AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

[MarkA]

Ok so today I went back to the small rehearsal room, turned the bottom genzler 180 degrees and pointed it into the corner, left the top cab facing out.....woah that did it, all the low end returned 10 ft out. Is it room reflections messing with the low end? Maybe the fact that the ports are on the rear of the hathor had the same effect, that's why there was a perceived fuller low end?

Sounds plausible to me, but I don't know. Some rooms/stages are just weird -- some perniciously so. Sometimes the trouble spots are very localized -- move the cab a few feet and you're okay. In any case, it sounds like you hit on something that's helping -- at least in that situation.

 

[husky123]

Lee, a little ways back I posted a quick clip, playing through the Hathor 1203 with its switches in their various positions. It's not terribly hi-fi, but not too bad for having been made with a phone. Perhaps you'll find it helpful:
AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

I want to say that the 1203 dips from ~2KHz to ~4 KHz and bumps around that. Duke has posted about it before and can correct me. It's voiced, but with some finesse. The 1505 is accounted to be more aggressive/grindy/bumped and less extended up top. I would guess that it would pitch its grind a bit lower than the 1203's, but haven't heard one, so can't say from experience.

Thank you and thanks to everyone for your feedback thus far.

 

[Triad]

Do you have a one-off custom Hathor 18?
The 18" woofered cabs I'm aware of are the original ThunderChild 118, Hathor 1855, & the Hathor 1863.

I have a one off, originally made for Skip Fantry. 18" woofer (BMS) and four Faital 3".

 

[slagheap]

Hey guys,

I'm close to pulling the trigger on a Hathor 1505. I've bugged Duke with a few emails so I wanted to ask here rather than bothering him and keeping him away from building. I'm curious to the words that the cab "zigs where others zag". I assume he's talking about guitar cabinets and the Hathor's ability to slot itself in the mix well.

My question is...is that a certain frequency range they push to do this? Also, for the 1203 and 1505 owners, what really appeals to me is the mid switch and the grind mode. How would you describe what that does? Thanks for any help.

Lee

hope someone will chime in if i'm mistaken, but i believe the early 1505s utilized an emminence 5", and to some the mids were objectionable. i believe Duke heard the cries and now they ship with the faital 5".

 

[Type-55]

That would be a nice upgrade.
Is it true?

 

[nutdog]

Hey guys,

I'm close to pulling the trigger on a Hathor 1505. I've bugged Duke with a few emails so I wanted to ask here rather than bothering him and keeping him away from building. I'm curious to the words that the cab "zigs where others zag". I assume he's talking about guitar cabinets and the Hathor's ability to slot itself in the mix well.

My question is...is that a certain frequency range they push to do this? Also, for the 1203 and 1505 owners, what really appeals to me is the mid switch and the grind mode. How would you describe what that does? Thanks for any help.

Lee

Some time ago Duke detailed all the zigzag frequencies in a message but it's gone. IIRC, he thinks electric guitars dominate the 2-4k range so that leaves some mid room for the bass in the 1-2k range. The grind switch either smooths out the mids in this region when down or boosts them when up, or both.

This could be disastrous because the gank frequencies are in this range but he's managed to do it with out making it ganky or boxy sounding. The mids are very present, even beautiful, I would say, but don't sound goosed in the way that bumping a para eq might.

The top switch rolls off the highs around 6k when down. Otherwise the 1203 tops out around 12-14k. I leave both switches up all the time.

 

[husky123]

Some time ago Duke detailed all the zigzag frequencies in a message but it's gone. IIRC, he thinks electric guitars dominate the 2-4k range so that leaves some mid room for the bass in the 1-2k range. The grind switch either smooths out the mids in this region when down or boosts them when up, or both.

This could be disastrous because the gank frequencies are in this range but he's managed to do it with out making it ganky or boxy sounding. The mids are very present, even beautiful, I would say, but don't sound goosed in the way that bumping a para eq might.

The top switch rolls off the highs around 6k when down. Otherwise the 1203 tops out around 12-14k. I leave both switches up all the time.

Thanks so much.

 

[Snaxster]

Some time ago Duke detailed all the zigzag frequencies in a message but it's gone.

Here you go, 'dog, in chronological order, in which Duke talks about it in various contexts. The second one is the most detailed, I think:

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

P.S. - @husky123, I just realized that nutdog was replying to your post. So this might interest you.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

I'm close to pulling the trigger on a Hathor 1505... I'm curious to the words that the cab "zigs where others zag".

Good question! The thing the Hathor 1505 probably does better than any of my other cabs, when in "grindy" mode, is to ZIG where guitar cabs typically ZAG. Here's the graph of an Eminence guitar speaker, it's a fairly representative sample of what guitar speakers do:

The most obvious feature is a broad screaming peak that starts at about 2 kHz and continues up to about 5 kHz. Imo we DO NOT want a peak in this region - it belongs to the electric guitars, and if we try to be loud there for the sake of "cutting through", we risk instigating a volume war. And THEY can buy volume much cheaper than we can. The 2-4 kHz octave is where the ear is most sensitive, which is one of the reasons why little dinky guitar cabs with low power amps are so darn loud... another reason being, the guitar speaker's ballpark 105 dB efficiency in this region (and yet another reason being, guitars amps driven into distortion have a lot higher AVERAGE SPL than the same wattage not driven into distortion). Anyway we don't necessarily need to have dippage in this region, but imo we DEFINITELY do not want any significant peakage there.

Okay, the next important feature of that response curve, not as obvious but arguably more important, is that fairly narrow but fairly deep dip centered on about 1.6 kHz. Most guitar speakers have this sort of dip, to some extent. This dip is our WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: We can be LOUD here, and it sounds good and slots well in the mix, WITHOUT stepping on anyone's sonic toes!

This zig-zag voicing doesn't sound as good solo, so you might want to engage the "smoother" switch for practice at home.

hope someone will chime in if i'm mistaken, but i believe the early 1505s utilized an emminence 5", and to some the mids were objectionable. i believe Duke heard the cries and now they ship with the faital 5".

The Eminence Pro5 MRN-8 is still my favorite midrange driver. Its curve has the zigs and zags in exactly the right places for what I want. Here's a link to the spec sheet:

Invalid Link Removed

Its 1.6 kHz bumpage is minor, but overlapped with my custom 15" woofer's peak in that region, it works well. And notice how its top-end rises right about where the guitar speaker starts falling off. The 5" cone of course has much better dispersion than the big woofer. According to my measurements, the Faital 5" mid has a small dip in that 1.6 kHz ballpark, which does not show up in the factory curves. So yes it sounds smoother when in "growly" mode, and would be preferred by someone looking for that, but smooth is not really what this cab is designed for.

For those who want the 115 with some growly and a bit more "hi-fi" top end, imo the twin 3" Faital cones do a better job than the single 5" Faital cone.

For those who want a more aggressive 115 in when growly mode, the Eminence is imo superior to the 5" Faital, which just happens to have a small dip right where I want it to peak.

Imo the Hathor 1505 comes the closest of my cabs to embodying the "zig where the guitars zag" paradigm, when in "growly" mode, which may or may not be what someone is looking for.

 

[nutdog]

Here you go, 'dog, in chronological order, in which Duke talks about it in various contexts. The second one is the most detailed, I think:

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

P.S. - @husky123, I just realized that nutdog was replying to your post. So this might interest you.

Cool, looks like the mid part was right but the top switch starts rolling off at 3.5k. When I had the TC212 and Duke was starting to talk about his 'more of a bass cab/less of a studio monitor' idea. I had a shuttle max with all kinds of eq and he gave me some specific frequency and boost cut info but I must have deleted it. The thunderchildren were awesome but the hathor is more awesomer.

 

[Oneud]

Thanks so much for that detailed post, Duke! Makes me even more excited about the 1505 I have on order....I definitely picked the right cab for what I want. drool

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Hathor cabs must've been designed to fit on the Aurlex Baby Gramma 2.

The original Gramma was designed by my friend Jeff Hedback, award-winning acoustician and studio designer, bass player, and owner of two Thunderchild 115 cabs. He used to work for Auralex. One of the test tracks I use before any cab ships is a recording of a direct feed from Jeff's p-bass.

Actually, Curly is the bass player. Larry played violin.

View attachment 2896497

Thank you Tom! I stand corrected!!

I now know something. This design works very well for a lot of things and I would happily gig with it just as is. The beer bong tweeter presented no problems at all, and it sounded really great for all the slapping that went on...
All the booth slaves and Marco Cortes want to thank you for providing such a cool cab, and of course that goes double for me Duke.

Thank you VERY MUCH Passinwind, and Marco, and all associated slaves and minions and henchmen!!

I tried a few times to move the cab away from the back curtain, but that was just not a sustainable mode. And the placement otherwise did impact low bass quality in an undesirable way. I would have at least tried blocking some or all of the ports, but frankly, we needed as much low bass content as possible to keep up with the other rig sitting next to it, since two bassists at once was pretty much the default mode a good bit of the time. Note the iPad running into the Aux In on my amp, playing backup tracks for the endorser demo sets. The cab was stellar for that aspect. It sounded quite good for clean guitar too, by the way. The heavier duty compression driver seemed to help a lot in that regard.

So what would I do differently in retrospect? Bear in mind that this is just for a specialized case, not what passes for the real world:

1) Two tens, vertically stacked on front.
2) Same robust front tweeter, plus beer bong top firer.
3) Diffuser panel above beer bong, with some kind of trick radial spoke arrangement for pattern control. Now the amp size is removed as a variable.
4) Bottom firing port with blocker available for back and/or side openings.
5) Mega-bling dayglo acrylicized wood front panel, possibly with subtle (or not) LED backlighting. There was a guitar like this in the infamous nether reaches of Hall E. I took a card from the wood place in California exhibiting this stuff, I'll see if I can scare up a pic of what I have in mind.
6) Can of Raid for the bugeye.
7) Zircon encrusted logo plate.
8) Profit!

Thank you for so much detailed feedback!

I hadn't thought through the low-frequency acoustics of a big convention center floor... you probably might as well be in an open field when it comes to low frequency reinforcement. So the ideal cab cab would probably to have a very strong low end in order to not sound anemic.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

I was comparing my genzler rig with my hathor 1203 rig. Put both in a corner, 15 x 15ft room. The genzler had more low end within 3ft, but when I'm out about 10ft, the genzler lows completely disappeared, but the hathor was strong and low. Same thing happens on hollow stages, huge lows on stage, then completely disappear in the audience.

Could it have anything to do with port location in certain rooms, on the back of the hathor vs front of genzler? I was under the impression port location doesn't matter, but on paper and experience, the genzler goes deeper and has better lows, but in some rooms and placement, the hathor is way stronger in the lows by comparison.

Ok so today I went back to the small rehearsal room, turned the bottom genzler 180 degrees and pointed it into the corner, left the top cab facing out.....woah that did it, all the low end returned 10 ft out. Is it room reflections messing with the low end? Maybe the fact that the ports are on the rear of the hathor had the same effect, that's why there was a perceived fuller low end?

I don't have a definite answer, but my instinct is that you're on the right track.

With a single cab/single woofer/front port, if there is a strong reflective wall behind the cab, there will be a fairly low frequency at which the energy bouncing off that wall arrives at the ears 1/2 wavelength behind the first-arrival sound, off the front of the cone. This can cause a dip at that frequency. As you move further out into the room, the frequency of the cancellation dip changes, and that particular reflections becomes less significant relative to everything else going on in the room.

Now if we go to a rear-facing port (and/or add a rear-facing woofer), that low-frequency source will have a different path length to the ears, and more importantly a different path length to the wall, than the front-facing woofer. So there is less likely to be strong cancellation in a particular frequency region, because the path-length-induced dip from the rear-facing port (or woofer) will be at a significantly different frequency from the path-length-induced dip from the front woofer (and port). Each effectively fills in the other's dip by enough to make said dip audibly minor at worst. A rear-facing woofer is better at this than a rear-facing port because it covers a much wider bandwidth.

 

[Passinwind]

I hadn't thought through the low-frequency acoustics of a big convention center floor... you probably might as well be in an open field when it comes to low frequency reinforcement. So the ideal cab cab would probably to have a very strong low end in order to not sound anemic.

There are nine different halls at NAMM, and then at least hundreds of different booth configs. We had a tall back wall, for instance. And then there's the bogey factor of 100,000 plus people milling around. Yeah...it's complicated.

 

[slagheap]

Good question! The thing the Hathor 1505 probably does better than any of my other cabs, when in "grindy" mode, is to ZIG where guitar cabs typically ZAG. Here's the graph of an Eminence guitar speaker, it's a fairly representative sample of what guitar speakers do:

View attachment 2900737

The most obvious feature is a broad screaming peak that starts at about 2 kHz and continues up to about 5 kHz. Imo we DO NOT want a peak in this region - it belongs to the electric guitars, and if we try to be loud there for the sake of "cutting through", we risk instigating a volume war. And THEY can buy volume much cheaper than we can. The 2-4 kHz octave is where the ear is most sensitive, which is one of the reasons why little dinky guitar cabs with low power amps are so darn loud... another reason being, the guitar speaker's ballpark 105 dB efficiency in this region (and yet another reason being, guitars amps driven into distortion have a lot higher AVERAGE SPL than the same wattage not driven into distortion). Anyway we don't necessarily need to have dippage in this region, but imo we DEFINITELY do not want any significant peakage there.

Okay, the next important feature of that response curve, not as obvious but arguably more important, is that fairly narrow but fairly deep dip centered on about 1.6 kHz. Most guitar speakers have this sort of dip, to some extent. This dip is our WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: We can be LOUD here, and it sounds good and slots well in the mix, WITHOUT stepping on anyone's sonic toes!

This zig-zag voicing doesn't sound as good solo, so you might want to engage the "smoother" switch for practice at home.



The Eminence Pro5 MRN-8 is still my favorite midrange driver. Its curve has the zigs and zags in exactly the right places for what I want. Here's a link to the spec sheet:

Invalid Link Removed

Its 1.6 kHz bumpage is minor, but overlapped with my custom 15" woofer's peak in that region, it works well. And notice how its top-end rises right about where the guitar speaker starts falling off. The 5" cone of course has much better dispersion than the big woofer. According to my measurements, the Faital 5" mid has a small dip in that 1.6 kHz ballpark, which does not show up in the factory curves. So yes it sounds smoother when in "growly" mode, and would be preferred by someone looking for that, but smooth is not really what this cab is designed for.

For those who want the 115 with some growly and a bit more "hi-fi" top end, imo the twin 3" Faital cones do a better job than the single 5" Faital cone.

For those who want a more aggressive 115 in when growly mode, the Eminence is imo superior to the 5" Faital, which just happens to have a small dip right where I want it to peak.

Imo the Hathor 1505 comes the closest of my cabs to embodying the "zig where the guitars zag" paradigm, when in "growly" mode, which may or may not be what someone is looking for.

thanx, Duke. you 'da man!

 

[DirtPoorRobins]

I don't have a definite answer, but my instinct is that you're on the right track.

With a single cab/single woofer/front port, if there is a strong reflective wall behind the cab, there will be a fairly low frequency at which the energy bouncing off that wall arrives at the ears 1/2 wavelength behind the first-arrival sound, off the front of the cone. This can cause a dip at that frequency. As you move further out into the room, the frequency of the cancellation dip changes, and that particular reflections becomes less significant relative to everything else going on in the room.

Now if we go to a rear-facing port (and/or add a rear-facing woofer), that low-frequency source will have a different path length to the ears, and more importantly a different path length to the wall, than the front-facing woofer. So there is less likely to be strong cancellation in a particular frequency region, because the path-length-induced dip from the rear-facing port (or woofer) will be at a significantly different frequency from the path-length-induced dip from the front woofer (and port). Each effectively fills in the other's dip by enough to make said dip audibly minor at worst. A rear-facing woofer is better at this than a rear-facing port because it covers a much wider bandwidth.

That makes total sense and what I experience at some venues being right against a wall, low end drop off about 10-15ft out front. Rear firing woofer sounds like a great idea, I basically did that with turning one cab around and it worked perfect.....maybe a new cab design....

 

[DukeLeJeune]

That makes total sense and what I experience at some venues being right against a wall, low end drop off about 10-15ft out front. Rear firing woofer sounds like a great idea, I basically did that with turning one cab around and it worked perfect.....maybe a new cab design....

Actually I was prototyping bipolar bass cabs even before I did the Thunderchild 112. Never quite felt like I got everything right.

Jim Bergantino makes some excellent cabs with rear-firing woofers.

I've been doing bipolar home audio speakers, and variations on the theme, for over ten years. So I do like the concept. I think it would be most at home in something like a dedicated upright bass cab.

 

[MarkA]

@DirtPoorRobbins, if you've a stack of two Hathors (wasn't clear if that was the case), you could try the same thing with them and turn one around. Maybe even experiment with whether that's the top or bottom cab.

 

[DirtPoorRobins]

@DirtPoorRobbins, if you've a stack of two Hathors (wasn't clear if that was the case), you could try the same thing with them and turn one around. Maybe even experiment with whether that's the top or bottom cab.

True, I think my experiment proved dukes hypothesis that the rear port with the hathors helped the wave cancelltion effect because of the sound from the rear port going in an opposite direction and having a different path to the listener. I assume turning a hathor around would maybe just increase the low end perception at that 10-15 ft out. I'm just so glad I was able to figure this out, I'll probably be turning one cab around at a couple venues similar to this.

 

[kittywithabanjo]

I did my first gig last night with my new to me Demeter. I didn't need both my cabs for this gig but since it' a 2 nighter I figured why not. My tone was killing.
Chain was.
Reimer active pj
Two-tone lebass
Demeter hbp-1 800d
Hathor 1203
Tc112