Large Scale Studio Monitor Inspired by TAD TD-2404

[@handroids1981]

Beautiful, just beautiful. I'm here from the interview with Toid's DIY. Liked, commented and subbed.

[@normalman6686]

Nice. The effortless power and transparency of this speaker design will be a real treat for the owner.

[@inception-hifi]

great design! awesome classic simplicity

[@Skunkhunt_42]

Damn beautiful aesthetic! I'm a woodworker, engineer and audiophile that doesn't buy hifi gear yet

[@katinkaenglish6895]

This design looks absolutely awesome.

[@Clobercow1]

Awesome design!

[@fabieneldridge3414]

It’s hard to believe that Klipsch speakers have been around for so long. The La Scalla’s and K-Horns do what you are doing.

[@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding]

And JBL, Altec, and Western Electric before that.

[@fabieneldridge3414]

@@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding your right, but there are none hardly producing quality products as you are. Your speakers and wood work are Beautiful ! I’m just a poor old man I’ll have to keep rocking the Klipsch and Marantz. It’s all paid for and it does sound good. Very good still !

[@jenniferwhitewolf3784]

So B&C is joining BMS and their 4592 for a 2" 2-way... I will have to look into it. I have worked out a pretty decent crossover solution for the 4592... but always looking for other good options. One of these days I would LOVE to buy a set of these waveguides with 2" throat. They would likely run well with my bass setup consisting of 16" TAD 1602 and JBL 2241 18"

[@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding]

The new DCX464 is a 1.4” throat driver which offers proper treble coverage. B&C offers a 2” version but it’s just an short conical adapter bolted onto the regular 1.4” driver. For best performance you should use the 1.4” throat and have the horn flare geometry optimized for the intended frequency bandwidth (flare rate). I think the DCX464 has fantastic midrange, but requires some work getting the treble to match the midrange performance. Removal of the wire mesh bug screen is one step. There are other crossover tricks that need to be implemented. Also the DCX464 works amazing on 600Hz Fc horns as well, which is half the size of the ES-290 Biradial. There’s still plenty of low midrange energy on the smaller horn compared to using other large format compression drivers.

[@jenniferwhitewolf3784]

I looked into the B&C... not bad, but I hear no reason to jump ship from my modified BMS 4592-16-16 with enhanced series crossover.... ( and the screw-head ports between chambers blocked) Really like your solution using the drivers selected in this project. You are doing superb work. So refreshing in today's world.

[@davidkalil5698]

Great project! Thanks for reposting. Did you use the passive crossover that you reviewed for the coaxial driver? It seemed like something else would be needed for high frequencies

[@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding]

It was optimized for the 16ohm version of the DCX464.

[@daneprostamo-brown6552]

Love the design. When using drivers like the dcx464 fully active with high quality dsp’s such as an xilica xp4080, would you consider it a compromise in audio performance using a fixed resistor L pad to reduce sensitivity to lower the audible noise floor? I run this configuration and am unsure if I should insert an L pad as my class d amp is too high gain, or purchase a significantly lower gain yet high s/n class a/ ab amp that should have a lower audible noise floor. Cheers from Australia 🇦🇺

[@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding]

This is a common problem for most of my customers. A low gain amplifier is the solution however there are not many to chose from with low enough residual noise. A fixed resistor L-pad is an acceptable alternative, but certainly a second choice. Make sure the resistors are sized to handle the wattage with a good margin, otherwise the dynamics will be compressed and certainly distortion will skyrocket.

[@johnsweda2999]

Have you ever thought about horn loading the woofer?

[@plcamp1]

Hi Joseph. Have you used these horns (or the 600) in an open baffle? I have PAP Trio 15 with Tangband full-range I want to replace. I suspect your horns would match quite well (given the stock crossover I have now results in acoustic cross of 700 hz). The woofers do have nasty breakup at 1,200 hz I need to avoid, so crossing at 600 looks ok?

[@firstdaddy]

Definitely better. Thanks for the reload.

[@sandarq]

Hello Troy! I have a question not related to this awasome project! Is it mandatory that the separation between the drivers not exceed the wavelength of the full cutoff frequency in horn loaded loudspeaker designs? For example on the cornwall IV the mids to highs crossover is 5khz, and my estimate, via some autocad drawings, is that they are vertically separated by 15cm and that is more than twice the wavelength of 5 kHz, it's actually 6.86 cm... Thank you!!!

[@JosephCrowesDIYSpeakerBuilding]

For me it is not so much a consistent vertical off-axis that is important. What is important is that there is an integrated sound character. If I can perceive two different physical sound source location between the high frequencies and midrange frequencies then I find that objectionable. Additionally, I find it really bothersome when the drivers are not physically time aligned. If the high frequency is positioned too far forward then I can perceive it as a arriving before the midrange and it is distracting, along with the loss of dynamics and coherency. So if the drivers are time aligned and the centers are reasonably close, then the crossover point can be as high as you'd like. Even with a Fostex super tweeter coming in at 10kHz with a c/c of around 22cm I don't find there is any concern subjectively. However if this was increased to 33cm then I would find that objectionable assuming a listening distance of 2-3m.

[@snakeoilaudio]

Sadly TAD is not building high-end speakers anymore, they are now in the piano finish speaker business :-(

[@jonathanginofilippi]

Nice