bf titan 39 and altec woofers

awhile back my buddy talked me out of a set of a-5's for his sound company here in western montana.b he'd never heard anything so clean and loud ever. the problem was that his current subs were rendered ineffectual. couldnt hear them at all with the altecs running. hehehe. so after selling him on the concept of high eff. horn loaded speakers, the next logical step was good horn loaded subs. after old guy recommended the tuba for the 515g, we settled on the titan for volume..spl. i wrote to bill fitzmaurice, with no reply, about wich altec driver would best be suited for this cab. all it says in the plans is..that any driver with an fs. between 35-50 hz and qts between .3 and .4. fairly vague... the throat on the baffle is 50 sq in, horn length is about 11 ft , horn mouth is ~ 6 sq ft. im going to try a 421-8h in it, altec used it in the 1215. also the 515-8g, 418-8, and a 3156. my buddy used emminence definimax 15's in his 4, still got 4 more here in the garage, ive been sanding and painting on just one of them, piano black, to test in my system, in comparison with my 6th order banpass. still looking for the best altec sub 16- 80hz

You can't fit a 15" in the T39- hafta go 48.

Bad idea, assuming 421 works cause Altec used it in the folded box. Old horn specs and new are quite different. Marshall Leach kinda changed things...

421 will work. Output will be limited. Better is 515G, better still 3154.

lol..thats funny..dont know why i was thinking the 39..we did indeed build the 48
pics this week

If you hit the lottery....

Thiele-Small

Spec wise, none of the Altec woofers are suitable for a 16-80 Hz BW except at modest efficiency/peak SPL due to low Pe/Xmax ratings, especially below Fs, though if you have room to devote to a built in, then a single long/large hyperbolic FLH will be more than a match for a pair of A5s all the way down. Of course if you increase the number of drivers, then a pair of 3184s should do well down to 16 Hz in room, but not in a 2pi prosound app, which will need at least four.

GM

Note the 3154 has same Xmax as the 3184. And that in a modern horn it's resonance will drop by about half...

I didn't promote it as the ideal choice, simply the best if you wanna use an Altec 15.

it never even occured to me that one of the sealed application altec woofers would work in a horn. makes sense tho , as the chamber is sealed on the titan 48. can one change the foam surround to a cloth and still retain the excursion? and is the 3154 a better driver than the 411? crap, that might open a can of worms with that question. its just that ive seen so many rotted foam surrounds. and only just a few 3154's. bill is making them currently, if im not mistaken

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Originally Posted by valhallax

it never even occured to me that one of the sealed application altec woofers would work in a horn. makes sense tho , as the chamber is sealed on the titan 48. can one change the foam surround to a cloth and still retain the excursion? and is the 3154 a better driver than the 411? crap, that might open a can of worms with that question. its just that ive seen so many rotted foam surrounds. and only just a few 3154's. bill is making them currently, if im not mistaken

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3154 handles lots more power than a 411
It would be my choice of the two.

I do see them on FeePay occasionally.

got some pics, but hoastboard says 'too big'

even in thumbnails from photobucket...upload error. in the meen time, piano black is, has proven to be a real challenge, to say the least

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Originally Posted by valhallax

even in thumbnails from photobucket...upload error. in the meen time, piano black is, has proven to be a real challenge, to say the least

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Don't upload from Photobucket, just post the url or use image tags [img] picture [/img]

hope these work...

more...guess not ive allready gone over my limit on attachment space

not only that, but it seems as if ive reached my max, now i cant even add more attachments to any other posts..

o.k... ran some tests. finally got this little project done. i started out painting them piano black with buzz can enamel. ill never use enamel again ! along vthe way i thought i understood how altec got the hammertone look in the paint. i would spray on a new coat, and anywhere i had sanded blisters and checking. so i sanded back to bare wood and switched to laquer. the face has at least 15 coats of paint. that and lots of wet sanding produced black mirrors, that look great from 2 feet away, get any closer and there are the little scratches. steel wool worked great on this, until i then needed to switch to rubbing compound, then to polishing compound. the emminence drivers just slipped right in the enclosures, but the altecs required cab modification, lots of grinding in the back plate and speaker mounting baffle. i found that it was extremely important to seal all air leaks, as they amplified through the horn mouth, also significantly reduced performance, very audable. it was truely amazing how much air came through the speaker door before they were sealed up. i only got to a/b the eminence magnum driver with the altec 515-8g in a listening test, but the difference was considerable... i would say the magnum driver was along the lines of the 421 results. of all the drivers tested the 515-8g sounded the best. far more controlled, much tighter. the owner of the eminence driver said while listening to, it and the 515, that his sounded as if it were 'flopping around'
i set the rane crossover to run out to 2500 hz, ran the test cd at 1kz sine wave, set the altec 9444b amp at 2.83v on my fluke, and measured the drivers with my spl meter set on c weighting, four feet from the horn mouth, then recording the max spl on the seperate test frequencies using pink noise. i ran all the drivers consecutively asd to reduce error in the results. the 421 had the disadvantage, in that it was the oldest and hasnt been voiced in a long while. ive been told that one needs to warm them up by playing loads of spl to get them back in shape
anyway..heres the results
416-8c 421-8h 3154 515-8g 3156 210

pink noise 83.3 83 80.6 84.5 85.5 93.4
1khz sine wave 88.4 88 77.6 86.2 85.4 100.0
20 hz 80 79 77.9 82.7 85.9 86.8
25hz 81.8 80.5 79.3 83.5 86.6 88
32hz 83 81.5 80.4 84.5 87 92.1
40hz 83.8 83.3 81 85.5 87.1 89.7
50hz 84.6 84.2 82.3 86 87.4 90.7
62hz 85.3 85.3 82.6 86.9 88.4 92.2
80hz 87.1 86.6 84.2 88.7 89.4 93.3
100hz 88.5 87.9 85.6 90.1 90.8 94.4
125hz 89 88.9 86.6 90.8 91.8 95.5
160hz 90.7 89.9 88.2 92.3 91.8 97
200hz 91 90.7 88.2 92.7 91.8 97.5
250hz 91 91.1 87.7 92.9 91.8 98.9
315hz 90.5 90.9 86.5 92.3 90.8 99.3

i had to run my 515e loaded 210's here, after all they were right there...
my buddy running eminence definamax in his four says these subs start comming alive after about 300watts however ive not measured these drivers to see if thats how much it took for his... currently running one 515-8g in one and one 3156 in the other, and ill listen for a few days to see which is better, the 515 really sounds good and the 3156 really pounds, hmmm...
ive more picture however i own to much attachment space and could use some help in this dept.

dont know where all the spaces went in my nice looking graph..grrr, it even looked good in the preview post, hope you can read it now

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/18.jpg ineeded jack plates and had these sitting arround

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/19.jpg heres a picture of the face

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/20.jpg test rig...

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/21.jpg testing

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/22.jpg before http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/23.jpg after

build pics....http://i266.photobuc<a href="http://...tan48016-1.jpgket.com/albums/ii263/valhalla-x/titan48020-1.jpg[/IMG]
http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/24.jpg



http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/25.jpg

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/26.jpg
http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/27.jpg

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/28.jpg

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/29.jpg http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/30.jpghttp://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/31.jpghttp://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2009/05/27.jpg

You need to take the "th_" out. You are posting the thumbnails, and they don't open to full size. They just open to the thumbnail.

/valhalla-x/th_P5141975.jpg

looks like i need four more.. four per side should do it right? picked up 10 sheets of ac plywood today. gonna load 'em with 3156's fer the time being

Are the 210's still in your livingroom ? And, if so, are the subs going to end up there ?

the 210's are of'course in the living room...and the additional subs will be on the road in a 4 stack v formation per side under a two high 828 stack with wings and an 805 horn on top. currently running 421's in the 828's

How many cu. ft are those subs? They are huge,thought my cabs were big :cool:

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Originally Posted by valhallax

four per side should do it right?

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Depends on the XO point, desired peak SPL BW along with a V4's measured peak SPL response.

Since a pair of 828s are only going to be ~107-108 dB/m sens. down to ~175 Hz and with only a 150 W/driver power rating, ~108 + ~22 dB = ~130 dB/m peaks is all you need in theory down to whatever low corner frequency is desired. Lower the XO point and lower the system's peak average SPL potential, so how high up does the T39 play 'nice'?

I'm curious, why 828s? Just because you have them? Really, you want at least 817s or better, 815s for a road show.

Also, will an 805 cover the longest/widest front-to-back listening space? I mean with what little I messed with these types of systems it typically took arrays of different horns to do anything bigger than an auditorium.

GM

these cabs dont sound good to me after 100hz..not at all at 150hz. and the 828's cuz we had them. i know... it takes two 817 cabs per side to equal a 210 cab, and im tring real hard to convince this guy he really needs the 500 lb cabinet per side. but at 35 inches wide, we have problems with doors. he is almost there, and by next summer hopefully. i just so happen to have a set of 210 clones i built up this summer, i was thinking of chopping off the reflex portion of it..making it an 815. and the 805 horns? its a run what ya brung thing, hes got some 511b's as well. deffinetely a work in progress and as the budget allows. it seams the 'artists' like the lions share of the proceeds from these shows.
with the four titans stacked with a coupler on top, its a 24 sq ft horn mouth.

That's kinda what I figured, so a single 817 or dual 816s/channel is the smallest practical option.

I don't remember how much weight I pared off mine when I whacked off all of the cab I could and adding back proper bracing, compression chambers, but they went from four twenties something guys down to two to haul them around and hoist them into place atop the 30" high 'subs'.

FWIW, the 815 has a smaller mouth area, so is a bit truncated WRT the 210, so doesn't load quite as low, though low enough. Regardless, if DIYing even more horns is an option, better IME to stack/array multiple single cabs at any size larger than one man + dolly or built-in wheels can handle, especially nowadays, what with the 'crazy' total labor costs.

Large format multi-cells are for sure nice for PA work, but four relatively inexpensive, small array capable, 511s with some current, inexpensive brand/model driver can work as good or better overall and much easier to haul around. Don't recall if there was any packaging benefits other than the 511s could crammed into the tail of a Bug-eye Sprite or tiny trunk and even in one's lap without too much discomfort if space was really at a premium, though imagine neither the police nor one's insurance carrier would allow it these days.

GM