I might be buying a pair of home made Altec VoTT and Peavey

[GM]

GM, it has taken days for what you have said to sink in. Sorry, I'm dense. I guess I want to solve for added weight with an arbitrary Fb? ?And hope that I don't overload with watts, but maybe the good thing is these woofers are rated up to 150 wpc? Sorry for the ignorance, but I?m and ignoramus, I am just now, after 35 years, trying to figure out this audio stuff. I will see my son, the engineer tomorrow and sick these formulas on him, and see if he was paying attention in Calculus class.

Correct and just like with any speaker alignment, you don?t want to over drive it into damaging excursion, which the lower it?s tuned, the lower in SPL this will occur.

Then there?s the issue of how much added mass referenced to the driver?s moving mass [Mms] the suspension can safely handle, which only the manufacturer will probably know, but FWIW I?ve loaded down drivers up to 4x Mms [mr = 4] which cuts Fs in half and doubles Qts, though power handling is severely compromised unless it has a lot of Xmax, which prosound drivers typically don?t have, especially MI drivers such as the 418, 421.

Really, except for turning a burned out driver into a passive radiator [PR, AKA drone cone], I only recall adding mass to raise Qts.

No need to apologize, unless you?re a math/physics wiz, you don?t pick this type of info up real quick; for sure I didn?t. Oh well, better late than never, right?

Actually, I think it?s just high school Algebra, but I failed it, so not sure. I had to learn this stuff experimentally and it was only much later I was given the ?long hand? math and even then had to have yet someone else program it into Lotus 123 originally and later into MS Excel.

GM

[VolvoHeretic]

I've been doing some thinking... Just how does Altec use the same frame and wind up with speakers that have such a wide difference of Xmax? 416-8B; .13", 418-8hII, 421-8HII; .05" (?), I could go on, but how do they accomplish this? I am going to cut my 416-8a in half before I send it to GPA for reconing in the year 2016. Just wondering and wanting to learn.

[VolvoHeretic]

OK, just hooked up my new Behringer CX2310 crossover. Right now I am sending >80hz to a 100wpc Sherwood receiver to the Altecs (418-8H II, N501-8A, 32B horn w/ 808-8A/pascalite compression drivers, and one Piezo supertweeter) and <80hz to a Soundcraftsmen pre amp to a Crown DC300A to my pair of Alpine 10" box-O-subs in .75 cu. ft. boxes crossed over at 80hz.

Sounds a lot better than when I was running everything full range and using a graphic EQ to filter down the high frequencies to the subs. I also am not using any EQ and like it.

I have another Sherwood amp lying around and will bypass the N501-8A's after I find some more speaker wire and try tri-amping. Doing so, the Altecs will be receiving a full signal w/ F3 at 44hz.

So, I'm thinking I would like to get a Crown 75wpc D150A and 35wpc D75 for the Altecs and find a sub amp that has either 300wpc @8ohm stereo or 600wpc @4ohm mono.



Does everybody's wiring look like this?

[Old Guy]

I've been doing some thinking... Just how does Altec use the same frame and wind up with speakers that have such a wide difference of Xmax? 416-8B; .13", 418-8hII, 421-8HII; .05" (?), I could go on, but how do they accomplish this?

Very belated reply, but xMax doesn't really address the frame. It is how far the coil can travel without leaving the magnetic gap. Altecs are underhung, meaning the coil is shorter than the gap Just for the sake of argument, assume a gap length of one inch and a coil 1/2 inch. Past 1/4 inch in either direction the coil leaves the gap.

Overhung OTOH uses a short gap and long coil...attempting to keep a constant number of turns in the gap. Most consider overhung not as linear.

[GM]

Xmax approximation = [Hc-Hg]/2

Where:

Hc = coil height
Hg = magnetic gap height

So assuming a constant Hg, the VC must get shorter to decrease Xmax, ergo the 421 would theoretically have a much shorter Vc than a 416. That said, there may be more at play here WRT each motor's design, but never bothering to learn about any detail differences across a 'family' of drivers or do any re-coning, I've no clue what the reality is.

GM

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Very belated reply

Not nearly belated as me, his post just popped up earlier today in my email, so thought I was making a timely response for a change only to notice yours after I uploaded mine.

GM

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(418-8H II, N501-8A, 32B horn w/ 806-8/pascalite compression drivers...........

Does everybody's wiring look like this?

32B? 800 Hz horn that wants a >1 kHz XO point coupled to a 'textbook' 500 Hz/2nd order? 'Careful with that axe [volume control] Eugene'!

GM

[VolvoHeretic]

Thanks for the explanations guys.

Discovered that I had the Soundcraftsmen pre-amp wired up wrong all along all of this time (no manual) :{, now have the altecs running full range with the bass boosted 12db at 60hz and crossing over the subs at 40hz sounds best. Tomorrow I will hook the Altecs up to the active crossover.

Any recommendations for a cheap/used stereo sub amp with 300 wpc rms at 8 ohms or 600 wpc bridged mono at 4 ohms? Any good cheap Altec amps? Any good cheap Crown amps (too many kinds to choose from and can't decipher any of them)?

Old Guy; Would it be a bad idea to run my Crown DC300A at full power with a 2 ohm load? I don't know or think that I can run that amp bridged mono can I? The DC300A belongs to my A7's and will eventually be married back with them someday.

Cheers.

PS: GM, I have been forcing the Altecs to put out 110db at 30feet for a couple of years now, so they must be tougher than most expect.

[Old Guy]

Most amps are more linear in the middle of their capability. Loading the Crown down to 2 ohms will IMHO lower the audio quality.

[VolvoHeretic]

How much audio quality is there at 40hz?

It won't blow up will it?

[Old Guy]

Probably won't blow up. The DC300A was spec'ed for 2 ohms. May not sound great.

[VolvoHeretic]

So, wired everything up through the crossover, man what a bunch of wires and knobs... the preamp amp and crossover have no manual, so I am flying blind. The only way I can figure out how to wire it all up, I am sending the full signal through the tape loop on the preamp, to the EQ so that sound is what I want through the Altecs, then sending that to the crossover and to the three amps and to the Alpine subs, 418-8H II, 808-8As and Piezoes. I think that to send flat to the subs, and EQ'ed to the Altecs will require two EQ's. Any advise? At 1000hz, the Altecs have never sounded better. Too bad I have to jump up every other second to tweak this stuff, I guess I don't have to get onto the wife's treadmill anytime soon.

PS; after opening up the second Altec speaker, I found a tag that says that the compression drivers are actually 808-8A(802-8D) drivers that have newer Pascalite diaphragms.

Playing a little Weather Report, Return to Forever, Yes, Styx, and even Michael Jackson for the Wifey, and I love it. Can't wait to get a full 300 wpc to the subs.