dangerous territory for most of us as well as prematurely fatigue the surround.
However, depending on the exact execution and implementation i think i see some real possibilities.
For example, i have a sweet little SET amp that delivers a hair over 5wpc. The OPT's characteristically roll off pretty steep below 70hz. My WAG is that this amp would probably have a hard time breaking a healthy large format driver, even with no crossover in line.
This all has me wondering if there are OPT's that are specifically designed to have intentionally limited or "narrowed" bandwidth, as well as wondering about some of the iron and amps used in tube consoles.
Not all vegetables make good leaders.
Originally Posted by bowtie427ss
At very low power the HF wouldn't be in danger. It's excursion that is the issue, not frequency per se.
IOW a driver that can handle 30 watts at 800 would make x excursion. Halve that to 400 and the excursion goes up by the inverse square...IOW 4 times. So theoretically you've reduced the power handling to 1/4 or 7.5 watts. Down to 200 or halve again, and it becomes less than 2 watts. At 100 less than 1/2. So you can see it becomes an issue quickly.:doh:
Narrowing the frequency response of an amp isn't hard at all. But would that be truly crossoverless? I would argue the amp is also a filter at that point. Actually virtually all amps are a filter anyway.
The problem with crossovers is the phase and other issues. Active crossovers reduce this to such a low level as far as I'm concerned it's nil.
I might build a crossoverless system as an experiment...
I miss the old days of making sawdust and reading everything I could get my hands on...
I am not trying to discourage experimentation....by all means do so...just understand most experiments don't pan out. But the fun isn't so much whether it actually works or not as it is anticipating...doing something you have never done and seeing how it turns out...
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
Eliminating the negatives a crossover introduces is certainly a worthy goal, but it's all been tried long ago. If you find success, I have a few bucks I'd like to invest.
The problem is that no driver plays well (read, with linearity) beyond the 2-3 octave BW it was designed for.
There are... cheap ones...
"[I]We're going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn[/I]!"
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[I]"Time wounds all heels"[/I]
John Lennon, referring to the Nixon/Hoover deportation fiasco.
I used to have/use some fostex single drivers that I ran w/o an XO...
That is what got me back into audio many years ago while I was in the Navy. Well, that & running across some cheap, inexpensive vintage items.
The result of my single driver phase was short lived, while kinda impressed with the output of the set amps married to the little 6.5" driver, the sound got to be come fatiguing after a while & very beamy & honky. I tried all kinds of cabs, the best and easiest was the Bibs from a time ago.
I have moved on & I will doubt I will venture into that sea again... but AI do still have the fostex's & I am thinking about making a decent set of desktop speakers for my office.
I could just imagine the results with some of the large altec speakers if you would run them without XO's... XO's to me not only act like a filter, but they seem to implement a level of control....
-chris
I would have to agree that (1) if you're running much power you're in danger of frying your h.f. driver/diaphragm and also (2) both high and low frequency drivers will not sound their best as you get farther from their intended range. I by no means have the technical expertise that some of the other folks on this forum have, but I guess I would add as a third point that a well designed speaker system--like the model 19, for example (example of a 2 way), has hours of experimentation involved in the design process. The goal for a high fidelity speaker system is usually to get the cabinet and crossover to work with the horn and woofer to obtain a (somewhat) flat response. From what I understand, many hours were spent on the model 19 just to get the cabinet and port just right--and to make sure it worked well with the specific crossover they ended up using and the drivers--the final result was that great model 19 sound. I'm not going to say it's impossible (never say never), and I'm also not going to discourage experimentation (experimentation that seemed "crazy" at the time can result in huge unforseen breakthroughs), but I would say that in my opinion this is a very random approach to high fidelity. You would have to be VERY lucky to have a hf driver's mechanical cut-off (and overall natural "unfiltered" frequency response curve) work well with the woofer's mechanical cut off/natural frequency response curve to result in any kind of a flat overall response for the final speaker system.... It seems to me that the increased overlap range caused by the lack of a crossover would (in most cases?) cause an undesirable spike in the frequency response curve where the two drivers overlap not to mention the potential phase problems that someone else mentioned in this thread. Just my 2 cents.....
One of my neighbors, of whom I had no previous Altec connection, has a pair of split 210's with the vents eliminated, housing 416A's. Layed on top are 811A's w/early 802's. He has chosen to take the crossoverless route, and powers them with low powered (8W max.) tube amp's, and has no tonal controls. Not having the technical expertise to judge what is going on there, I can say that I don't care for the sound at all. Both bass, as well as the high end seem to suffer immensely. This is a "strictly to the ear" evaluation.
What you say there does not surprise me! It must sound awful.
Going without crossovers on Altec gear is going to be hard because the driver are fairly wideband to begin with. So there is going to be tremendous overlap.
There are some woofers I've seen that can work OK without a crossover, the roll off on the top is benign. But a tweeter without at lest protection? Not likely to sound good or last long.
I have listened to the Biflex drivers full range and they were OK. But finding a tweeter to go with them that didn't use a crossover.........
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