Upcoming Tom Danley Hifi speakers

[Mountain Goat]

The TH118 and TH115 were specifically designed to be simpler to transport while still providing 140db output at 39hz - which is downright impressive for such a small box. If you want to go lower you need look no further than right here, however. Remember, to go super low with lots of output be prepared to $pend. In an installation I did, I replaced two JBL dual 18" front loaded cabs with a single Th118 and the difference was sick. Painful - but not in the ears, more in the chest. In another installation I found that a single TH412 outperformed FOUR front loaded JBL 18" cabs - and did it with ease both in output and frequency response. I think this has something to do with the single point output of from the TH412 vs the two dual 18" boxes stacked on either side of the stage some distance from one another (obviously, some cancellation.)

A friend of mine who liked to play music - specifically loved low frequency - put a TH221 on his boat which was super awesome to experience. He bought another one for his jam room. It was super cool there because the room was large enough to really experience the low rumble. I think he paid something like $11.5k for the passive one and $15k for the powered one.

You gotta get the Matterhorn for the real rumble. Cut a shipping container-sized "port" in the side of your house, back it in, and enjoy "all house" bass:

 

[Stu Pidasso]

Is it just me or did that Matterhorn seem a bit absurd? Cool factor of 11 though. I haven't had the chance to hear Tom's boundary subs. It would be great if I had a chance to listen to the TH812, to me a 12" driver seems to work very well for sub reproduction. YMMV. Keeping things in context, I don't use Danley subs in the house, I use them for professional sound reinforcement, both indoors and out. Don't get me wrong, if Danley Soundlabs were selling a DTS10 kit again I'd buy a couple and put them together. For now, in my home I use a pair of Martin Logan subs - a Descent and a Depth - with the SH-50's. In my room I found the best mating was to high pass the unity horns at 55hz and low pass the subs in at 40hz and 35hz. In the bedroom I use a set of B&W Signature 25's (little 2-way passive 7" w/1" hard dome tweeter) and the sub for that is a JL audio - but these are for TV only - which means I never hear them because I can't sit still long enough to watch TV.

 

[Head_Unit]

On the ocean-way-hr5 studio monitor measured by Amir with diffraction slot for the woofer, some slow decaying resonances have shown up

I'd think some of that would be from the diffraction horns, especially how the round drivers are coupled to a square, and then the lower one does not even fill the slot of the horn. Maybe I'm missing something but it just looks like terrible horn design to me. ???

 

[Stu Pidasso]

I'd think some of that would be from the diffraction horns, especially how the round drivers are coupled to a square, and then the lower one does not even fill the slot of the horn. Maybe I'm missing something but it just looks like terrible horn design to me. ???

I'd have to agree with you - on first glance the unity horn just isn't sexy at all. But if you listen to them, you'll quickly forget the shape of the flare and say to yourself - that's just not possible from a pro box that looks so - so - boxy...and unsexy.

 

[ctrl]

I'd think some of that would be from the diffraction horns, especially how the round drivers are coupled to a square, and then the lower one does not even fill the slot of the horn. Maybe I'm missing something but it just looks like terrible horn design to me. ???

"...and then the lower one does not even fill the slot of the horn. Maybe I'm missing something...", if I didn't misunderstand you, yes, the 7'' woofer used at the bottom of the Ocean Way HR5 speaker fully fills the diffraction slot.

I can't say for sure if the cause for the decay problems in the mid range (below 1kHz) is caused by the constant directivity horn (that's how Ocean Way calls it itself), or if the diffraction slot alone is responsible for it - my guess is that the diffraction slot is responsible, but I could be wrong.

In the seventies and eighties, diffraction slots were used more often in loudspeakers to widen the radiation (for example to better match radiation of a 8-10'' driver with a 1'' tweeter) than they are today, but these old implementations are not comparable with the modern concepts as in the synergy horns.

The advantage of the "acoustic low-pass filter" formed by a diffraction slot, which in contrast to the electric filter suppresses harmonic distortion, as described by @Tom Danley, is confirmed by the measurements of the harmonic distortion of the Ocean Way HR5. The harmonic distortions, especially HD3, are excellently low in the midrange (I cannot say how significant the share of the "acoustic low-pass filter" is).

The diffraction slots used in the synergy horns are designed differently and seem to have no or significantly less problems in midrange decay, as the measurements of the SH-50 provided by Tom have shown.
We will have final clarity on this when @hardisj publishes the Klippel-NFS measurements of the SH-50.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

The TH118 and TH115 were specifically designed to be simpler to transport while still providing 140db output at 39hz - which is downright impressive for such a small box. If you want to go lower you need look no further than right here, however. Remember, to go super low with lots of output be prepared to $pend. In an installation I did, I replaced two JBL dual 18" front loaded cabs with a single Th118 and the difference was sick. Painful - but not in the ears, more in the chest. In another installation I found that a single TH412 outperformed FOUR front loaded JBL 18" cabs - and did it with ease both in output and frequency response. I think this has something to do with the single point output of from the TH412 vs the two dual 18" boxes stacked on either side of the stage some distance from one another (obviously, some cancellation.)

A friend of mine who liked to play music - specifically loved low frequency - put a TH221 on his boat which was super awesome to experience. He bought another one for his jam room. It was super cool there because the room was large enough to really experience the low rumble. I think he paid something like $11.5k for the passive one and $15k for the powered one.

I still didn't care much for what I was hearing. I know that opinion will get zero traction here but whatever.

 

[Stu Pidasso]

I still didn't care much for what I was hearing. I know that opinion will get zero traction here but whatever.

Anyone can connect one or more subs out of phase with one another by accident, try and power them with too little power, cross them over too high or fail to cross them over at all - honestly I've seen a combination of all of these things.

Let me ask you this - have you ever owned or lived with a Danley product? No one should fault you for your observations if you've reached them objectively.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Anyone can connect one or more subs out of phase with one another by accident, try and power them with too little power, cross them over too high or fail to cross them over at all - honestly I've seen a combination of all of these things.

Let me ask you this - have you ever owned or lived with a Danley product? No one should fault you for your observations if you've reached them objectively.

Heh, well luckily I haven't done that yet. I think it's pretty tough to wire pa subs out of phase since it's either xlr into a power amp or speakon. I have stood on stage as an a2 whole my buddy tweaks monitors and given him the "that's much better" response only for him to tell me he didn't do anything lol. A nice laugh for a fun crew that won't ever let me live it down.

I get to work with some synergy horns at the local va hospital. Someone there knew what they were doing on the install to get danley stuff in there. For me the transients on tapped horns don't feel right. I'm quite partial to folded horns on the bass outdoors even though they don't quite get the low lows sometimes. So far my favorite bass was a huge stack of funktion one f121, and the elektrikal sound system which is es18bph and hog scoops. Scoops seem to get a bad rap but man I just love them.

Huh weird, it says you replied kyle but I don't see the post here. Anyway, I travel when I can and I'm super into sound system culture over in Europe, not really any of that over here in the U.S. I miss ninebars labs or really anything but reflex which is all you find over here. So cool to see another person who's heard some of these DIY rigs. Engineers here are just totally different and seem a lot more focused on just getting the show done than doing interesting fun things with gear. I used to be all over speakerplans.com and engineers here ask me where I learned all this stuff like modeling horns and what not, and I say "I just love this stuff and I learn it all in my free time", they expect some sort of formal schooling. I'm in Ohio right now, but hoping to move somewhere else soon. It's dead and boring here but this is where I'm from. Got family here.

 

[kyle_neuron]

I think it's pretty tough to wire pa subs out of phase since it's either xlr into a power amp or speakon.

You might be surprised to see how often it happens, at all levels!

I get to work with some synergy horns at the local va hospital. Someone there knew what they were doing on the install to get danley stuff in there. For me the transients on tapped horns don't feel right. I'm quite partial to folded horns on the bass outdoors even though they don't quite get the low lows sometimes. So far my favorite bass was a huge stack of funktion one f121, and the elektrikal sound system which is es18bph and hog scoops. Scoops seem to get a bad rap but man I just love them.

Where is that install? I thought it would be across the pond, but then you reference Electrikal from Edinburgh. Which is a system I tuned and often work on - which is nice to hear, especially given the non-standard filtering approach the system uses! That’s also why the owner ended up with six of the blue Danley SH46 a few pages back, plus some SH50 and TH118s.

I think a common problem with tapped horns is the way they’re integrated with the rest of the system. Especially when referring to DIY designs, at party/club/PA level. A lot of the time I see systems processed purely around the electrical filter response and ‘what came before’ which can leave a lot of audible, ragged lower midrange through overlapped crossover regions when the system is driven hard.

 

[Tom Danley]

Heh, well luckily I haven't done that yet. I think it's pretty tough to wire pa subs out of phase since it's either xlr into a power amp or speakon. I have stood on stage as an a2 whole my buddy tweaks monitors and given him the "that's much better" response only for him to tell me he didn't do anything lol. A nice laugh for a fun crew that won't ever let me live it down.

I get to work with some synergy horns at the local va hospital. Someone there knew what they were doing on the install to get danley stuff in there. For me the transients on tapped horns don't feel right. I'm quite partial to folded horns on the bass outdoors even though they don't quite get the low lows sometimes. So far my favorite bass was a huge stack of funktion one f121, and the elektrikal sound system which is es18bph and hog scoops. Scoops seem to get a bad rap but man I just love them.

Huh weird, it says you replied kyle but I don't see the post here. Anyway, I travel when I can and I'm super into sound system culture over in Europe, not really any of that over here in the U.S. I miss ninebars labs or really anything but reflex which is all you find over here. So cool to see another person who's heard some of these DIY rigs. Engineers here are just totally different and seem a lot more focused on just getting the show done than doing interesting fun things with gear. I used to be all over speakerplans.com and engineers here ask me where I learned all this stuff like modeling horns and what not, and I say "I just love this stuff and I learn it all in my free time", they expect some sort of formal schooling. I'm in Ohio right now, but hoping to move somewhere else soon. It's dead and boring here but this is where I'm from. Got family here.

Hi
What one likes is personal preference however there was a tendency in live sound to use reproduction of a kick drum as the evaluation signal of choice for sub woofers. It's ability to reproduce the transient attack to have the more realistic sounding whack is thought to be a plus then.

On the other hand, what is it;s actual job? if one listens to the output from the crossover low pass for a sub woofer, very little of any of the transient is present in the signal going to the sub woofer, that is it's job ( not producing frequencies above crossover needed to fill the whack) .

In the bad old days of live sound it was thought and demonstrated that adding low frequency content to a large system muddied up the mid range and it did that was hard to argue.
Where do the harmonics from straining bass speakers forced to produce low bass fall and how much more sensitive are you to upper harmonics from bass vs fundamentals?

So far as the Tapped horn, I was modeling a synergy horn and thought what if i replaced the closed end reflection with an opposite polarity radiator and instead of a cancellation notch, one gets addition.

If you adjust the horn dimensions and have the right driver parameters this addition can happen in the first response saddle in a bass horn. Now where one had a broad dip in a "TOO SMALL" bass horn, now both sides can radiate.
It took a couple weeks of fiddling in AKABAK before i had something to try in wood and it has proven to be a useful principal in the last 16 years we patented it and have been selling them. If you want low bass and don't have room for a full horn, that is where they usually fit.

The Tapped horn is to a normal horn what a vented box is to a sealed box and can provide a 6 to 9 dB increase in sensitivity and output compared to the same driver used as a direct radiator and was the advantage / reason for the patent being granted.
Best,
Tom

 

[Matthias McCready]

I think it's pretty tough to wire pa subs out of phase since it's either xlr into a power amp or speakon.

I have ass-umed wrong on this one before

1. The boxes might be wired up wrong from the manufacturer (and yes it does happen!). How many install companies verify before install? How many production companies verify upon receiving the box?
2. XLR's/Speakon can be wired wrong (I always test new/repaired cables to verify). This can be a big problem for line-array deployments, with boxes being out phase with each other, because of a bad cable(s). Obviously Danley has less to go wrong here.
3. Incorrect loudspeaker processing settings (polarity, delay, filters)
4. Incorrect processing connection (this especially important for subwoofer arrays).

 

[Deleted member 12642]

I have ass-umed wrong on this one before

1. The boxes might be wired up wrong from the manufacturer (and yes it does happen!). How many install companies verify before install? How many production companies verify upon receiving the box?
2. XLR's/Speakon can be wired wrong (I always test new/repaired cables to verify). This can be a big problem for line-array deployments, with boxes being out phase with each other, because of a bad cable(s). Obviously Danley has less to go wrong here.
3. Incorrect loudspeaker processing settings (polarity, delay, filters)
4. Incorrect processing connection (this especially important for subwoofer arrays).

I do run smaart on all the rigs I work on, any sort of improper configuration would have been known about pretty quickly. I don't get why everyone is so hung up on this, I just prefer other designs, that's ok.

The Tapped horn is to a normal horn what a vented box is to a sealed box and can provide a 6 to 9 dB increase in sensitivity and output compared to the same driver used as a direct radiator and was the advantage / reason for the patent being granted.
Best,
Tom

I've definitely experience this first hand, taking some of the same drivers and using them in both reflex and tapped horn, the difference is quite shocking.

 

[kyle_neuron]

I do run smaart on all the rigs I work on, any sort of improper configuration would have been known about pretty quickly. I don't get why everyone is so hung up on this, I just prefer other designs, that's ok.

I don’t think two people saying that it does happen is being ‘hung up’? It’s worth mentioning at this point that the Danley tapped horn products ship wired normally - that’s positive SpeakOn pole to positive driver terminal. The factory presets have a polarity inversion, which may or may not be appropriate to leave in place depending on what they’re being integrated with and where.

I’ve personally seen that missed, especially on installations where the factory turn-key DSP or amps isn’t being used. I’ve also seen many more installations that are a lap or more behind - in phase, out of time.

It’s perfectly cool to simply not be a fan of something, of course. It would be really boring if we all liked exactly the same stuff. I’d also be out of a job

I’m not sure when you heard the Electrikal rig, but that’s a good example. You might look at some Smaart traces and think it’s ‘wrong’, but your ears would hopefully say different.
Here’s a nice photo of their rig with the custom Danley tops, all oiled up and sun bleached:

 

[Matthias McCready]

I do run smaart on all the rigs I work on, any sort of improper configuration would have been known about pretty quickly. I don't get why everyone is so hung up on this, I just prefer other designs, that's ok.

Smaart is great, and it is a fantastic tool for identifying problems.

I wasn't meaning to question any measurements you did make, or to presume you did not do your due diligence; I was just mentioning systems have lots of places where things can go sideways.

A little less than a year ago I participated in a shootout between Adamson, D&B, L'Acoustics, and Martin at a venue I mix at occasionally. Unfortunately two of the four manufacturers couldn't get their processing right; one even had an array that was significantly out of phase with itself! That isn't a knock on the two manufactures that had difficulties or their products; just that mistakes happen and processing (amongst other things) can be tricky business.

And if you don't like Danley that is fine (other than this being a Danley thread ); personally have never mixed on a Danley PA, so I don't have an opinion on the product or a prized goat in the race.

I do know that Tom Danley and Ivan Beaver (also at Danley) are quite active on several forums, and I REALLY appreciate their knowledge, insight, creativity, and willingness to share.

 

[Stu Pidasso]

So here's an anecdote - where I wired a TH118 out of phase from another TH118.

I had a nightclub install gig in the Belltown district in Seattle some years ago. The main room was 30' x 80' and would regularly be filled beyond capacity - to the point where traversing down the long dimension would easily take a person twenty minutes, amazing how 500 people can fit in such a tight space. In that room we installed two SH-50's (later added two more) and had two TH118's as well as two Basstech 7's.

Each TH118 was being driven by a bridged QSC power amp, I forget exactly the model, but one of the amps failed and the club owner temporarily replaced it with another amplifier (the only spare he had on hand) which was far too small to do the job properly aaaand the TH118 driver burnt (see photos.) Danley overnighted me a new driver to install in the cabinet. As luck would have it, just at that time they changed driver manufacturers and the mounting holes on the new driver didn't quite line up for the mounting bolts to make it into the box T-nuts, but after a bit of finagling I got it to work. When I tested the system I was shocked at the lack of low end.

I immediately assumed the belts were melted (again) in the Basstech 7's. This is a common failure since you can't hear any distortion when over-driving a Danley Servodrive. I figured this had occurred in an effort to compensate for the dead TH118 (failure modes such as this are common when you have an enthusiastic club owner messing with processor settings he's certain he totally understands and depending on how much he'd partied he'd like to change settings often.) I took a few calm breaths and disconnected both TH118's which were side by side next to the mouths of the Basstech 7's. Tons of low end.

I scratched my head. What's going on here.

My mentor Rick Chinn was nearby and stopped in to see what the deal was (another set of eyes can be helpful.) By this time I had the replacement 18" driver out back out of the cabinet, to check it's wiring because I was getting cone motion in the wrong direction when applying a 9v battery to the NL4 input. Nope, the wires were correct, red to red terminal, black to black terminal.

Rick said, well why not just wire the driver reverse? Duh.

So I did. And it worked.

The diaphragm moved in the opposite direction, black being positive - directly from the manufacturer! Well JBL has been doing that for years but I didn't expect such tomfoolery (sorry Tom) from anyone else...

Now imagine if I didn't have the two TH118 boxes side by side but instead had them some distance from one another (I know who would do something stupid like that right) it may have been difficult to figure out with limited time and a nightclub about to open.

I will also mention that a slight bit of delay was required to get the Basstech 7's to play nice with the TH118's.

Here are a few photos, and don't ask me who the manufacturers of the drivers are, its unimportant really.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

It's a shame that you and Earl Geddes haven't been able to listen to each others systems to hear both your thoughts on them.

I know someone who's heard 'em both, even had them in the same room

 

[ctrl]

I know someone who's heard 'em both, even had them in the same room

What a cliffhanger
and...?

 

[redshift]

"Hyperrealistic" is just what I'm afraid of! I've heard only very big diy-synergys and the sound was like having headphones on - extreme imaging and attacking transients. Not for me thank you, but I believe that most people will like them at least at demos.

It is called overpowering the room modes and absorption/reflections. Small room -> small speakers and vice versa.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

The best place I have to listen to my SH-50's is outdoors. I live in eastern Washington in a rural town called Prosser... so I can do that. I welcome anyone who wishes to stop by and listen to them, just give me a heads up prior to showing up. At the moment my subs are a pair of ContraBass (because they're easier to move around compared to the Basstech 7's.) I just acquired a set of Danley XD118's that haven't arrived yet and am looking forward to hearing them, however they're also going to be somewhat unwieldy.

Have you ever heard any of the Unity rigs that were in operation in the PNW about 15-20 years ago?

The reason that I got interested in Unity horns, waaaaaaay back in the day, was because I had one of those Dot Com jobs where we knew our employer was "circling the drain" but we had to keep showing up for work while we waited for the layoff notices to show up. That was over 20 years ago.

Since there was very little work to do, I used to read patents all day. Since they were technical it kinda made it look like I was studying. That's where I learned about making Unity horns.

Around this time, there was a company out of Seattle or Eugene that was doing raves with a set of SPL TD1s and some SPL Subs. I heard the set up at one of the USC raves in Seattle.

At the same time, John Sheerin had built the first DIY Unity horn (that I'm aware of) and I vaguely recall that we met at one of the "Vacuum Tube State of the Art Conferences" that used to be held out in Silverdale Washington.

 

[Patrick Bateman]

What a cliffhanger
and...?

Oh that's a pic from my old condo. A few years back I tried to buy a set of SH50s. I briefly had my Gedlee Summas (which was my reference for about half a decade) and a rented set of SH50s, simultaneously.

The SH50s were so big I had to sell my car and buy a bigger one (see attached.)

When I bought the Waslo Cosynes that I have now, I rented an SUV instead of buying one, so I guess I learned my lesson lol.