I had to look that up and -- oh my. I hope they don't employ the same vocabulary.But they sound more like Terence and Philip...
Would you elaborate on the technical aspects of getting a speaker to project behind itself as related to these designs?
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1)Dispersion 2)Efficiency 3)Size
- Thread starter LowG
- Start date
Would you elaborate on the technical aspects of getting a speaker to project behind itself as related to these designs?
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
If you read up a little on dipole designs you'll get a decent idea of what I was shooting for. Those 4" drivers are just mounted on a flat piece of wood with no back. The dimensions and placement of the plate and wings influence loading at the lower end of their range, and the movable baffle wings can be adjusted to change the front to back wave ratios and geometries. There's a passive crossover to the 15 at around 570Hz or so, but there's still appreciable output off the back down to at east 400Hz or so. The whole system is just meant for ambient effect in a stereo rig for use at home, as the 15 is much stouter than the two 4 inch drivers can really keep up with at higher volume. If you place this system in a corner and play with the wing baffles there are a lot pf pretty cool ambient effects available. The other cab in that rig is my TC112AF with the back firing second tweeter. This is by far my favorite stereo rig out of quite a few that I've owned and/or played through.
The 3-way cab in the right of the pic is a whole different thing. It's my take on an Uber-fEARful, more or less. Directivity is very carefully controlled via the matching horns and nothing is coming off the back or sides, save for what comes off the woofer at the low end. It's a cannon, pretty much.
Sweet. My first set of speakers that I bought when I was in the USAF was a set of Magnaplanar MGII's back in 1977. Bi-polar planar design, same sound out of the front and back. Still have them. I had dreams of a roll-up version of them that was electric bass compatible. Makes our Tanks seem kind of normal.
Those openings create a tuned chamber. High frequency response rolls off at a rate of 12dB/octave above the chamber tuned frequency. You can tune the chamber to a higher frequency to get better mids, or you can tune it to a lower frequency for better lows, but you can't do both.
Subjective opinion without confirming objective data means nothing. Its the very definition of placebo effect. If you had polar plots to back up your claims that would be a different story. Not that I'm picking on you specifically, none of the others who claim dispersion that defies the laws of acoustics have any objective data either.
So you're saying that unless we provide plots, people are not actually hearing what they're hearing? That they're experiencing a placebo effect? That ears don't matter?
The idea that people only think they're hearing what you feel they're not hearing from other cabs isn't new here.
At this point we're fine with anyone who still feels the need to dismiss what people claim these cabinets do IRL based on their knowledge of speaker design vs. actual experience. I'm not going to spend time debating what you believe. BTDT. If you ever get an opportunity to hear a Tank IRL that'll be your best opportunity to give them a pass or fail. So far no one who's done that has come away claiming they don't work. I know that means nothing to you and we're cool with that. Maybe one day that'll change... maybe it won't.
BTW we just introduced our guitar cabinet, based on the same principles. To our surprise, so far we're not getting the same pushback as we did when the bass cabs launched.
The idea that people only think they're hearing what you feel they're not hearing from other cabs isn't new here.
At this point we're fine with anyone who still feels the need to dismiss what people claim these cabinets do IRL based on their knowledge of speaker design vs. actual experience. I'm not going to spend time debating what you believe. BTDT. If you ever get an opportunity to hear a Tank IRL that'll be your best opportunity to give them a pass or fail. So far no one who's done that has come away claiming they don't work. I know that means nothing to you and we're cool with that. Maybe one day that'll change... maybe it won't.
BTW we just introduced our guitar cabinet, based on the same principles. To our surprise, so far we're not getting the same pushback as we did when the bass cabs launched.
BTW we're not defying any laws of physics, we're exploiting them in ways some people never imagined. There's a big difference between the two.
The challenges only highlight how outside the box our little boxes are for some knowledgeable folks. We like that.
The challenges only highlight how outside the box our little boxes are for some knowledgeable folks. We like that.
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So you're saying that unless we provide plots, people are not actually hearing what they're hearing? That they're experiencing a placebo effect? That ears don't matter?
The idea that people only think they're hearing what you feel they're not hearing from other cabs isn't new here.
At this point we're fine with anyone who still feels the need to dismiss what people claim these cabinets do IRL based on their knowledge of speaker design vs. actual experience. I'm not going to spend time debating what you believe. BTDT. If you ever get an opportunity to hear a Tank IRL that'll be your best opportunity to give them a pass or fail. So far no one who's done that has come away claiming they don't work. I know that means nothing to you and we're cool with that. Maybe one day that'll change... maybe it won't.
BTW we just introduced our guitar cabinet, based on the same principles. To our surprise, so far we're not getting the same pushback as we did when the bass cabs launched.
Good luck selling those guitar cabs. Those guys tend to stick with their Fender, Mesa, Marshall, Vox, etc. Getting them to switch to something they've never heard of is going to be a push.
If you can design the guitar ones to break up with 5w that would solve most of our problems.
I know exactly what you mean on the guitar tip. But we're giving them a tiny alternative to a 412
. So far the reception from guitarists has been great. We encountered resistance from bass and regular music stores with our bass cabs so we expected the same. Couldn't even get some stores to check them out. Oh well.Speaking of dispersion...
www.facebook.com/druewjr/videos/10206543697412631/
We've already gotten several bassists to switch from SVTs so who knows?
We're going for M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction) to keep the peace. Check out the video I just linked.
Cool, Charlie. Thanks very much. The stereo rig with the moveable baffles, 15, and the Thunderchild 112 AF sounds like a lot of fun. Picturing the cab in the corner and what effects might be achieved via moving the baffle wings reminded me of a Heil Talk Box for some reason.
When I click on the link I get: The link you followed may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience you're not in.
We're going for M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction) to keep the peace. Check out the video I just linked.
Since I mentioned the MAS cabs as exemplars of good dispersion and since that topic, including the idea of 180 degree or better dispersion, has been the subject of recent discussion, let me relate a couple of pertinent, recent experiences:
Last week I took my MAS 112 and my MAS 46+sub stack to serve as the house rig(s) at a local jam. I wanted to hear them back to back in a band context and the jam gave me the opportunity to do some listening from out in the house as well. (I ran each off one channel of a power amp, so switching between rigs was as simple as turning one volume knob down and the other up.) I was lucky in that four other bass players showed up -- all cats who could play -- so I got a good listen from out in the house. With this thread in mind, I walked around the stage and behind a curtain into the off-stage storage area (not while I was playing!), listening to the bass rig (which was backed against the wall) all the while. With the caveat that this was a loud, busy mix which likely obscured some details of the bass sound, it seemed to me to change very little from directly in front of the cab to 90 degrees off-axis, about 15 feet away. Still lots of midrange presence and detail -- not only plenty to cue off for the other players, but enough to feel that the bass tone was well represented at all points along my little perambulation.
The drummer was running sound for this jam. No bass in any of the monitors except maybe for the powered speaker he sets up for himself with his own mix. Sound in the house was largely my rig with some lift from the PA. After I took my little walk (twice -- once to listen to the 46+sub, once for the 112) I realized that his monitor might've affected what I heard -- also wanted to hear the bass out in the house with no PA support -- so I turned the DI level on my preamp down to zero for the last half hour. Took two more little walks and heard essentially what I'd heard the first time. I'm not sure exactly how one would quantify 180 degree dispersion (it would be frequency dependent), but my little experiment suggests good coverage over 180 degrees, at least further out. (Maybe I can sit in on drums sometime -- I'd have to make the most of it, since I don't know if I'd get a second shot.)
This is a relatively wide, shallow stage, so the drummer is often against the wall, directly to the side of the bass rig. I can't recall ever having to set the cab in front of the drummer, though, and suspect that changes in tone behind the cab would be significantly more noticeable.
The sound further back by the bar was still present and even sans PA -- a little bump in the level of the rig was all that was necessary to bring the house levels back into balance. Drummer said that he could hear the bass fine without it in the monitor and no one on stage complained about the bass being too loud. When the bass was in the PA, the sound from the rig out in the house blended well with it. I talked with other players in the audience and all remarked positively on the quality of the sound and the balance. I dug the sound with and without PA, but preferred it slightly with a bit of PA support (though either rig could and did cover it on its own).
Same jam last night. Just took the 46+sub (with a different head). No bass in any of the monitors. A little PA support at the start of the night, but took the bass out by the end of the night. Same walk, to check last week's impressions, with the same result.
I don't know how efficient it is or if there's a production model yet, but Duke makes a "birdhaus" cab with speakers on three sides, I think. Dispersion in a small space is its raison d'etre. The tweeter on the back of his "acoustic friendly cabs" and the open mid-chambers on his Hathor cabs are cool ideas as well. Even with "regular" cabs (no "extra" holes, chambers, or speakers) there's a lot that can be done with crossover design to ensure good coverage across the frequency range -- by all accounts, that's an area where Duke excels, though I'm sure he's not the only one.
I've played the same club discussed here with everything from a malfunctioning combo amp (fun night, actually) to franken-stacks of dubious pedigree, so I'm not implying that fancy cabs are always necessary, that dispersion is the end-all, or that 4x10s are evil (though comb-filtering has been shown to cause sterility if you stand in a null for long enough). I dig what I'm playing, though; it's made it easier to hear myself clearly in less-than-optimal situations and, I believe, made it easier for the other musicians and the audience to hear me as well.
Last week I took my MAS 112 and my MAS 46+sub stack to serve as the house rig(s) at a local jam. I wanted to hear them back to back in a band context and the jam gave me the opportunity to do some listening from out in the house as well. (I ran each off one channel of a power amp, so switching between rigs was as simple as turning one volume knob down and the other up.) I was lucky in that four other bass players showed up -- all cats who could play -- so I got a good listen from out in the house. With this thread in mind, I walked around the stage and behind a curtain into the off-stage storage area (not while I was playing!), listening to the bass rig (which was backed against the wall) all the while. With the caveat that this was a loud, busy mix which likely obscured some details of the bass sound, it seemed to me to change very little from directly in front of the cab to 90 degrees off-axis, about 15 feet away. Still lots of midrange presence and detail -- not only plenty to cue off for the other players, but enough to feel that the bass tone was well represented at all points along my little perambulation.
The drummer was running sound for this jam. No bass in any of the monitors except maybe for the powered speaker he sets up for himself with his own mix. Sound in the house was largely my rig with some lift from the PA. After I took my little walk (twice -- once to listen to the 46+sub, once for the 112) I realized that his monitor might've affected what I heard -- also wanted to hear the bass out in the house with no PA support -- so I turned the DI level on my preamp down to zero for the last half hour. Took two more little walks and heard essentially what I'd heard the first time. I'm not sure exactly how one would quantify 180 degree dispersion (it would be frequency dependent), but my little experiment suggests good coverage over 180 degrees, at least further out. (Maybe I can sit in on drums sometime -- I'd have to make the most of it, since I don't know if I'd get a second shot.)
This is a relatively wide, shallow stage, so the drummer is often against the wall, directly to the side of the bass rig. I can't recall ever having to set the cab in front of the drummer, though, and suspect that changes in tone behind the cab would be significantly more noticeable.
The sound further back by the bar was still present and even sans PA -- a little bump in the level of the rig was all that was necessary to bring the house levels back into balance. Drummer said that he could hear the bass fine without it in the monitor and no one on stage complained about the bass being too loud. When the bass was in the PA, the sound from the rig out in the house blended well with it. I talked with other players in the audience and all remarked positively on the quality of the sound and the balance. I dug the sound with and without PA, but preferred it slightly with a bit of PA support (though either rig could and did cover it on its own).
Same jam last night. Just took the 46+sub (with a different head). No bass in any of the monitors. A little PA support at the start of the night, but took the bass out by the end of the night. Same walk, to check last week's impressions, with the same result.
I don't know how efficient it is or if there's a production model yet, but Duke makes a "birdhaus" cab with speakers on three sides, I think. Dispersion in a small space is its raison d'etre. The tweeter on the back of his "acoustic friendly cabs" and the open mid-chambers on his Hathor cabs are cool ideas as well. Even with "regular" cabs (no "extra" holes, chambers, or speakers) there's a lot that can be done with crossover design to ensure good coverage across the frequency range -- by all accounts, that's an area where Duke excels, though I'm sure he's not the only one.
I've played the same club discussed here with everything from a malfunctioning combo amp (fun night, actually) to franken-stacks of dubious pedigree, so I'm not implying that fancy cabs are always necessary, that dispersion is the end-all, or that 4x10s are evil (though comb-filtering has been shown to cause sterility if you stand in a null for long enough). I dig what I'm playing, though; it's made it easier to hear myself clearly in less-than-optimal situations and, I believe, made it easier for the other musicians and the audience to hear me as well.
lelandcrooks
Commercial User
The PA MVW cabs exhibit full range dispersion to 140 degrees, confirmed by measurements. Tops only. When combined with MVW subs there are other effects that come into play, widening dispersion. Which would be closer to one of Mike's cabs. I would expect Mike's MAS cabs to be comparable.
The best way to check dispersion is to actually measure it.
A smartphone and simple app can easily do it. Why ear testing doesn't work is your brain fills in parts it doesn't hear. If you hear certain harmonics your brain will fill in the other parts. Missing fundamental is a prime example. For the audience that actually wants to hear the wide dispersion, there is nothing better than measuring it. Has been this way for decades and honest FOH equipment is all measured.
A smartphone and simple app can easily do it. Why ear testing doesn't work is your brain fills in parts it doesn't hear. If you hear certain harmonics your brain will fill in the other parts. Missing fundamental is a prime example. For the audience that actually wants to hear the wide dispersion, there is nothing better than measuring it. Has been this way for decades and honest FOH equipment is all measured.
We just compared an F212, 2x1203 Hathor stack, and a Tank 1015.
As far as dispersion goes, they were all great. No discernible winner.
As far as dispersion goes, they were all great. No discernible winner.
I didn't think the dispersion was much different between the three rigs...same amp, settings, etc. I played the drum kit adjacent to (and a little behind( the cabs, and moved around the (small) room while others played. They were all great in this regard.
Tonewise, the F212 was the fullest and cleanest. The 1203 stack had a little more mids and grit, not the highs and lows of the F212, but a nice kick.
The 1015 BBC was much more colored and boxy/middy sounding. It always sounded like it was working harder than the other rigs, and didn't have the same refined sound. It had the nicest covering (alligator or snake), and was the most mobile.
As far shear loudness I'd say F212>1203s>BBC.
I may be biased but the F212 is a sweet beast.
Tonewise, the F212 was the fullest and cleanest. The 1203 stack had a little more mids and grit, not the highs and lows of the F212, but a nice kick.
The 1015 BBC was much more colored and boxy/middy sounding. It always sounded like it was working harder than the other rigs, and didn't have the same refined sound. It had the nicest covering (alligator or snake), and was the most mobile.
As far shear loudness I'd say F212>1203s>BBC.
I may be biased but the F212 is a sweet beast.
Boxy / mid-sounding / unrefined is hardly how I would describe my Tank 1215.
I believe he meant 'comparatively speaking' (the Greenboy F212 is one of the alpha examples of how to engineer/build a balanced bass cabinet - the Audiokinesis Thunderchild & Michael Arnopol Soundworks cabs are in the same league, but with different goals).
Almost every manufacturer comes at it from a different angle & with different design goals.
I'd love to audition a BBC Tank 1212, though.
