Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

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Cressy Snr
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#301 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

JohnG wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2020 10:41 am Hi Steve
I have heard and have developed a soft spot for these Speakers through my visiting Owston,
I now have memories of them being their two times, and on each visit these speakers transported me to another place.
I know from your posts and pre presentation descriptions you have made slight changes to them each time I have auditioned them.
For the Record, I like them a lot, they transport me into a place of Solace and relaxation.
They are still on my 'must be done' list.
There is a Mr Nixie - STC 11 Amp, that I would very much like to look into, to be used to Direct Drive them,
'No Speaker Cables' is the intention.
The ongoing investigations being undertaken by yourself and the reporting back of the positive findings are always welcome at this end.

Thanks John,
in comparison to the more exotic FR drivers, the Fane 12in tri-cone driver and its 15in big brother are a steal at the price.
As far as I’m concerned they tick all the right boxes:
  • They work really well with sealed box loading
  • Given the above, the cab can be placed against a wall, so that they integrate well into a living room environment
  • They have good HF extension without the need for a tweeter
  • They present a benign load and are a doddle to drive with a low power SE amplifier
Back to the present work with them: the resistive coupling into the bottom chamber is working very nicely and extends the bass response by a fairly good margin. Slowing down air velocity, lowering the Q and all that.

It’s a pity the original Naim SBL (Separate Box Loudspeaker) was so damned ‘loud’ in the presence region or I’d have bought it in a heartbeat just for its deep, boom free bass. I called it the Naim “Sgt Major” speaker at a dealer show once. It didn’t go down well :lol:

The Fanes with the quasi SBL technique don’t go as low as the Naims did, but they play bass tunes just as well and their bass texture is as good, if not better.
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Cressy Snr
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#302 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

I’ve just had another thought,

The old Naim IBL (Integrated Box Loudspeaker) cheapest in the *BL range, was more like my Fanes, as it too, had an acoustic resistor setup, inside the cabinet rather than as part of an entrance to a separate cab, which required a gasket between the two and a frame to hold the lot rigid in order to prevent air leaks.

I knew somebody had put an acoustic resistor inside a speaker cab before. Roy George.
Acoustic resistances are an interesting addition to the sealed box designer’s toolkit.
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ed
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#303 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by ed »

you triggered a memory here...I had to go and get Olson off the shelf....
he has a few things to say about silk which has a history in early telephones and microphones....
I think I may be speaking out of turn...I'm going to have a further read and try and fathom inertance, which it seems is relevant.
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Greg
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#304 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Greg »

Is it not similar to Aperiodic loading where in small boxes there is a resistive vent to atmosphere and in large boxes into a second chamber below a brace? Still used, I believe by Dynaudio and Scan-Speak who still sell vents for DIYers. Also used by Peter Comeau in his WD25A and 25T speakers.
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#305 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by chris661 »

Just trying to wrap my head around it.

If you took a pair of cabinets, put a driver in one and a tube between the two, and then shoved a load of polyfill into the tube and empty cabinets, I can see the following occurring:

- At mid-high frequencies, the driver will only see the cabinet, with a black hole of absorption where the tube is.
- At low frequencies, the tube and second cabinet will appear as a large cabinet

It's worth noting that the frequencies described above are relative to the acoustic size of the cabinet, not necessarily our hearing range.

- At some mid-low frequency, I think the spring-mass system of the loaded sealed box could be annulled by correctly sizing the port. ie, if you do it right you'll get a flat impedance in the LF range. You'd have to line up the port with the sealed Fc of the upper cabinet. Probably. It's a little fuzzy to me.

So, (potential) flat LF impedance, and increased efficiency (via the larger cabinet) at very low frequencies, in something that looks like a stand. Neat.

FWIW I just built some slim floorstanders and filled them with polyfill. YMMV.

Chris
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#306 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Scottmoose »

Depends on the variation in question. The Dynaco A35 is probably the most well-known example of this load; other variations like the WD25T have used smaller driver chambers with the object of allowing a greater range of fine tuning over the overall system Q. Theoretically it may provide slightly superior driver loading to a regular sealed box as the full box volume & internal resistive-vent are only acoustically transparent at lower frequencies. Different ways & means of implementing of course. YMMV as always.
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Cressy Snr
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#307 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

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5 days in with the damped arrangement with twin chambers and acoustic resistance ‘doorway’ between the two and, I think it is a success. I reckon the arrangement is a great help with a big single-driver full range system such as the Fane 12 and 15in, tri-cone units. Here’s why:

I haven’t measured anything, so need to do that to be sure, but the acoustic resistance setup to my ears, acts to shelve the frequency response of the speaker system, up from the lower mids downwards, so that the top to bottom tonal balance becomes more skewed towards flat, once the aid from the next-to-wall wall low bass reinforcement is added into the equation.

This characteristic of the acoustic resistance is incredibly useful with a big full range unit, and it, in conjunction with off-axis listening, ie both cabinets firing straight down the room, effectively neutralises the frequency response without it leading to scooped-out mids.

The end result for the Fane driver in this cabinet, is a flatter in-room response; so much so that it has been possible to remove the behind-the-grille, eye diffuser I put in a few months ago to shelve down the top end. The treble end of the FR is in better balance with the bass, with the acoustic resistance in use, so that shelving the top down is no longer needed.

For a single driver system, this is a very good result.
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Cressy Snr
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#308 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

OK, so after having sorted the bottom end of this ongoing project, with the acoustic resistance, and as our Ant is messing with subs on his 15 inch Fanes, I thought I’d go to the other end of the spectrum and attend to the top end on mine.
This Fane driver is an excellent full-ranger, and for the money being asked, it’s very good value in the sound-per-pound stakes, but like most single drivers it has its limitations at the top end. True, it goes very high but this is at the expense of a viciously rising on-axis response, which can be cringe inducing to put it mildly. Get off-axis and it can sound very nice, but too far off and the treble beaming, these kinds of be-whizzered drivers suffer from, causes the HF to fall off a cliff. The published curves show this behaviour very clearly.
Falling treble mixed with rising upper mids, is not a healthy combination, and results in ‘cupped hands’ colouration on female voices, which can be ameliorated with judicious grille engineering, which I have successfully experimented with. But again, this midrange ‘cure’ doesn’t solve the falling treble problem off-axis, and if we are being honest, shriek can still break through on occasion. Shriek is not caused by too much treble, it is caused by not having enough of the stuff in the right place.

After I got Bell’s palsy a couple of years ago, my hearing got wrecked and I lost much of the upper end. I’ve slowly got it back, but it was slow going, and these days I can’t hear anything above 10KHz. The falling off-axis treble response of these Fane drivers, confounds this age related hearing problem, much, much more than it did when I first built the speakers, and yesterday I’d just about had enough of it.

Listening to the Doug Sax mastered DSOTM 20th Anniversary CD from 1993, I found I could no longer hear much of Nick Mason’s delicate cymbal work. The double time tippity-tippity-tippity-tippity ride cymbal rhythm, during the guitar break on ‘Money’ was virtually inaudible, as was the slow jazzy ride work on ‘Us and Them.’ And don’t get me started on the little ‘ttttring’ ripple on the bell section of the cymbal, just after the climax of Clare Torry’s improvisation, on ‘Great Gig In The Sky’ where the piano leads us into a softer voiced place. I mean where the feck had it gone? Completely missing in action.

The answer is a helper tweeter and below is the lash-up I’ve been playing with:
B4D97C54-CB9B-4AC5-8755-E1343A6DF5A8.jpeg
A nice 92dB efficient Monacor SPP-90 polypropylene cone unit got dragged out of my box of tweeters. I chose it because it’s dispersion pattern is a good match for the whizzers in the main driver and its response curve is an almost perfect mirror of the Fane’s top end response. It also has previous form for not being in the slightest bit aggressive.

As a pair, these tweeters raise the top end, very effectively. They give excellent imaging and restore a level of fine detail, I thought I wouldn’t get to hear again. Vocals of either sex are improved and harshness is noticeable by its absence.

A pretty decent result.
Last edited by Cressy Snr on Sun Dec 13, 2020 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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#309 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

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Just need to make a couple of boxes to place on the tops of the Fanes, to house the tweeters.
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#310 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

I made a useful little mod to the Fane cabinets this afternoon. They now use aperiodic loading, well as near as I can get to it for now.

The ‘slot’ is made up of a line of 1” holes drilled in the underside, between the two front legs. They make a slot around 12”x1” These holes are covered on the outside by a piece of quarter inch thick wool felt, of the kind used inside speaker cabs. It’s completely invisible from the front and all the damped holes do, is to relieve the pressure in the cab, pulling the system Q down a bit. I think I’ve judged it about right, as you don’t want to be trying to pull the thing below what the driver itself is capable of.

This loading gives the speakers a nice overall balance. Less mid-forward, meaning they can be cranked right up without becoming overwhelming, which they were prone to do if you played the wrong material. Bass is even-tempered and extends lower than it did, or should I say the hump is no longer masking what low bass I had which is quite useful in a small room like mine, where low bass is difficult to get right.
Last edited by Cressy Snr on Mon Feb 15, 2021 10:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#311 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

Listening a bit more to the modified Fane speakers, I’m loving the even handed reproduction quality. I’ve never heard an aperiodic loaded speaker (OK these are not proper aperiodic more ‘leaky box’ than anything else but humour me, although an aperiodic can be a leaky box...oh sod it :D ) It’s the one loading type I have no experience of listening to and I find them to be very, very good indeed. The presentation suits my idea of what a speaker should be better than anything else I’ve done apart from the Mets Dave now has, which sound very similar. In fact the aperiodics do a very good impression of the sound of a transmission line cab.
An additional benefit is a flatter impedance plot if you get the vent optimised, making the thing a match made in heaven with a low power valve amp.

It’d be interesting to do a better aperiodic cabinet for these drivers, I probably haven’t got enough holes at the moment, for the size of the cab/driver. I think, (but don’t quote me on it as the last bit of theory I read on these things was in 1976) that you need 10 sq in of vent area for each cubic foot of cabinet. For my 2.8 cu ft cabs I need just under 30 sq in of vent area, so a 12x2.25in vent is about right.
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#312 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by karatestu »

Hello Steve. I have just caught up with your speaker adventure. I didn't know that you had hearing troubles, sorry to read about that. My hearing tails off at 13 kHz and I have a very low level hissing probably due to years of playing drums and loud machinery at work. I have no idea how it effects what I hear and it makes me question every speaker decision I have made. It's a bit depressing :)

I never thought I would see you adding a tweeter but if your hearing requires a bit of help up there then so be it. What capacitor have you used and when is it rolled in ? What does your good wife think about the speakers ? I take it her hearing is better than yours.

I am also surprised that you haven't tried aperiodic before. Through my blind fumbling with speakers I always end up going back to it. I think it is a very useful tool in a small nearly square room (like mine) where one foot wrong in the bass department can lead to bass mode disaster and a feeling of wanting to throw it out of the window.

Thanks for your advice on HFS regarding the BBC dip. It has led me to plan trying a few things in that department. I read a long thread on diyaudio and they couldn't decide why it was there :D Who ever says designing speakers is easy is so wrong and I don't even have the added complexity of an electrical crossover to deal with.

Happy listening.
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#313 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

Hi Stu,
I got told to remove the tweeters! It was a step too far. I can’t repeat what she said, this is a family show! :lol: So I had to compromise by removing the grille engineering, which did restore some of the top end but put the mids too forward again. TBH I thought I’d just play around with the speakers without posting much about it, as they were in a bit of a fluid situation.

I had a bad case of Bell’s Palsy a few years ago and it wrecked my hearing. At the worst stage, the hospital audiologist measured me at 6KHz. That was not the worst of it however. There was a nasty flutter-echo distortion whenever an HF event took place, such a bell ringing or a cymbal crash. I had to give up with the hi-fi for a month: it was too painful to listen to.

I’m now back at 10KHz, which I think, is as good as it is gonna get, and there is slight tinnitus, but it’s not a bad result, considering what could have happened. My face works at least.

Re the aperiodic mod. It has balanced up the sound nicely, so that the mid-forwardness is gone. I think it is a simple case of cabinet internal pressure relief, so the large cone area can move more freely back and forth, which balances the bass cone output against the mid whizzer better. I’ve also left the grilles off, which has helped the treble whizzer to do its stuff more effectively.

The drivers go up to 17KHz, which is nearly twice as high as I can hear, so I cant see any more reason to mess with tweeters. The missus’d kill me anyway. Her reaction to me getting a drill and holesaws out and attacking the undersides of the cabs was on the lines of, ‘you’re going to bugger them up’ but the reaction to the sound when I played the system after the mods was positive to say the least. So we’re on the right lines. The fine details are slightly down, but TBH I don’t care any more, the overall sound is very pleasant and the sonic irritation is way down below my cringe threshold.
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#314 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by Cressy Snr »

So this morning, with the aid of PiR^2 for my hole saws I worked out the (very) approximate area of vent I needed to do a proper aperiodic cabinet. It turned out to be a line of three x 3" holes, taking into account the line of half inch holes already there. Three holes in the base of each cab later and a piece of high density felt, glued and stapled across each resulting opening. The vent fillings consist of 2" of the glass fibre cab lining already there, plus the high density felt covers. The Fane cabs already have a holey brace, they now have a holey base. :lol:

The sound is great and really brings out the best qualities of the 807 SEUL amplifier. I can't complain at all.
Out is the mid-forwardness, out is the peaking.
In, is a superbly even quality across the musical spectrum with a beautifully smooth treble, and lovely vocals, the residual hardness and glare the drivers could sometimes exhibit, is effectively banished.

These speakers actually sound more like my old Mets than my old Mets and that can only be a good thing in my view.

It's taken me nearly three years to drag these big full range drivers, kicking and screaming out of the pro sound world and into the domestic hi fi environment. From when I first heard them without even a cabinet, I realised the potential they had to be a top full-ranger. What I hadn't bargained for was the amount of time and effort they were going to require to get them to bring a decent facsimile of the recording studio into the living room.

So to conclude then:
Give these Fane triple-cone drivers an aperiodic cabinet of approx 80L and they make excellent domestic hi-fi speakers, for quite reasonable money.

EDIT
I've just gone back to the beginning of the thread in March 2018 and found that Scott did mention that the drivers had potential in an aperiodic cab., but I chose to ignore him. :oops: Feckin'ell :banghead:

Oh well, you live and learn.
Bloody dogma strikes again FFS!
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#315 Re: Fane 12-250TC Retro Speaker.

Unread post by izzy wizzy »

Cressy Snr wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:09 pm So this morning, with the aid of PiR^2 for my hole saws I worked out the (very) approximate area of vent I needed to do a proper aperiodic cabinet. It turned out to be a line of three x 3" holes, taking into account the line of half inch holes already there. Three holes in the base of each cab later and a piece of high density felt, glued and stapled across each resulting opening. The vent fillings consist of 2" of the glass fibre cab lining already there, plus the high density felt covers. The Fane cabs already have a holey brace, they now have a holey base. :lol:
May I ask where you found this info on aperiodic loading? Is it a sim of some kind?

cheers,
Stephen
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