TAD 3415 Horn System

RogerD

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Pallet of 2 TAD subs and 6 cinema amplifiers arrived today.Now waiting on my Studer C37 to arrive from NYC,so I can get all of it moved downstairs.
I talked to Bob at AB Systems and he can upgrade my amplifiers with Mundorf low ESR lytics.I think it will be worth it and reasonable to.
 

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RogerD

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Everything moves downstairs Friday. Here's some photos of the inside of the TCS 3415 bass cabinet with the opaxial design woofers. Kind of unique and Jerry the designer told me they can do some neat things directionally with the passive network. Up front and personal they are impressive and big. I don't think I'll have any problems filling the room with bass.
 

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DaveC

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Do you know the design rational behind the bass cabs with the woofers facing in opposite directions? Do they all fire in-phase? Dipole?

8x15" woofers ought to do it unless you have a REALLY big room! :)
 

RogerD

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Do you know the design rational behind the bass cabs with the woofers facing in opposite directions? Do they all fire in-phase? Dipole?

8x15" woofers ought to do it unless you have a REALLY big room! :)

Hi Dave,

When I talk to Jerry I'll find out because it really has my curiosity peaked. A pair of these are said to fill a 600 seat venue. I added two 18 inch subs just to make sure.;)
 

DaveC

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Hi Dave,

When I talk to Jerry I'll find out because it really has my curiosity peaked. A pair of these are said to fill a 600 seat venue. I added two 18 inch subs just to make sure.;)

I look forward to hearing more about the bass enclosures.

I haven't seen the specs on those woofers but if they're like most pro woofers they need a sub to fill out the bottom octave so good move on the 18s. :)
 

RogerD

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I look forward to hearing more about the bass enclosures.

I haven't seen the specs on those woofers but if they're like most pro woofers they need a sub to fill out the bottom octave so good move on the 18s. :)
Dave, yes the TAD 18's will handle 100hz and lower. The 3415's will go from the 100's to let's say 700hz. Then I'll have the RH3's from there and the upper cutoff TBD. The Lake SM01 after the RH3. It will be a 4 way with the the Fostex probably from 8k and up. The 3415 will be passive,the rest active...at least that's what my current thoughts are.
 

JackD201

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Me too. This is getting exciting :D
 

RogerD

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Making small steps here as the 3415's and the 1118 subs were moved downstairs. I measured for the screen and I think I'll go with a 135 inch which will fit perfectly between the big TADs. The screen will have to be a acoustic type,as I intend to use a center channel. A pair of Fulton FMI 100 speakers for my rear channel.
So far the Datasat AP20/25 looks like a very good cinema processor and it comes with Dirac Live. QSC also makes a one box solution that is very powerful.
I picked up a fully configured 16 channel DCP-300. The unit has polarity,gain,delay,parametric EQ,2,3,4 way crossover,master volume,routing,digital-inputs,SPDIF,cobranet,Dante,analog inputs,digital networking,totally balanced,etc,can be configured up to 28 channels. For everything that this box offers I couldn't say no.
 

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Mark Seaton

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May 21, 2010
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Hi Dave,

When I talk to Jerry I'll find out because it really has my curiosity peaked. A pair of these are said to fill a 600 seat venue. I added two 18 inch subs just to make sure.;)

This is similar to the concept behind the M&K subwoofers which used the reverse mounted, down firing woofer. The intent is to cancel out the asymmetrical non-linearity in the woofers (inward vs outward motion), which translates to even order distortion. This sort of spacing ends up only affecting 2nd & 4th harmonic distortion at low frequencies. It can help, but it should be understood the help is with the least offensive of distortions. Before we had as much understanding and measurement of woofer mechanics the woofers used were less linear, and this offered more notable advantages. Below 100Hz this configuration will have benefit, but very little benefit above 200Hz.
 

Mark Seaton

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Dave, yes the TAD 18's will handle 100hz and lower. The 3415's will go from the 100's to let's say 700hz. Then I'll have the RH3's from there and the upper cutoff TBD. The Lake SM01 after the RH3. It will be a 4 way with the the Fostex probably from 8k and up. The 3415 will be passive,the rest active...at least that's what my current thoughts are.

You should be able to overlap and shed a lot more of the range to the 4x18 cabinets than >100Hz. With a quick search I found this PDF describing the originally designed use of the speakers. Note they indicate a nominal operating range of 35-500Hz, which is even a bit higher than I would want to run these unless you shade the inverted wide woofers at 1/2 the frequency. They can certainly work very well as midbass-woofers under a big horn.

You had mentioned the AP20/25. I would suggest also taking a look at some of the new processors using Dirac on the market, especially if the DC-300 will handle all of your crossover duties. You will be missing many decoding formats with the cinema DataSat unit. 3-4 companies just introduced similar processors with Dirac at $4500-6000, and Emotiva has their 7 channel unit already out and their 16 channel unit coming some time next year which looks quite promising.
 

RogerD

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Thanks Mark,

When I talked to Mr.Steckling iirc correctly the design also enabled directivity of the woofers by his passive network.
 

RogerD

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My plan now is to couple a Oppo 205 to a Denon 700 AVP with the DCP 300. I'll see how that works out as except for the HMDI the rest should be balanced. To start though might just run the Oppo into the DCP300.
 
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Mark Seaton

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Thanks Mark,

When I talked to Mr.Steckling iirc correctly the design also enabled directivity of the woofers by his passive network.

If they have different parts in line with the two pairs of woofers, it would make sense and help make them useful to higher frequencies. At that point it really becomes a 2.5 or 3.5 way system depending on what horns are on top. The only concern for home use is that such large speakers may not really function with the intended directivity at the listening distances and smaller room dimensions of a home theater. Ultimately be sure to take some measurements to insure things are behaving as intended at the listening position.

My plan now is to couple a Oppo 205 to a Denon 700 AVP with the DCP 300. I'll see how that works out as except for the HMDI the rest should be balanced. To start though might just run the Oppo into the DCP300.

If you found a surround processor which could output the 8 channels digitally that didn't have room correction, you also have options like the MiniDSP DDRC-88D, which is 8ch in/out by AES giving you Dirac correction on the 8 channels to feed into the DCP-300 digitally. If you were able to get the filter settings for the parts, you could even look at combining DSP crossovers and Dirac Live correction in the MiniDSP DDRC-88BM which gives you full flexibility to run active speakers from a Dirac corrected input channel. You would probably need 2 units for the system, but having Dirac integrated is intriguing. In a quiet basement the big hurdle with these very efficient speakers will be keeping an eye on the noise floor from the electronics to keep background hiss low as practical.

Looks to be quite the kit you're assembling!
 

RogerD

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If they have different parts in line with the two pairs of woofers, it would make sense and help make them useful to higher frequencies. At that point it really becomes a 2.5 or 3.5 way system depending on what horns are on top. The only concern for home use is that such large speakers may not really function with the intended directivity at the listening distances and smaller room dimensions of a home theater. Ultimately be sure to take some measurements to insure things are behaving as intended at the listening position.



If you found a surround processor which could output the 8 channels digitally that didn't have room correction, you also have options like the MiniDSP DDRC-88D, which is 8ch in/out by AES giving you Dirac correction on the 8 channels to feed into the DCP-300 digitally. If you were able to get the filter settings for the parts, you could even look at combining DSP crossovers and Dirac Live correction in the MiniDSP DDRC-88BM which gives you full flexibility to run active speakers from a Dirac corrected input channel. You would probably need 2 units for the system, but having Dirac integrated is intriguing. In a quiet basement the big hurdle with these very efficient speakers will be keeping an eye on the noise floor from the electronics to keep background hiss low as practical.

Looks to be quite the kit you're assembling!

Mark these horn arrays will use TAD4001 CD's the same as the original design. The CD frequency range is 600 to 20khz. The DCP300 should give me enough flexibility for a good frequency response.

After looking at the system and trying to keep it simple if that is possible the system config would be:
QSC DCP300 7.2
Oppo 205 7.1 analog
Oppo UHD 4K digital audio
Accuphase C200 preamp
Later I might add 1x8 miniDSP Dirac Live processors,but for now I'll use the QSC for the setup of the system.

These will be the other speakers in the 7.2 System
Paradigm center ch speaker
Fulton FMI 100 RL side speaker
Paradigm Studio 80v2 rear RL speaker

Thanks for your input.
Btw to interface the QSC processor with my cinema amplifiers is this adapter. Or at some point will insert the Dirac live between the DCP300 and the JSX amplifiers.

Now the other option is to go Oppo HDMI audio only > Arvus > DCP300 > Dirac 88D > amplifiers
Costs about 2.5k more to go digital....benefits?

I was able to locate and purchase a HDMI to AES3 converter ,so now I'll have 8 channels of LPCM digital audio into the DCP300 from the Oppo HDMI audio only output. It is not Arvus...which means the cost was reasonable. Dolby True HD,DTS HD master audio,SACD,192/24 bit audio
 

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RogerD

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I should have the 602 HDMI unit next week...pretty rare to find one lnib. Then next will order the Fostex 500's and then having the horn modules made. Should be interesting when I talk to the cabinet maker about making the modules adjustable for toe in and angle.

The FJ45 adapter from the AES3 on the 602 to the DCP300 digital input.
 

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DaveC

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I'm also looking into a different way to adjust angle of the mid horn that doesn't involve machining aluminum. Not sure yet, it might get integrated into the overall design that holds the horn, we'll see...

I didn't know you were going multi-channel too! Make a big project even bigger, lol.

It does look like the T500s are back in stock.
 

RogerD

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I'm also looking into a different way to adjust angle of the mid horn that doesn't involve machining aluminum. Not sure yet, it might get integrated into the overall design that holds the horn, we'll see...

I didn't know you were going multi-channel too! Make a big project even bigger, lol.

It does look like the T500s are back in stock.
Hi Dave,
I'll shoot you a pm when I'm ready,might be after the holidays though.
The horn modules will weigh in close to 150 pounds and total channel at 500 hundred pounds+...so I need to figure a way to build in some adjustments.
Yep it is a big system...makes my other system look small. A big challenge....thanks for your help.
 

RogerD

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