audio-talk

steve s wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:41 pm Those look really good Colin..
The grain looks really good and I really like the grills ... are they available in different sizes

Hi Steve,

The grilles are hand made by me from 18mm birch ply specific for these speakers. The acoustic cloth I bought from ebay from this UK seller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-4-x-0-5M-S ... 3513936867. It seems only available in one size 1.4m long x 0.5m wide and available in 4 colours. It does look the business and quite easy to apply. I simply used general spray on adhesive applied to the plywood frame.

However, if you want a rainbow of colour options you can buy it from China Ebay seller and it is available in larger sizes: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-4mx1-0m-Sp ... 0005.m1851.

As everyone else has said - very nice looking speakers and I am sure they sound good too

And then the 2 Walnut speakers for Ali now becomes 4!
So I now have a pair for my own use and for demo purposes should anyone want to pop over for a listen.
Photos orientated for both W10 operating users and Apple users.





Having had Al;i's speakers hooked up and playing these last 3-weeks they are now fully run in and sounding super splendid.
I'm just going to go back into my music room for a long listening session with the new speakers hooked up to my NickG designed 300B monoblock amps. Must say this is a rather nice sounding combination.

I only charge nominally for the use of my speakers.

Ali Tait wrote: ↑Thu Oct 25, 2018 3:25 pm I only charge nominally for the use of my speakers.

Ah! but you haven't had my speaker running-in service charges yet

Seriously apart from the banter, I asked Scott to have a look at the 12" version of the Monacor Coax driver, the SP-312CX, to see how this models into a similar proportioned MLTL cabinet. The good news news is it should work fine. We can maintain the same general proportions - just needs to be a couple inches wider, rougly the same height and a little deeper to accommodate the larger driver. As this is a beast of a driver the cabinet structure will need some beefing up but still keep the build nice and simple. We shall be keeping to the same general XO topology and quality Jantzen components in the hardwired crossover. Scott reckons that from the published datasheets the impedance does not drop much below 6 ohms and since the drivers are around 1dB more efficent than the 10" version these should be a nice easy load to drive for low power SET and OTL amps. I'll start to draft up the design today with a view to make the prototypes before Christmas.

Funny you should say, was going to ask you about that. Shame they don’t do a 15” p

Toppsy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:27 am
Seriously apart from the banter, I asked Scott to have a look at the 12" version of the Monacor Coax driver, the SP-312CX, to see how this models into a similar proportioned MLTL cabinet. The good news news is it should work fine. We can maintain the same general proportions - just needs to be a couple inches wider, rougly the same height and a little deeper to accommodate the larger driver. As this is a beast of a driver the cabinet structure will need some beefing up but still keep the build nice and simple. We shall be keeping to the same general XO topology and quality Jantzen components in the hardwired crossover. Scott reckons that from the published datasheets the impedance does not drop much below 6 ohms and since the drivers are around 1dB more efficent than the 10" version these should be a nice easy load to drive for low power SET and OTL amps. I'll start to draft up the design today with a view to make the prototypes before Christmas.

Sounds like a good plan Colin. There's something about big main drivers that just sounds, for want of a better word, "right"

As the 10" coax speakers sound so incredibly good, trying out the 12" version in a similar MLTL cabinet simply had to be done. I know Ali has a hankering to know how these compare to the 10" speakers I recently built for him.

So an email went out to Scott requesting he design a similar proportioned MLTL box for the SP312CX driver. The larger cabinets have around 24 litres increase in internal volume. This results in a box approx. 2" wider, around 1" taller and near on 2" deeper. On paper doesn't sound a lot bigger than the originals until you physically stand then side by side and have to lug them around. Boy are they heavy. Both sets of cabinets are made from 18mm birch ply but the larger 12" cabinets have considerably more internal bracing over their smaller brothers.

I have made quite a bit of progress last week and now one speaker is complete bar the installation of the XO'ers. So as yet I cannot report on the difference in sound the bigger brother drivers bring to the party. This will have to wait. I am still awaiting delivery of all the XO components and hope to have these by the end of this week or early next week. The second speaker has been built and is ready for me to start the veneering. These are covered in OAK. I had forgotten I had this and had put it away in a corner of my loft. Though it is crown cut American Oak and each leaf is 450mm wide x 4m long it doesn't have much of a character as in grain pattern. Perhaps why I had placed it out of site Couldn't do these in the rather nice American Walnut as I exhausted my entire stock of this veneer on the 2 sets of smaller speakers.

Attached are some photos of the finished speaker alongside the original 10" MLTL's. As before I have pasted images oriented for both W10 and Apple users.

S.

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Lovely work as always, Colin.

I've got a 10" coaxial project coming up - mine will be in stage monitors for PA use, but if the drivers (Faital Pro 10HX230) prove to be good, though, I'll see about doing a pair for home stereo use. An ML-TL is a nice way of getting a decent amount of LF extension from these drivers.

Cheers,
Chris

chris661 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 13, 2018 10:40 pm Lovely work as always, Colin.

I've got a 10" coaxial project coming up - mine will be in stage monitors for PA use, but if the drivers (Faital Pro 10HX230) prove to be good, though, I'll see about doing a pair for home stereo use. An ML-TL is a nice way of getting a decent amount of LF extension from these drivers.

Cheers,
Chris

Hi Chris,
Whenever you get around to building the home stereo speakers for your 10" Faital coaxial driver into your version of a ML-TL cabinet it would be really interesting to compare them against mine and Scott's 10" Monacor ML-TL's. Something for the new year no doubt.

Most likely next year, yeah.
The test driver is on its way from Italy - ETA is a couple of weeks.

I'll probably work like this:
- Put it in a sealed box, figure out the crossover
- Assuming the (passive) crossover doesn't take too much work, measure the T/S parameters, see how stage monitor/ML-TL/whatever looks in terms of response.
If the factory specs are accurate for the driver I get, it looks promising for all sorts of cabinets, but time will tell as to how accurate the specs are.

I went for the Faital units as they have an Xmax of just over 7mm, which is handy for when the drummer asks for more kick drum in the monitor. The polar plots and frequency response charts also look more-than-workable, so I'm looking forward to this.

Chris

Finished the second 12" coax driver speaker yesterday. Unfortunately still awaiting the XO inductors from HFC so don't know yet how they will compare to the 10" speakers.

Just a couple photos of the speakers as completed - First two orientated for W10/Android users (hopefully):




These should be orientated for you Apple users:





Me thinks I'll have to have a talk to one of my techy friends how I can get around this orientation issue when using my Samsung mobile phone camera

Shoddy as usual Colin.

Hi Ali,
Hope you are fully recovered from your tooth abscess?

So how are you getting along with your Milburn MKII speakers?

Do they perform well with your OTL amp? As you heard at my place they are a super match with my NickG designed 5W 300B SET amps.

Coax drivers do have a certain something going for them and the 10" drivers appear to be very low distortion devices reproducing a very clear and clean sound. They can be quite ruthless of poorly recorded material. I love em. From the spec sheets I reckon the 10" and 12" drivers share the same horn loaded tweeter so I am expecting the HF and midrange to be on a par but a bit more bottom end grunt from the 12" babies. Time and XO'ers will tell.