I've been using one in my desk system, with a FiiO K5Pro for its DAC and headphone amp. I think it sounds great for nearfield listening, and I love the convenience of its tone controls, high pass filter, and sub-out. I absolutely do not care about measurements.
If you even think you can't hear a difference then you're deaf. A small 2 way speaker vs a large dinosaur.... what's the point of this video???? Sheeeeer boredom. Also, you don't know what a coaxial speaker is do you?
Maybe I am missing something here... I thought this driver is designed to be used with DSP for the best results. Some people have implemented the driver like that using EQ for the HF in fact like it more than let's say BMS 4592ND. I have 4592ND and 4591, both run passive and I am interested to hear more opinions how axi2050 (when run active) would perform against those BMS drivers. The other thing is why not use this driver with it's full potential, crossing it as low as 300 hz? As full range as possible.
I have some Aspara HL1 horns which I've loved from first hearing. I've spent four years redesigning the cross over using empiracal means. I'm here to learn how to do these things properly. Thanks a lot for your brillant videos.
Joseph I started a similar journey in the midst of the pandemic. PI USB comes with one cavet sometimes lack of upgrade firmware can interferes so flas it to the latest . Clock Upgrade is not crucial because the USB passes data asynchronously. My test of PI & x86 Fanless proved the most realistic deep soundstage equivalent 5 digit sound system. Put clean power into the PI or X86 try a SMSL -PO100 for the DDC into the SMSL-D300 with the proper upsample multiple if not hi-res already . You will be impressed!!! Out of boredom I tested about 300 combinations of Old,New, Vintage,R2R,R2RHATs equipment if you don't hit perfection I'll tell you exactly how to set up Volumio with an external DAC. Keep posting
Interesting project and I'm not surprised that measurements in the frequency domain don't reflect the audible differences. Might be better to change tool set and measure in the time domain. Record with Python, process with numpy and graph with Matplotlib. Would also make it easy to repeat measurements a thousand times and thus reduce noise from your A/D card. And you could synch & normalize measured wav files of different DACs/players/streamers and cross-correlate them to assess how similar the results are.
The first thing is that Pi is overpriced. However this is a minor issue. The bigger issue is that Broadcom SoC does not allow to feed an external master clock to its I2S subsystem. As a max it accepts LRCK that is not the same thing. On the other hand, USB on Pi board is quite noisy. In this case, a hosting board with Pi computing module seems to be a better solution for music (if an external USB DAC is supposed)
Your observation is correct, Just use a fanless mini PC and power through a Mosfet DC to DC converter it will provide lower noise than a "Universal Filament Regulator" and cost around $15.00 usd
@@thinkIndependent2024 Ian Canada offers a super capacitor based PSUs for a Pi and GPIO sound cards. And it's not too expensive. Yet more thing can be made is an async-to-sync re-clocker powered from a battery or a super-cap, or low noise LDO after a non-switching PSU, but it needs a special Linux driver that appears as a block device, not a stream one.
@@sc0or Super Capacitors equal a tremendous amount of work , One just use a DC to DC con convert with AGM batteries and achieves faster build and zero soldering . I will send a very simple build to Gabster next week I'm sure he will post it I'm an engineer but have no time to create videos
This is my setup and it works great. $30 InnoMaker Raspberry Pi HiFi DAC HAT PCM5122 HiFi DAC Audio Card Expansion Board for Raspberry Pi 5 4 3 B+ Pi Zero etc. (DAC HAT). $46 New Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ Board (3B+) Raspberry PI 3B+ (1GB) (3B Plus). $0 installed Volumio. Powered by 2A USB phone charger adaptor. I connect to my local area network via WiFi And stream from NAS (Qnap).
This looks like a fun project, will you try it with streaming once you have the final setup finished ? I am not a DAC expert and the circuits used in audio products often surprises me. But from a communication circuits background to me it seems like the performance of the digital transport shouldn't have any impact on the final signal, ASSUMING the DAC was implemented properly. The jitter performance of the DAC will be defined by it's own clock reference not the clock being used by the transport. A proper DAC should be buffering the incoming bits and the DAC will retime all that data with it's own clock reference. Alot of audio circuits are using really old topologies, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could find many DACs that did have their performance hinge on the performance of the transport clock.
I'm not sure I'm understanding the rationale behind avoiding ethernet (wifi or wired) for data transmission. TCP and ethernet are not lossy, they kinda have to be bit perfect in fact. Is your network streaming source transcoding your audio stream into a more lossy format? Also, It seems like it might be more ideal to go optical to fully de-couple the device ground planes.
I’m just basing it on subjective listening over the seven years of owning the Poly. I don’t have an explanation for you other than to say Wi-Fi introduces electromagnetic radiation physically very close to audio signal components.
Hmm. it would be curious to get your impressions on how your new setup handles it given the RPi5 and audio hat have a totally different hardware topology. Though id also wonder about the bluetooth radio as well since IIRC they both transmit in the 20-100mw power range and are both around 2.4ghz (excluding 5ghz obviously).
Hi Joseph. I have watched a lot of your videos and really like your approach to sound and speaker design. A few years ago I have built a multiple entry horn based on K-402 horn replica. It is a two-way design with about 500-600hz crossover (cannot remember the exact figure right now). A great extension of this idea would be ES100-MEH - a horn based on your equation that can provide horn loading down to 100hz when being corner loaded. It could use a 1.4-2" CD and a couple of 15 inch bass drivers in sealed cabs. A two way Synergy done Joseph Crowe way. Do you think such spanner is a feasible idea? Would love to build such speakers.
Did you take this any further? I've been reading some about the 6.5 Purifi driver and was wondering how the 8 and 10 inch woofers would perform and possibly mate with a horn crossed at 400-500Hz.
First, thank you for your research,, You having evaluated both the Seas FA22RCZ and the Markaudio CHR 120's , how do they compare realizing that they are significantly different in cost?
Hi, how did you design the waveguide? Is there some online calculators or math needed or just yolo until you get something awesome? Appreciate any pointers you can give me as I want to design something similar for a different AMT tweeter (for fun) Cheers
The flare geometry is based on an equation that I’ve developed inside my CAD program. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. I do offer design services though if you need a custom CAD file created. Joseph_crowe@josephcrowe.com
Your designs are so beautiful I wish I could afford them. I dream about being able to build designs this complex. If only I could use a CNC I would still screw it up lol. One day maybe
I'm very curious how you're crossing them at 300hz in a system with a relatively small mid horn? Can you please explain more about your crossover, and the other drivers/mid/high in this system?
In this application it is more like 600Hz -6dB down point on the LPF. The horn is a 450Hz Fc. If I said 300Hz in the video that was my mistake because normally it is 300Hz on my larger horns. Thanks
