Millercarbon's Mega Moab Mod Meander


One of the all time great automotive engineers, Norbert Singer, was a key player in every one of the 16 Porsche LeMans victories from 1970 to 1998. His dominance was such that at one point Porsche had won LeMans more than all other marques combined. This was all accomplished by building on the already solid foundation of Porsche production models. The air cooled flat 12 in the 917 was really two flat sixes combined to make 12. This car so dominated motorsport the rules had to be changed to stop it!  

So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.  

I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!

The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.

My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.  

This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.  

Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.

So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.  

That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!  

The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
128x128millercarbon
@chicagoblue1977 - I agree with your initial statement over the trolling (you may be surprised by the numbers of those who agree with you). And will not consider myself worse off without the contention and trolling.

I've got the parts all laid out the right way now, each inductor axis at 90 to the others, and the fun part, Herbie's Grunge Buster mat under the inductors and around the ends of the Alumen Zcaps. Herbie's is kind of a stiffer thicker sorbothane I guess you could call it. Most of the rest of the caps are wrapped in fO.q tape. 

All the leads reach so they can all be wired direct to each other.

Couple days now at my day job, then get back to it Saturday.

chicagoblue1977,

"@gulpson Be a man and just walk away."
I am sorry, I will be gender-neutral today.

While we are at that, as millercarbon allegedly does not read my posts (that is just one reason why he stays uninformed about topics he preaches), could you tell him that some of us are decent drivers? His demeaning non-sense was not well-placed.

"I am sure he is wonderful."

I am not sure about wonderful, but at least I have manners.

Now, you do not need to walk away. Instead, why not run?
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I found direct coupling the bass actually works. No passive XO for me anymore. My bass is all active XOs. At the very least my onboard Plate amps have DSP. One system is servo, one is Direct coupled with full blown DSP 300hz and below..

I like the way DSP pressures the room. more so than the servo units..

DSP I can actively see on a Laptop what is going on and change it on the fly.. Servo plate amps I can't.. I have to get up move the unit listen, play with the controls... YES PLAY! It takes forever..

DSP is a LOT more convenient using a Behringer set up.. Never tried it above 300 hz though.. I'm all passive 300hz and up.. 6 different crossovers at a time and daisy chainable... 6+6+6+6 etc. 256 nodes I think..

MC's set up has a single woofer on the bottom. that is better from a mag field perspective. I had TWO, close, at right angles. One is a double stack the other a single. LOL I stick a compass in there... It just spins.
I'm not putting an XO even close. I think its 18" from the bass section.
Need to remove the drivers all together. I haven't used the bass section in most speakers in years..

The Bass and monitor section in the same box? How do you separate the vibration there, if it so dog gone important? Vibration that is..
Just wondering from a guy who did do it.. ME... No bass and I limited the effects of bass on bass drivers (phase plug design)

All the other drivers use a foam directional wave guides and weirs in the planar design (Back wave return).

I've designed a LOW distortion, low vibration system that really works well. A lot of the acoustic tweak is right in the BOX and DRIVER design..

I actually though inside the box.

Then outside the box for the bass. Just made sense to me. 

A manic mechanic :-)