Lii Song has sent me their new flagship drivers, the PT-10's which are quite the animals...  it shows a company who's passion for exceptionalism is over and above.

They asked if I would design an enclosure for these drivers. When I received the drivers I had no idea what to expect. I measured the Thiel Small Parameters and was stunned to find the impedance at resonance at 500 ohms. It actually created a 180 degree phase shift at that frequency of 30 Hz. This got me a bit panicky. I spent the rest of the evening making a transformer to largely eliminate the phase shift just in case it proves to be a problem and how couldn't it, right?



Well, we still don't know the answers to any of this, it is too soon.  I just want an ace in my pocket to delete the phase shift just in case I need it. I then moved on to model the perfect box based on the Thiel Small parameters I had measured.  This was depressing because nothing was really modeling correctly.  The driver wanted to roll of at 300 Hz in most box types.  With some trickery it can go flat to 100 Hz, and if really stretched you might get it to hit 60Hz.  Or so I was being told by the computer models...




Finally I got frustrated and just went and got a sealed box of around 3 cubic feet and shoved one of the drivers over the hole since it was too big to fit a normal 10 inch cut out.  I just needed to see if this thing was going to make any bass...  Sure as shit it did.  Not a lot but I could hear the potential and an uncanny speed. It was special despite being only from the back side of the cone. 



This is when I knew I was going forward.  The Audio Gods told me it's not modeling well because it wants a real horn.  I got right on it.   When I finished the plans about 4 weeks later I started to build a pair.  This is when I found out my plans would have made my phone ring and clogged up my email...  so time to make some revisions.

ohhhh yeah- a spark of excitement just ran through my veins. Looking good and can't wait to see the final results. I will pace an order as soon they are available. Thank you for posting!

I think I’m gonna need to pick up a few more jigsaw blades.

If these can produce something similar to the bass you get from those corner cabinets (imperial?) then this is an exciting build.

I almost wish I'd waited now as I'm sure Steve's backloaded horms will sound absolutely spectacular.... Then again, my MLTL Platinum-10 speakers should sound fantastic also. I'm rather hoping it's pretty hard to get a Platinum-10 based speaker wrong.  

I'll take delivery of mine this coming Sunday  

Will you be looking to get a pair of your PT-10 BLH into the hands of Stereophile magazing Steve? I'd really love to read up on that  

Drew,

They are certainly gorgeous! I saw them on Facebook.

I’ve been wondering myself, why he hasn’t posted pics on this forum yet. Prolly too busy listening 😎

Well done

Hi Matty,

Great looking speakers!

It will be interesting to see how these sound in open baffle.  I think I can shoehorn them into to my existing C10 baffles with just a little trimming of the baffle.  My C10s are rear mounted and the mounting area is flared.

Once I get a ship date, I will pull everything out of the existing baffles and start working on them.

If they sound promising, I'll probably build new baffles.  Of course that's what I said about my current C10 baffles and here I am four or so years ago.

As I mentioned, I have the bottom end well covered so I just need these from around 160-200Hz and up.

Matty, those look great!  Interestingly they are about the same size!

The horns are nearly finished now.. just waiting for paint.  We scheduled a group listening session with Bob, Randy and several extended members of the Decware family this past weekend and all agree the project is a hit.  Actually the comments were so over the top you wouldn't believe me if I told you.  Some refused to go back in for fear of ruining their audio hobby for life.

Here is a short video of them playing in my wood shop.  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uFy5O9XQ2jZD6WHd4Tna_YWTt-WAVCds/view?usp=shari...

Recommend you download it and then play it to hear the actual recording rather than use google video player that pops up which will compress it.


The plans are in revision 5 and should be available soon.

Steve

Galaxy S9 phone.  It is what I use for 99% of all the videos on this channel.  That way the viewers have somewhat of a common frame of reference since they can record their own stereo playing the same tracks and upload it to YouTube for a direct comparison.

Steve

It would be interesting to know how it compares with the Silver-10 based Origin speakers as a baseline as that’s arguably Lii’s best known ready made speaker.  :)

The braces are curved with holes to break up the standing waves that otherwise occur between parallel surfaces.









The slotted things are diffusers, they deal with high frequencies but also stabilize bass frequencies by keeping the air pressure from sliding up or down on the rear panel.  The size diffusers carry the highest amount of energy.

Pre-drilling the holes for the wings so I can make it hard with the white paint.  The interior panels are all sealed with two coats of clear sanding sealer.



This is the wing.




Two for each speaker.



The removable baffle is made from cabinet grade plywood.  The plans under the baffle are showing the blade angles on your table saw to cut each panel.

Yes, I got Bob Ziegler involved!  We spent a good hour just getting the threaded inserts aligned.  It's a heavy driver all bolted into the 12 inch baffle so it was nice to have an extra set of hands holding the bottom as it was being tipped into place.


Now here is a story about what happened with the Audio Gods...   It starts with a round pillow!



I have at least four of these in my wood shop because the wind keeps blowing them out of the grandkids treehouse into the yard where they kill circles in the grass.  I found they are great in the shop because they are soft and level and firm enough to hold projects on without scratching anything.



Inside this horn is a pie shape just below the driver that when chanted into makes a horrible droning sound, and at resonance the sound continues for a few dozen milliseconds after you stop chanting.  The first time I heard this I felt panic.  Did I just make something for the bond fire?  You can't have sound like that inside the box with a cone this thin!  Crap.

I started having visions of stuffing the box with wool, and worried that the sound might be the horn flare itself!  Dread...

The the Audio Gods showed up and made sure that when I looked around for something to shove in that cavity that the pillow would be right there.  A perfect fit, and by itself it MORE than fixed it.  I seemed miraculous at the time, and my brain wasn't even processing it fully yet.  So simple... yet a wide band linear diaphragmatic absorber was just created and I missed it.

I'm sure it bummed them out when I ordered $187 worth of 1/2 inch wool to line the inside of the box with.  Also some foam that would be slicker to put near the throat of the horn.

While Bob was there I installed the felt in one of the horns and the foam and stuck my head in the cabinet and was satisfied that it was working, but I also remember the sound with the pillow days earlier.  So the little voice suggested an A/B test.  I relayed their wishes to Bob.  We agreed and put the Pillow in one cabinet and the fancy felt/foam job in the other and then tested the cabinets with the drivers installed on music.

The 1/2 inch thick ultra dense wool was removed as it was found to distort the sound at all volumes.  By comparison it sounded garbled.  It was hard to keep your ear 6 inches away from the cone, while the pillow side was crystal clear and it was easy to stand there indefinitely at that same distance.

During the process of getting the threaded fasteners aligned I realized that it was not fun taking the drivers in and out and thought we should just add the felt to the other cabinet and skip the A/B tests, because obviously the felt would win anyway.  I thought it, but I never spoke it.  Then I realized it was father Murphy trying to trip me up using laziness and pressure to win a bet with the Audio Gods.

I'm going to admit it wasn't easy to resist but I did, and thankfully so because the sound of this speaker would have been ruined and we would have never known.

The Felt was absorbing some frequencies and not others.  As well it was deaccelerating the air slowing down the reflex and doing it differently at different frequencies.  This was causing what I would have to call 'dynamic smearing' where the timing was off.





Here you can see the pillow installed. It sets at an angle just below the 10 inch driver.  The four corners allow instantaneous air movement between the two spaces created by the pillow.  This keeps the reflex speed at max, unlike the heavy wool that was simply lining all the walls.

The fleece on top of the 3 inch foam pillow creates just the right surface for voice, way better than just bare foam.  The heavy wool now gone allowed me to place some ultra thin green crafting felt in critical places.  It won't create too much drag on the air, but will delete the sound of MDF in the midrange.

Looking up instead of down at the pillow, we see the top of the interior chamber and the horn throat which is the slot on the left side of the image.




Since the closer we get to the slot, the faster the air flow / higher the air pressure and this is what feeds the horn flare.  We do not want to slow it down, but this is what the speaker cone sees, so we installed two pieces of thin craft foam, which is slicker than craft felt, to kill the MDF sound that would otherwise affect the midrange.  This stops before the slot.

I have to say this is a real achievement for me when it comes to interior box design / tuning.  Even the HDT wasn't this good.  By that I mean it is very satisfying to have no echo, no speed reduction and nearly perfect intelligibility inside a speaker box.  Usually the best you can hope for is a muffled sound without sharp reflections.

I know this is the most boring part of the speaker design, and if I put it in the plans most will ignore, but this is next to getting the angles right, the most important part.

Installing binding posts



The drivers



Yes, you can have them come out the rear, but I'm a purist and the internal wire is shorter this way.  

. Actually my heads been wrecked for a long time.  The closest I ever got to this sound was from my Acoustat Monitors.  They are full range electrostats with the "cone" area equal to eight 15 inch drivers per side with the mass of a few tweeters.  The panels are directly driven by servo charged tube amps where the plates of the high voltage tubes put 5KV directly on the panel without an interface making them unlike every other popular electrostatic speaker.  These are 20Hz to 20kHz panels that are 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall with four 5 degree facets but they were still real head vise speakers and even after weeks of placement adjustments they never sounded perfect because the amplifiers weren't good enough.  Well, not really but kinda really.  I figured some day I would build some tube amps for these electrostatics and use them again.  Now I have the speed, but also the range and the sound is way better because the amp is way better.  The dynamics are more visceral and the bass depth is more tangible, less oversized and diffused.  And I'm doing it with a single amp that is only 2 watts / channel and it gets to the same volume as the Acoustats.  Best of all the head vise effect is by comparison -- gone.  These cabinets completely disappear and I am only sitting less than 8 feet away from them.

It's hard to believe what I am hearing right now compared to this time last night...  Proof that miracles can happen because I laid awake all night thinking it would take one to get the sound I wanted and now I sit here easily able to say I've not heard better, and this is still only from a 2 watt amplifier.  I'm playing disco music, jazz, classical, vocals, electronica, trance, classic rock.  The pin point dynamics and the way everything is separated out is at a new level for me in all the things I've heard in my 50 years of hifi.

Even at normal listen levels I can feel the bass in the concrete everywhere in the building.  Also the lowest and the fastest bass I've ever heard.  It can start moving the whole building and then just stop and the building itself freezes until it is released and OK'd to finish moving.  It's freaky frikin fast bass and it moves from top to bottom with zero bloat.  There is zero mid bass bloat.  It's like listening the Zen Master Series larger baffle (model ZF15L) with an octave lower bass, and even great speed and way more neutrality.  The sound is perfectly neutral.  It energized the room in a way only large horns can.  This is even better than the full size imperial horns because it's faster and at 1/3 the width the standing waves in the room are reduced by 2/3rds and the bass is increased by the same amount.

Steve

Steve…thanks for the detailed update on this project. Congratulations….this is one badass speaker!!  Intimidating is an understatement!!  I think I’m going to need to coax the wife to allow me to burn some vacation time to attend this years Decfest.  

At my last Decfest…I can still remember listening to Yello’s Takla Makan through the Imperials sitting in the main chair and it blew my doors off!!  I can only imagine what this song would sound like through the new Headwreckers!!  Please post some video clips soon.

Dom

Maybe you will feel better this morning after some sleep Steve. We seem to share the same problem with anxiety when things are not right and/or very perplexing in our world. Valium works for me in the times of sleeplessness. Don't really like the side effects but it is better than the hopelessness feeling that develops with lack of sleep.

The Headwreckers will fit in my scheme Maybe? The width is perfect but the depth might interfere with the theater sound and view. Height will tower impressively in the Charoit for sure.

Nice work!

John

Are you going to sell them with the pillows in ?  :D

The phase shift at 30 Hz was measured with the speaker in free air.  I don't know what it measures in the cabinet yet.   I wouldn't waste my time on a speaker with a hole in the resulting frequency response which is why I designed a transformer for the driver just in case. So far am not hearing any holes in the bass response.


The wings were designed at the same time as the speaker.  They are optional.  The purpose is to project sound similar to the way the larger open baffles do.  It adds density to the midrange.  

Yes, the pillows are part of the speaker.  They are not optional.


I stayed up most of the night listening to these.  I had to take today off and sleep.

Quote:


That speaks volumes (no pun intended).

With the wings it reminds me of the Voigt pipe Speakers but the horn is folded so it isn't as tall.  

https://fredt300b.smugmug.com/Hobbies/Building-the-Voigt-Pipes/

Today I got up and wrestled with the pool liner.  After I finally got it out I had to put a new bottom in the pool.  Several trips to town for stuff, rain, brutal.  The only thing that doesn't hurt right now is my eyeballs. So I'm having a couple beers to kill the pain and taking the opportunity to listen more to these speakers.

So far all I have heard them on in this room is my UFO25, and only turned up to 1:30 on the dial. That's plenty loud, in fact 10:30 would be the normal listening level with these speakers in my largish room.

Tonight I decided to hear some of my reference tracks for slam that I used in the wood shop which is when the name 'Headwrecker' was coined.

I wanted to see what these things sounded like turned up, like we played them in the wood shop, but that was a push-pull amp with 3 to 5 times the power...  Anyway I decided to do what any normal man would do in this situation and turned up the dial until the VR tubes in the back and or the meters started to flinch. I got to 3:00 on the dial and it was so loud I stopped.  The amp was not clipping, I could not believe it.  It was as loud or louder than I remember in the wood shop, and this room is much larger and a lot deader...

So I listened to this particular track and had a brand new thought that I've never had before...



The slam and the speed at which the notes stop is so over the top, I've never heard anything do it this well before. It actually made me realize with amazement that air is really fast! That those notes could leave that cone and hit my chest that fast without any softening or spongy effect from the 9 foot air cushion was really just astounding.

The uncanny thing about these speakers, and this was true in the wood shop too, is that at high SPL, the clarity is unheard of. This goes back to the felt thing and the discord that came with it. The clarity from top the bottom on this is so unreal that you can play music 10dB (twice as loud) without shorting out your brain because your ears actually like it. No other speaker has this insane density throughout the midrange and top end.  It makes tweeters sound silly, like BB's. The highs on these speakers are like 50 caliber rounds compared to BB's.

These speakers, if you could record it, could easily reproduce a 50 caliber round shot inside a building. After it went off, you would look at your chest to make sure you weren't hit. That is the kind of realism from a density and dynamics and speed perspective that these speakers are achieving.

So yea, they actually made me ponder how fast air actually is. It was faster than I thought. That was the conclusion, after listening to sounds for 62 years., most of it audiophile grade.  Also the fact that what I am experiencing is through a 2.3 watt Zen Triode Amplifier is just about impossible to believe.  The Zen TORII mono's on the house speakers only graze the boundary of what these speakers are doing with 30 times less power.

Never before has my bell been ringed this hard or my chest thumped this crisply --  and please understand that Decware started out life in the 1990's as a pro audio company that designed, built and installed sound systems in night clubs.  We used Imperial horns, several of them in each club.  We could make you car vibrate just driving by the club on main street.  

With all that, and hundreds of IASCA winning car audio systems that I designed prior to the pro audio business, and the 30 years of DECWARE that you know of -- making low power amplification... I have a reputation for serious bass which means good bass and I can safely say that I have never heard anything hit like this. It's ear candy. You might think with millions of watts and a line array of woofers and subs that you can achieve similar results, but that's because you've not heard this, so we'll give you benefit of the doubt until you come over and listen to it in person.  You can't make that many voice coils work together with this kind of resolution, it's impossible.

So again, with all this experience and bass reference it was never anywhere near this fast. And speed was its hallmark. But speed is relative. The speed is the key.  These speakers are a lesson from the Audio Gods.  It will be a real thrill to share them with audio community.  

Steve  

Sorry I know this is droning on and on, but I have to capture it as it happens.  I am listening to 'Send me an Angel' on this same album and this is really the epitome of heavy / hard metal music.  It is so dense with stuff that 99% of the time when I hear music like this I bail out and in a damn hurry because the horizontal headroom disappears.

Tonight I am listening to this through the UFO25 which has been processed by Cryotone, and connected directly the HOLO Audio MAY dac and I have never heard music this 'busy' sound this clear.  I did not know it was possible.  Until right now, I was bias against this music because I am allergic to homogenization.  I am so stunned that I feel like I just uncovered a whole new universe of sound.  It's like going from the Hubble to the James Web and finding out you live inside a black hole.

God I love this hobby and being able to share it with all of you is my Re: New DECWARE Folded Horn

That's it! I had enough! I will be out this summer to hear this horn set! Your enthusiasm is sinking into my psychic. My observations of this new driver and your box magic is placing my soul at the gates of heaven waning admission.
That said, the horns will fit well in the Chariot's theme

John

Wow, this really has me thinking. And that’s the problem because I’m living proof of the adage, if you don’t think too good, don’t think too much. After placing my order with Sarah for a Sarah & the DNA2 back in August, I’m anticipating a late summer delivery on the speakers. Is that speaker still something relevant or does this new design make it obsolete? Because of the wait time for your amps, I’ve got a little 2a3 amp coming shortly to keep the DNA2’s company for the next couple of years. So there’s my dilemma, I’m really going to want another set of speakers in the future. What are the dimensions of the Headwreckers? How about boxed dimensions? I’ve loaded a pair of boxed Klipsch Forte IV in my Audi avant(station wagon) before, but I’m wondering about these. So I’m following this thread with great interest. I may need guidance on that matter,  having lesser speakers urinating uncontrollably will be a problem.

Thank you, Steve for sharing your hobby with us!

I like the appearance of the wings. The circle against the rectangle really pleases me.

Brian

Just some general where we're at with this...  

Best speaker I've heard on electronic music played loud after dark.  No question.  Everything else is still pending.

Unlike many highly resolute speakers that get sharp sounding if you turn them up, these drivers are not like that, at least not in this horn which is the only cabinet I have tried.  This combination sounds sharper at low volumes than it does at high volumes.  In other words, as you give it gas, the midrange weight and midbass get really well developed and the overall top to bottom balance becomes perfection.

I am only using the SE84UFO25 to test it, which with its resolution is kind of a worse case scenario.  These speakers may well behave completely different on our other amps, and we'll get to that when the time comes.  So after around a week of listening at lower to normal volumes I can confirm that where I have them placed in my room that they could sound warmer.  Again, they sound warm when turned up.  But we don't always listen loud, so today I have introduced the CSP325 matching preamp to the system and we'll see how that changes things.

I want to get 500 hours on the drivers before I take any of this too seriously.

This development process is going to take weeks/months so I wouldn't worry about getting a pair until we have the full report and you know what the final analysis is.  The speakers have to be tried in different locations and with different amps, with and without the transformer I designed and of course be fully burned in.

I'll keep you posted. : )

Steve

When we eventually work our way to your neck of the woods, I intend to pack the ZP3(tape mod), CSP2+( possibly 25th upgrade), and SE84 to try on the horns.

Wondering if a change of tubes will help with the sharpness? Or a SE84UFO25 without the cryo treatment. Too much of one thing can can tilt the apple cart.

Please do keep us informed

John

UPDATE 5/20/23

I have been listening to the speakers all week on the Sarah300B using the Chinese output tubes.  The sound is pretty spectacular.  The leaner mid-bass at low volume that I talked about is still gone.  Just doesn't happen on this amp.  This got me to wondering why... which got me to wondering about that 500ohm peak at resonance that we measured in the PT-10 driver.  Could it be the way the two amps handle that, or is it just the more body that the Sarah 300B amp has going in that makes the difference?

This of course also got me to thinking about bass response.  Since placing them in the listening room, the room response is different that with the other speakers.  The bass wave is so large that the standing wave pattern is also large.  That means that there will be places in your room with no bass that will move around as the frequencies change.

It's time to measure what is happening in the room from these speakers in the bass response.  This is really the first thing we need to know when setting up speakers in a room... where to place them and where to place the listening chair so that we hear all of the bass.

The way I like to do this is not to use the computer REW to measure the room, but instead I like to play test tones across the speakers and walk around in the room so I can hear where the tone is prominent and where the tone is weak.

To do that I just used sticky notes, one for each frequency.  We start at 100Hz, drop to 60Hz, 50Hz, 40Hz and 30Hz.



I drew an X where there was bass and and O where there was not to get a feel for what is happening in the space. What I learned is that I need to move the listening chair forward about another foot to stay out of a 40Hz bass hole where you don't hear any bass at that frequency.  

Additionally I wanted to see if my gizmo that I created to nearly eliminate the phase shift actually did anything and this would be concrete proof if it did or didn't.

So if you study the postIT notes, you will notice at the bottom there are small stars below the circles.  Remember the circles indicate no bass. After installing the network that fixes the phase shift at 30Hz, the bass returned to the rear of the room at every frequency.  The square represents my listening chair and the two lines on the right hand wall represent the door opening that does not exist on the left hand wall.

I want to see what happens when I install the network to eliminate the phase shift at 30Hz.  How will it effect where the bass is in the room?

This is the impedance and phase shift response for the PT-10 driver that I measured prior to starting this project which caused the concern about this drivers ability to have any bass at all in a regular box.


click to enlarge

The blue line is the impedance peaking at 500 ohms at 30Hz.  The red line is the phase angle flipping 180 degrees at 30Hz.

Here is room at 100Hz.  The horns (black rectangles toed in) are to scale.  There are two openings in the room.

The purple stars are bass.  The blue circles are no/weak bass.  The red stars are bass that appeared after installing the network.

Interestingly, I don't care if there is bass in the back of the room where I don't sit. At higher SPL the sound might be cleaner without all that energy on the rear walls vibrating everything. Who knows...  So the merits of this network in my 17 x 27 room are meaningless in how it affects the bass response that I will be hearing from the chair.  It will however have an affect on the overall sound and imaging so I will spend time with it turned on and off over the next several weeks to see what I like or dislike about it.

Here is the room at 50Hz.

https://youtu.be/hcoCX_jgj7I

Above is a link to the construction and testing video.

What I am hearing with this in place has 100% fixed anything that was causing me puzzlement.  It doesn't sound like the same speaker.  Same 2 watts, deleted the preamp just to reset and now at low to modest volume there is at least twice as much weight with pristine balance from top to bottom.  Can't find a single bad note in it, and spatially it is just numbing the difference this has made...

I'm pretty stoked.  I should have known it might take something like this but we're there.  The 2 watt amp sounds like it has giant balls and without being turned up like before.  See we have changed the dynamic of that game.  We don't want to have to hunt for amps that the speaker likes...

I really am stunned at what I'm hearing.  It's so deep and delicious and magical.  The liquidity is insane and compared to earlier today where it was comparatively like a sharp cold knife.

Just for kicks today when it was sounding lean at lower volumes, I used Roon to EQ it just to see what it would take to make it sound more balanced, and it was a 12dB increase in low end, and a 6 dB notch in the upper mids.  Sadly while it fixes the balance, it seems to ruin the sound going through the DSP in the computer prior to sending it to the DAC, so I've never been able to use it, or any other digital EQ that I've ever tried, which are a lot of them.

What really blows my mind about all this is that I am listening to test leads with thin crappie wire to test this circuit and that alone should completely RUIN the sound, so with that huge handicap in place this has to make everything better and boy does it.  I am still just stunned. Every track that comes on is jarringly good now compared to before.  It sounds like tape.

It defies logic, that it now sounds so full and beautiful and real with that 'there there' thing going on that begs not to be ignored. How is this possible. I am now listening to Time out of mind and it sounds perfect.  It sounded pretty off earlier today.

Now there is unbelievable weight that was absent this afternoon.  This is the weight that you expect when you have a cabinet this size, and it would have been a real shame if the only way people could experience this large horn was to play it loud.

Holy crap it's good now...  to me at this normal listening volume on the UFO25 the difference is 300% better on all counts.  Simply unbelievable.  

So I can't wait to install it without the cheesy wire and wrap that magnet at the same time.  It will no longer have to be turned up loud to wreck your head, it will just wreck your head because it sounds too good.

Would you sell this gitzmo?

We will be selling this device, yes.  It will be called the GIZMO2.  The original Gizmos were in a plastic box, one per speaker, and had no bypass switch option and were using non-UFO transformers.  This time I am combining everything into one high quality black steel box to match our other magic black boxes.  I built the production sample today.  So when time allows, I will update the website and discontinue the original Gizmo, and replace it with this newer model.  

I will post pictures of it shortly.

Steve

Steve,  I can you confirm if the gizmo2 would have similar positive effects on the bass, midrange weight of the Lii audio origin s10’s?

Thanks John

Hi John,

It would be applicable to any single-driver full-range speaker regardless of brand.  

Steve

In the Lii range what driver should benefit the most from the Gizmo2 ?
Or which one would not need it ? .....if it can be answered just with the driver spec.

Thanks, your description is clear, no, there is no such things with my F15' speakers.....logical I made them  ;D

$925 and no options or modifications will be available. Silver wiring is standard.

I've done ten video/sound samples of the horns in our listening room.  Recorded for headphones.

You can find them here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRj2qPuQz6zocI19iUtnU3w


Steve

Web page to purchase plans and finished cabinets:  https://www.decwareproducts.com/dfh

 "User installable and removable" Might be magnets.

Thank you, I looked at reply’s 24 & 29 & see what you’re talking about.

a thin layer of felt would be no problem.

l am however relying on them for side bracing which is to say that each side of the cabinet is braced/stiffened.  Without the wings, the only real alternative is to use a horizontal brace internally behind the driver that would connect the left and right side together.  That would make both sides vibrate exactly the same vs. allowing each to be somewhat decoupled from the other.  

No worries, this only matters in the mind as at the lower listening levels in a room I doubt it could be heard.

The imaging is more the big change you will notice.  It will be for better or worse pending distance from the walls and room dimensions, listening chair location, and perhaps equally important, electronics, cables.  Don't worry you will never know unless you have the wings and experiment with and without... sorry : )

Indeed you are correct.  This is how it becomes a brace for the side walls.

Very intriguing. Going to visit Ed Pong this weekend. Going your way soon Steve.
John

Hi Geno,
You bet I will and post about the visit. Yes he has a concert on Sunday and we plan on attending that if we can clear our eyes of smoke!
John

It sounds like you've built the perfect speakers around the PT-10 Steve. Fantastic results  :)

Tape is the ultimate dynamic media for reproduction that can not be duplicated digitally. It seems your stating that in your message. So exciting to be on that path of magnetic tape!

🍻

Hope the Monti is running.

John

I am using the Gizmo2 and no ZROCK2 or preamp.  Just Holo, ZP3 or Tape machine directly into the amp for the past week or so.

Steve

     
Hi John,

The speakers have been forcing me to up my game a bit.  Due to their large size and black finish, my phone that I use to make the videos and recordings will no longer focus properly.  It sees too much black and starts strobing the color... I finally had to give up and stopped using it.

Then there is the matter of the tapes.  My Infected Mushroom tapes played loud have such an intoxicating hit that I have desperately wanted to capture it for these videos but it just won't come through all the compression and limiting that the phone puts on it, not to mention YouTube.  

I have countless ways to record it, but getting that on a video without spending all day is the problem.  In any case I'm switching over to a better camera that can handle the lighting conditions and a separate battery operated stereo microphone/preamp with 20dB of gain so that I can run the  noisy preamp in the camera at a lower level and hopefully get decent recordings.  

This is a zero forgiveness way to record thou...  Unlike the very forgiving phone which kept anything from sounding too good or too bad, this setup will be brutally honest.

Even stepped up, I tried 6 times to record the tapes and it's just not going to capture it accurately.  The dynamics are still too soft and the weight is diminished.  So to hear the hit I'm talking about you'll just probably have to wait until DECFEST 2023 to hear them in person .

These speakers remind me a lot of the HDT's which are my goto speaker for flushing out all the weak links in the audio chain. They are great for amplifier design due to the lack of forgiveness and uncanny speed.  Lets you hear what's really there.

Anyway, because of these speakers and only because of these speakers, the Decware YouTube videos are transitioning into 4K with hi-res audio.  That would seem like a good thing, but the phone was so perfect on the small gimbal I have for it...  now I have a large gimbal I can barely operate and everything is heavy and cumbersome by comparison.  So really I blame it all on these speakers.

Steve : )

I remember some of Kenrick's videos raising this problem years ago, today he masters it to its best.
One of his latest :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkreDNTGfmY

"Decware Folded Horn for Platinum-10, Lii Headwrecker, just came out from piano factory."

https://www.facebook.com/liiaudiobrand/

Kamran,
The Headwreckers are the real deal when it comes to weight. Well, both physical and sound reproduction weight Steve is in the process of making a stand on wheels to roll those around finding better positioning in his room to enhance imaging. I also listened to the HDTs with Liis Silvers and was impressed on how much the sound improved since Decfest last fall.
When time permits a review of the couple hours with Steve will be posted. Right now too much wonderful fun in the sun is to be had.
John

It didn't take long for them to end up here on the West end of the room.  They do in fact image much better as expected, and by comparison to before they sound less congested.  The stands improve the sound regardless of placement, but now it becomes the easiest speaker in the room to move... how ironic.

Quote:


My cat prefers Beethoven. FYI/FWIW/YMMV and all that.

^ Priceless

Phono rig has become second chair up against tape. Who or what contemporary is going to ban this album! Shameful idealists we have today.

UPDATE: 7/30/23

A lot of things have coalesced since moving the speakers to the West end of the room where they can breath.




Right now I have things dialed in and the sound stage is 20 feet behind the speakers, which would be 15 feet behind the curtain.  The focus is uncanny.




The bass

First thing noticed after moving the speakers to this end of the room was the imaging, but then very quickly it was the bass.  The hole seems to be gone.  This is like a gift that I wasn't anticipating and I am so grateful!  Holy crap is it nice without the hole.  

I believe much of my concern about the bass of these speakers may have come by unique circumstance.  I have full size horns on the West end of the room designed for bass only.  They are not being used, and have been successfully designed not to sympathetically resonate with the other speakers in the room,  but... while that has been true for the past 20 years, I have never actually built a giant pair of similar horns and placed them on the opposite end of the room and fired them directly at each other...  It's probable that when the speakers were on the East end of the room the hole was created by an interaction with the horns at the West end of the room.  This makes sense now, because none of the smaller speakers I have create a bass null at the listening position.



Frequency Balance

The raw character of these speakers is to be insanely articulate and a bit forward by themselves.  When I moved them to the other end of the room I wondered if that would change.  It did not.  Well, actually IT DID!  I was frankly stunned, because I couldn't figure out how that was possible, but they sounded nicely staged back with good depth and weren't forward sounding.  Then I realized I had the network for the Lii Song Fast 15 still on the Sarah 300B amp from a previous demo and forgot to take it off.  Honestly, I preferred them on, so I listened that way on and off for several days.

The overall balance on this end of the room is far better because there is even weight throughout the bass regions, so really it's just about getting it to layer back and get the 3D space of the sound stage perfectly balanced.


The Gizmo2

I am really starting to love this thing.  I realized I like the HDT better with the Gizmo2 when I accidentally left it on one day when switching speakers.  Anyway, I installed the Gizmo2 from the start, but have had it in bypass mode this whole time.  I un-bypassed it and things got better still.  More separation from front to back in the sound stage.  It spent a few days with it using the Fast 15 networks at the same time and found I adjusted the Gizmo 2 to max which means minimal effect.

Later I removed the network and have been listening without it using the Gizmo2 turned all the way up which is to say maximum effect.  Lon would like this.  


The Amp and Tubes

I got my collection of 300B tubes back from the Steve Guttenberg review and all I had during those several months was the Chinese tube I found that I liked and that we offer to ship with the amps.  I can say with confidence that the tube doesn't suck.  Especially after hearing it on these speakers.  The dynamics are anything but weak and the sound is beautiful.  It is so good in fact that it made me forget about the Western Electrics that I sent out for review for at least a couple of months or more before I began to wonder what they sounded like...

So the other day I popped in my Western Electrics during the middle of a listening session kind of wondering what I would hear change and as soon as I turned up the volume there was a sanctity in my listening space that just made me gasp and then stand there in amazement at the difference in transparency... so that was fun.

The Cables

This is where it gets kind of interesting...

I am driving the amplifier with a single pair of DECWARE RCA interconnects from the ZBIT to the Sarah 300B amplifier.  Feeding the ZBIT is DECWARE XLR cable from the Cambridge CXNv2.

Since it was only a single 1 meter pair of RCA I used a prototype cable I got from Lii Song that had a slightly silkier sound I thought might compliment these horns.  After going back and forth for a few days I was convinced the cable is a notch above our own cables.

Then it was time to introduce a ZROCK to see how using a different approach to regulating forwardness by pushing or pulling back the image compares to the Gizmo2... or at least that was the plan.

Since I had to add an additional set of interconnects to make the ZROCK2 a reality, and since I didn't want to mess with what I already had, I set the ZROCK up on the second set of inputs, so I went from a single 1 meter cable to a pair, and just to mess with my head, both were actually 2 meter cables.

At this point I found the textured silky transparency and sound stage of the Lii cable from the ZBIT better than the sound from the ZROCK going through the other cables.  I became convinced the presentation was better without the ZROCK and long lengths of cables.  I blamed it on the cables.

ZROCK3

I have been developing a ZROCK3 because I have been refining and improving the ZROCK for the past several months.  Now was a good time to test it.  The above results that I blamed on the cables I also blamed on the the new ZROCK3 that had no burn-in time on it.  

After a couple days of using it and going back and forth, I decided to take advantage of one of the bigger new features of the ZROCK3 which is a variable output level.  I wanted to match the gain exactly with the ZBIT so I could A/B things a little more seriously.  After adjusting it down to match other input everything completely changed for the better.  I was actually stunned.  The layering and depth, and focus and everything I love about a ZROCK was there but it sounds as transparent or more so.  It was such a game changer for the sound stage.  It is set to about 10:00 A.M. so the EQ hasn't kicked in yet.  I have never been able to listen to a ZROCK at this position before, or perhaps I could have, but never wanted to.

By being adjusted into nearly perfectly flat response and at unity gain relative to the other input from the ZBIT which itself was set to unity gain at 2 volts, the layers have been just coming into focus and getting deeper and deeper as we go.

Now, I am hearing the sound focus, timbre, layers, depth and transparency are all better than before when not using the ZROCK.  So this completely vaporized my observation/suspicions that the cables were a big reason why I initially didn't like the ZROCK in the path.

Anyway, the ZROCK3 dialed back to unity and the GIZMO2 are the only things being used to make these speakers a new reference for sound stage. They are like the House speakers but bigger and faster and more visceral in the bass.

After dark, even the most delicate music has immense density and dynamics and decay.  Hell, you can be mesmerized on these things listening to elevator music.

Anyway, what started this thread was the insane imaging and sound stage depth that came as a result of all this experimenting which came as a result of moving the speakers to the other side of the room where there is lots of space around and behind them.  Because of the difference in depth resolution this brought it was suddenly easy to hear differences and I became motivated to explore it.  On the East end of the room the idea would have never presented itself, and didn't.

So this years DECFEST will be a lot of fun having something new to hear.  I'm thinking about having attendees sign a release form before hearing them.  This is no doubt the best demo in the Decware listening room to date.  It is much like the large open baffles in size and scale, but with razor sharp focus and imaging that just has me shaking my wrecked head.


The Gizmo2, the ZROCK, the impedance switches on the amp and the sound stage switch on the amp along with tubes in the amp all finding their synergistic part in the play have created a virtual experience that exactly replicates the physical experience of getting a tonearm mechanically dialed in to a specific cartridge.  So picture a super high end cartridge where the tonearm wasn't ideal, the azimuth a touch off, the wrong mass, the vta set too high and this is what comes from the factory. You haven't heard the cartridge yet.  Get it dialed in and holy cow.  Lii Song driver in this horn, same thing.

Steve

Yes, there is going to be a ZROCK3.  It will be a ZROCK2 with a variable output control.  

The ZROCK2 was designed to go between the source and preamp.  In many cases with Decware, there is no preamp which is made possible by the input gain control on the amplifiers.

When you use a ZROCK and set it past 12:00 or so, you begin to create gain.  In most cases this is 3 to 6 dB of gain.  This is not a problem with Decware gear but can be a problem with non-Decware gear.  For example, a large solid state or tube amplifier without an input level control... expecting to see less than 1 volt of signal because it comes to full power with 1 volt, is not going to be noise free if you put 4 or 5 volts on the input.

Many people do just this, because they want to ZROCK all of their sources, not just one like the unit was designed for.  That means they put it between their preamp and power amp and that often makes noise or hum that can be audible.

If any of these amplifiers had an input gain control, placing the ZROCK between a preamp and amp would work without problems because you would simply turn the gain control down on the amp the same amount that the ZROCK turned the gain up.

By putting a variable output level feature into the ZROCK3 it is the same thing as putting an input level control on amplifiers that don't have one.  The product will be available this fall.  Don't know the price yet, it's going to be a lot harder to build so labor will shoot the price up.  We may be able to upgrade the ZROCK2 but again, too soon to price it until we find out if it's even possible without rebuilding the whole thing to get the parts in the right places.