Eco-friendly Bamboo ply speakers


Anyone hear the Escalante Design bamboo speakers at the NYC show this year, i missed that room somehow. They make some pretty cool claims in their ads, but how do they sound? Thats a lot of money for monitors so they have some stiff competition in that range. Can anyone respond on the sound? Thanks for listening
jalanc42069
Hi Pete,
I thought Jalanc was talking about bamboo drivers, not cabinets. Tang-Band is coming out with a bamboo driver sold by P-E.
Cdc- Where do I find more info on bamboo drivers? Searches on PE and Tang Band as well as google didn't turn anything up. Madisound? Are these like the JVC sake soaked birch cones?
Hi Newbie,
Parts Express may not be advertising it yet but you can contact them as they already have a part number for it, I don't have it now. Brief specs on the W4-1320:
Fo = 75 Hz
Vas = 5.9 L
Mmd = 3.243 g
Mms = 3.490 g
BL = 4.802 TM
Qms = 1.488
Qes = .484
Qts = .366
Xmax = 3 mm
No = .501

Full range to 20 Khz. Very light, extremely low resonance and much better Xmax and Q than most all Fostex. No whizzer.
I'm, building one if I can get the cabinets roughed out. What an ordeal, geeeez!!
Cdc,
Looks good from the numbers. No crossover I presume. Are you building a Carolina Audio JTM clone? You should start a thread to keep us informed on your progress.
Hi Creeper, thanks for the interest. No JTM clone. Because I only listen at 70dB, a single driver speaker is practical for the way I listen. Furthermore because they beam above 3-4kHz, I don't have problems anymore with boosts in HF from wide dispersion drivers reflecting around the room. And this happened with every speaker I tried, even the soft dome ones.
This speaker has just the single 4" driver (no whizzer) in a box with no T-L. I have my current Tang-Band 871s 3" paper driver against the wall. Measures flat to only 80hz which does not cut it. I don't know if the new speaker will be sealed or vented. Will have to see how much bass it produces sealed. As Sean wrote, less bass but greater *extension* because of more gradual LF rolloff. If I tuned the box to 70Hz bass may drop off fast below the 70Hz and so a sealed box will give less bass at 70hz but more bass at 30 hz. No big deal to put in a vent later.
Fostex has such low x-max (usually .35mm) that I don't see adequate bass. They seem to start rolling off at 200hz vs. the 3mm x-max Tang-Band's 100hz. Also some have mechanical Q as high as 8.5. Maybe they sound good but the ones I've heard sounded bright. I think partially from the lack of bass and partially from ringing of high Q driver.
I was considering the FR-125 from www.creativesound.ca but I don't need 9mm xmax when the speaker is against the wall. Also because of the bass output, No (Musical power) is only .242% and SPL is 85 dB while the Tang-Band is .501% and 89dB. Not high efficiency but without an x-over still plays quite loud on low power. I guess the x-over on the Mission speakers (with some sort of bass boost circuitry) lowered *effective* efficiency to 2-4dB lower than x-overless speaker.
So this is the best I've come up with on paper. The Tang-Bands are only ~$32 each and my speaker design has a removable front and back panel sealed with foam tape. They will sort of look like Epos. I'm getting extra front panels so I can just drill out a front panel for a different driver hole, drop the new front panel in the speaker cabinet and voila - new speaker. Or may go with a standard 2-way front panel which I can drop in if I get tired of a single driver.
After this, I would like to build an amp3 kit from 41hz.com. Costs $25. I think the T-amp will complement a warm sounding driver like the Tang-Band very well. T-amps are said to have good detail and stereo separation but can sound thin, and bright from HF garbage. Single driver don't have much HF extension to begin with so I don't see this as a problem.
This is just my opinion, but I see a lot of people (myself included) moving away from hi-rez metal tweeters, etc. towards "lower res" vinyl, tubes, etc. Until a stereo can remove ALL the HF distortion from the electronics, power supplies, cables, power from the wall, you're listening to a lot of HF garbage along with the HF music. So hence the move away from this type of high resolution. Where I differ is the thought of "why spend a lot of money for "low rez"?" My single driver speaker tends to have a tube-like/ vinyl-like sound quality. And I'm not paying for the high rez of B&W. Or high price tubes and vinyl to subsequently reduce the resolution. I'm not worried about the nice tonality of tubes and vinyl, doesn't matter so much to my ears. Plus I still have the convenience of CD's where I burn all my favorite songs onto one CD so I don't have to switch every 10 minutes.
The realy cool thing is this $32 pre-built remote control kit with motorized volume pot I found. So I can have remote volume on the power amp for $32. Not some stupid $350 rip-off priced Creek unit. No pre-amp which is a problem but my CDB puts out 2v so it's not as bad as some others.
This is more fun than audio just being a money hobby where all it comes down to is saving up money for the next purchase, IMHO.