AudioKinesis 1x12 Cab Part Two

[lookiel]

Although I don't have my Thunderchild yet and am unable to compare I was going by Dukes' spec for SPL and 95 is on the low side, translating into turn the master up a bit more in my world
I understand the whole "higher sensitivity down low vs other drivers and saving watts versus the low watt cost of boosting mids" and thanks for pointing that out. The fact remains that users like Ken report having to turn up the master a bit even compared to 8 ohm cabs.
I did own an MB200 and even taking into account that a 400 watt amp would only be (in theory) 3db louder I still feel that the little GK would be fairly quiet paired up with the TC112.
Just tryin' to help out a fellow Tb'er with his small rig plans
That's all I was going for, not trying to infer anything else or belittle Duke's work!
Au contraire, I'm a fan and very much looking forward to receiving my own Thunderchild!

 

[DukeLeJeune]

One of the reasons my cab is not as loud as would normally be expected of a 4-ohm 112 is that I equalize away any significant midrange peaks in the crossover. I suppose that's a debatable design choice, but here's my thinking: I'm trying to do something that's different enough from most bass cabs that I'm incrementally expanding the range of choices available to bass players. There are other designers out there who are much better at designing cabs that have a specific desirable "voicing", so I'll leave that to them.

 

[lookiel]

I think I grasp your design goals and totally agree with you Duke,
That's why I decided to purchase one of your creations!
I sincerely hope my posts did not offend you in any way!

 

[DonovanBankhead]

How would the TC112 sound paired with a TC Electronic head (Classic 450)?

I can sort of answer this. I just got my TC from Duke a few weeks ago, and I've paired it with my RH750. I can tell you that the Thunderchild performs amazingly well! Very clear, great sound dispersion (which was my main interest, as I play a fair amount of small stages) and perfect clarity.


Lately, I've also added an RS210, but run that at the front of the stage to supplement our under-powered sub that we use in the band that I play in. The Thunderchild could probably handle the venue alone, but hell, I'm the bass player, and I want more!

 

[DukeLeJeune]

I think I grasp your design goals and totally agree with you Duke,
That's why I decided to purchase one of your creations!
I sincerely hope my posts did not offend you in any way!

Oh heck no - not at all! I didn't read any criticism in your posts. The truth is, my cabs are lower than average in efficiency. If sufficient amplifier power is available, their relatively high real-world power handling can get 'em back into the ballgame. But if my cabs are going to be competitive, it will probably be on the basis of quality rather than quantity (one would hope for some quality, at the prices I charge!).

In my post above I was just trying to quickly explain my design choices for anyone who stumbled upon this thread now, without having a bunch of background.

 

[Mike Arnopol]

Hey Duke
I was trying to be not-too-glowing as to not look like a paid advertisement! Actually I think that yours is BY FAR the best balance of frequency response and seamless blending of lows, mids and highs. To be honest, I don't know of any bass cabs with mids and tweets that sound as good to my ears. Interestingly, as we had spoken, I plugged one port to lower the cab tuning. I thought that the "bloom" of the notes suffered as opposed to both open. With both open there was no "bloat" and perfect control but with a wonderful bloom and thickness to the notes. One closed and the cab still sounded great, and with a little more control, but the individual notes were tighter and thinner. I've talked about this phenomena lots here as a property that seems to elude measurements, but now in speakers I think I'm getting more of a theoretical handle on. Now I'm just a theoretical dummy so correct me if I'm wrong. It seems to me that there is a perfect "sweet spot" in terms of port area that allows the speaker to move with the perfect amount of control. Too big and it sounds uncontrolled and bloated, too small and the notes can sound too tight and controlled. I think Duke nailed it. I play 50/50 between upright and electric and I think that upright is MUCH harder to get right in terms of the envelope as I've been mentioning. Before my surgery on the 28th I did a recording for NPR with my own trio for a special type of state of the art binaural recording. Loud trio. Upright, drums and SCREAMING guitar. Loud. My bass with the TC had almost perfect impact---rare on studio recordings and unheard of on 2 mic audiophile recordings. And my sound was more like a fine miked studio sound---but it was a Full Circle, Doubler and the TC. No Jaco mids. No artificially glassy highs. Everybody was flabbergasted. Sounded like me on a good day in the studio.
So Duke---you were asking what cab I was referring to and I have to say I haven't heard anything better. Louder----sure. Deeper---maybe---if you want to haul something twice the size. My buddy Dan was the owner and developer with Lakland. Everybody sent him their cabs.Or he'd buy them. I'd spend hours there goofing off and trying various amps and cabs. I know what's out there.
One word to everyone here. If you play upright or 5 string electric you must get a high pass filter to really see what this cab is capable of. With the piezo pickups for upright there is a ton of subsonic garbage in the signal. This just causes your amp and speaker to huff and puff and uses all of your resources to amplify crap that you don't want anyway. Even with electric the fundamentals of the B string you don't want anyway. NO commercial speaker that I know of does 30 hz. And what you're hearing in a deep amplified B string is mostly 60 hz anyhow.So if you have a high pass filter properly tuned, you'll wind up using half (or less) the power as previously. Which is why I tried plugging one port to drop the cab tuning. I'm researching a very small DSP suggested by another techno-guru TB member Passinwind. It would give a variable high-pass filter as well as MANY bands of parametric eq and much more.All in a small floor pedal. With a proper high pass, I don't know of ANY cab that sounds better. What we're paid to do as bassists is to pump out quarter notes (or whatever) that have power, authority and control. In terms of function, the rest is icing on the cake. And the TC has the perfect balance of these 3.
Anyway enough of my blathering----must be the copius amount of pain meds!

 

[Mystic Michael]

One of the reasons my cab is not as loud as would normally be expected of a 4-ohm 112 is that I equalize away any significant midrange peaks in the crossover. I suppose that's a debatable design choice, but here's my thinking: I'm trying to do something that's different enough from most bass cabs that I'm incrementally expanding the range of choices available to bass players. There are other designers out there who are much better at designing cabs that have a specific desirable "voicing", so I'll leave that to them.

Well, I for one really appreciate the results of that thinking. With respect to all those players who emphasize a LOT of mids in their tones, one of the chief reasons why I began playing the bass is because I fell in love with the low end: So I play the bass guitar - not the mids guitar!

If I want/need more mids and/or highs in my tone, I'll dial 'em in. Provide me with a smooth, balanced, clean, open-sounding platform on which to play, and I'll do the rest.

MM

 

[Mike Arnopol]

One thing I know----it's much more difficult to tame midrange anomalies than to give a smooth midrange boost. That's where crossover designers earn their dough--smoothing out frequency response to give a good pallette to enable eq in broader musical boosts or attenuation. As I said, I'm 50/50 slab and upright and upright is a pain in that you spend all of your time and available eq to tame a honk here, a woof there. The one thing about the Thunderchild is that I had to retract one of my typical blanket statements ---- that you couldn't have a passive xover that did not alter the damping factor and impact of the low end. I'm happily proved wrong.

 

[KJung]

Oh heck no - not at all! I didn't read any criticism in your posts. The truth is, my cabs are lower than average in efficiency. If sufficient amplifier power is available, their relatively high real-world power handling can get 'em back into the ballgame. But if my cabs are going to be competitive, it will probably be on the basis of quality rather than quantity (one would hope for some quality, at the prices I charge!).

In my post above I was just trying to quickly explain my design choices for anyone who stumbled upon this thread now, without having a bunch of background.

+1 Again, the typical 400-600 watt micro amp will push this wonderful cab to full performance, which is MUCH greater (i.e., more full, open low end and more max SPL) than virtually any other 112 or 210 I've ever experienced. The tuning and impedance results in a perfect match with the vast majority of micro's out there IMO and IME.

And, since it has not been mentioned for a while, the gentle upper treble roll-off switch is just wonderful, and changed the cabs voicing and feel to a 'virtual one way cab' if you want that vibe. Totally warm and even through the lower treble region. Great for P Basses and other more 'vintage' tone goals. Flick the switch, and you have full upper treble range.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

...if my cabs are going to be competitive, it will probably be on the basis of quality rather than quantity (one would hope for some quality, at the prices I charge!).

I suspect that I'm not the only one who appreciates the Thunderchild, not just as an elegant design, but as a solid value.

The TC may seem expensive to a typical Avatar or Carvin customer, but there are lots of 3-way cabs and 2*10's out there that are a triple-fail in comparison, even before you start looking at audio performance: they're heavier, larger, and more expensive.

What I find particularly interesting, is that I'm not just talking about stuff from boutique manufacturers...

 

[Vic]

...The truth is, my cabs are lower than average in efficiency...

That makes sense to me based on subjective comments. At least it makes more sense to me than some unique voicing characteristic giving the impression of lower efficiency anyway.

Thing is, less efficiency is not necessarily a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Just means you have to pair them with the appropriately "sized" amp... and with the 4 ohm rating, this should be very easy to do. I can think of other cabs that are pretty highly respected and yet known for their lack of efficiency, so it can work just fine.

 

[KJung]

That makes sense to me based on subjective comments. At least it makes more sense to me than some unique voicing characteristic giving the impression of lower efficiency anyway.

Thing is, less efficiency is not necessarily a bad thing in the grand scheme of things. Just means you have to pair them with the appropriately "sized" amp... and with the 4 ohm rating, this should be very easy to do. I can think of other cabs that are pretty highly respected and yet known for their lack of efficiency, so it can work just fine.

Don't underestimate the voicing impact on perceived loudness. Low and high mid bumps translate into 'loud' versus wide and even. If you haven't spent any time with the various 12/6 cabs or this cab, it really is a different experience. As was posted above, if you cut deep bass, boost low mids, and boost upper mids with the Thunderchild, guess what happens.... it starts to sound and perform like more 'normal cabs' volume-wise.

However, you are getting what we are all saying. The 'softer voicing' and lower efficiency is a zero issue, UNLESS you are attempting to use a low powered head. These days, watts are cheap!

This cab, along with the various other 3012LF executions, are a rare combination of high thermal capability AND super mechanical specs. The voicing does make them sound a bit 'polite' versus the more typical mid bumped two way cab, but that smooth, big, wide, even response is a great voicing.

I LOVE a more aggressively voiced cab with that snarly upper mid bump and that nice 'kick' in the low mids. But for certain contexts, the more studio monitor quality of these class of cabs can be very nice, and again, the low end extension that reaches the audience is pretty astounding, given the size of the box. The cost is they take a bit more power to get there... zero issue.

 

[Vic]

Don't underestimate the voicing impact on perceived loudness.

I'm not. Never have, never will. Just seemed to me kinda like nobody wanted to come out and say the cab appeared to be lower efficiency than other cabs... that it was all/only about the voicing. I didn't really speak up about it, but I just wasn't buying that. That's all.

 

[KJung]

I'm not. Never have, never will. Just seemed to me kinda like nobody wanted to come out and say the cab appeared to be lower efficiency than other cabs... that it was all/only about the voicing. I didn't really speak up about it, but I just wasn't buying that. That's all.

+1 Actually, the lower efficiency of these sort of cabs has been pretty well discussed.

The beauty of the 3012LF (versus, for example, the old Acme designs) is you can actually crank the power into them without doing any damage (cone creasing, etc.). They can actually USE that additional power, which again, is light and cheap these days.

 

[PSPookie]

Duke, have you had many/any returns on these?

 

[Vic]

Actually, the lower efficiency of these sort of cabs has been pretty well discussed.

Not recently, or we wouldn't even be here, and Duke wouldn't have needed to make the comment, and if this was already a known quantity to you, I'm surprised you didn't mention it earlier.

The beauty of the 3012LF (versus, for example, the old Acme designs) is you can actually crank the power into them without doing any damage (cone creasing, etc.). They can actually USE that additional power, which again, is light and cheap these days.

I must admit, I am looking forward to this.

 

[KJung]

Not recently, or we wouldn't even be here, and Duke wouldn't have needed to make the comment, and if this was already a known quantity to you, I'm surprised you didn't mention it earlier.

I must admit, I am looking forward to this.

Again, the key is, you probably don't want to plan on using a low powered head with this cab for a wide variety of reasons, including feedback from lots of us who actually own and gig the cab.

 

[Vic]

Again, the key is, you probably don't want to plan on using a low powered head with this cab for a wide variety of reasons, including feedback from lots of us who actually own and gig the cab.

Yep. What was clear to me from reading earlier content, was that the cab could take more. What wasn't clear to me until more recently, is it also kinda' requires more.

I'm still gonna' try it with the MB200 tho.

 

[Derek Kiernan]

Not recently, or we wouldn't even be here, and Duke wouldn't have needed to make the comment, and if this was already a known quantity to you, I'm surprised you didn't mention it earlier.

I must admit, I am looking forward to this.

I think most people's experiences have been what Ken said. Many hear a bump in the upper mids and a bump down in the low mids/upper bass as more apparent volume, and there's no doubt that a high quality "boutique" speaker like the Berg AE series has some more volume in the ranges they're sensitive. But it's also nothing like the Acmes, which are honestly low sensitivity (their 4x10 is 1 dB more sensitive than the TC), and its performance isn't unlike the fEARfuls which use a comparable driver that the TC's is derived from.

I'm arguing it's not low sensitivity this way - the 3012HO is closer to 97 dB sensitivity if you take out the breakup mode peaks, and guitar drivers are more like 98-100 when doing the same (and not counting 110 dB uppermid spikes!). Something would be wrong if those 10 dB jumps didn't sound louder to you in the region your hearing is most sensitive. There's a 2 dB real world sensitivity cost per watt to using the TC's driver over the 3012HO, but then you have to consider its 4-ohms vs the HO's 8-ohms. Smooth upper mids cost a lot of apparent volume, but no wattage to get back. I wouldn't be expecting guitar driver sensitivities out of a bass speaker either, so I doubt anyone would argue 97-100 dB sensitivity as a "moderate sensitivity range" for bass guitar that would make 95 dB considered low sensitivity.

I stand by the idea that if you want to test performance between two speakers, the speakers should be outputting something as similar as the the amp's tonal options allow. If another cabinet needs 2x the wattage in the lows (or more) to sound the same as the TC, a single general sensitivity number isn't a serious way of comparing their real world performance. If you like lows with a low powered head, you're already running into trouble if you're using a single 12 or a 2x10, or you probably play at a volume you wouldn't have difficulty with the TC in achieving. No one should be planning on killing any mid-forward 4x10s

 

[Passinwind]

Yep. What was clear to me from reading earlier content, was that the cab could take more. What wasn't clear to me until more recently, is it also kinda' requires more.

I'm still gonna' try it with the MB200 tho.

FWIW, I tried my TC at a Seattle GTG with an MB200. Not happening for me -- I could hear the amp limiting way too early for my taste. On the other hand, my 200 watt Hafler (one channel of a P-3000) sounds just fine with the TC and I'm sure I could do low key jazz trio gigs with it happily. YMMV...

I've tried the MB500 with the TC as well. That worked great.