tRiGgEr
5,000+ posts
CarAudio.com Veteran
Sweet. Interested in some future reviews.
- Status
tRiGgEr
- Thread Starter
- #17
Dan's a good guy... we both just really love audio...
David Hyre, Dan and I all had our parts in the final specs on this baby... and I must admit... when I finally got down to it... a fantastic driver WAS made... but not technically to all the plans I thought before
it still can be flat to 60hz ported though... which ain't bad
- Thread Starter
- #18
the objective tests will be posted as well when Mark K is finished
everything from distortion (linear and non) to FR to impedence....
they will then be retested through another independent DIYer... Cheapboy and Dingaling
I'm the most interested though in Jim Griffin's views... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/yumyum.gif.0556df42231b304b9c995aefd13928a8.gif
Know what kinda space is going to be required of these, and are there pics of the protos?
- Thread Starter
- #20
not yet... likely you will have more than you can handle in around 2 weeks or less
space depends what you want
they really do well IB in doors down to around 90hz... pods ... I would try for 10-15L if you want it as a 2-way... 2-3L is fine for a 3-way...
ported?
10L tuned to 71hz looks pretty good...
Just don't expect Extremis type output down low from this... even though it has the excursion to do it...
if you want a 2-way with no sub the Extremis is definitely the way to go
this speaker is made to be flat from 90/100hz-10khz IB at huge SPL levels...
IDK, I'm expecting these to be really expensive (read, more expensive than I can afford anytime soon). I'd just really like to A:B them with my extremi. I have .52 cube poorpods that I will be porting to 70hz soon enough.
Oh well, hopefully I'll be able to pick up a set used in the future.
Untouchable11
10+ year member
Yellow Ledbetter
These sound great. These are going to be thrown in to the mix of which ones to look at here shortly...
LOL......I could count the number of people on this forum that know about Lambda's on my fingers.
So, you going to offer just the mid for sale, or only as a set? Price of just the mid?
Untouchable11
10+ year member
Yellow Ledbetter
Yes, i definately do not know what a Lambda Apollo, or a Faraday is... I've looked up both, but really haven't found much on either... Just in posts by Feandil, and Thylantyr on CarAudioForums.com... Anyone have a link that explains these two?
Lambda Acoustics was a company created by Nick McKinney. He started a Yahoo
Group in 1999 here.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LambdaDrivers/messages/1
You can read about all the drama involved with starting a business making woofers.
After years he bailed out of the speaker making business to seek other ventures
and sold his Lambda inventory to John Janowitz at Acoustic Elegance. He now builds
Lambda woofers.
Nick made woofers, 10", 12" and 15" for different applications based in his
Lambda motor 001 design seen here.
http://ldsg.snippets.org/motors.php3
When Nick received license from Tom Danley to make the Unity Horns for DIY, Nick
needed a wideband woofer to mate with his Unity design. He made a cool wideband woofer
called the TD series. It came in different Q flavors from low to high, dubbed TDH, TDX,
TDS and a special midrange only version called TDM. The best sounding was the TD15
series, then TD12, and the TD10 last, see here;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/TDdrivers.html
One day he wanted to make his 'dream woofer' and he added more shorting
rings to the Lambda motor, he called it the 'steriod' version Lambda. He wanted
these for himself and to make loudspeakers on the side for people. When he told
the DIY folks the skinny on this verison, everyone got a boner and wanted in
on the action. So he did a limited run and called it an Apollo motor.
What is an Apollo upgrade? Nick said;
"The Apollo drivers use 2 more Faraday rings on the outside of the voice coil.
The top plate (steel air gap) has been modified substantially, it has 18
threaded holes for all the mounting bolts and also the magnetic path shape
was changed slightly so we could lower the weight of the driver as well (we
removed steel from places it was not needed magnetically).
The Top Faraday ring is ~6" wide and 5/8" thick at its largest points. Its
inside dimension is held to a tolerance of 0.002" so that it is spaced just
a few thousandths from the voice coil. It pulls the heat from the top of
the voice coil directly and sinks it into the cast aluminum basket, which
is about 5 lbs of solid aluminum.
The Lower Faraday ring is spaced under the air gap and inside the magnet
stack. it allows a more linear inductance to xmax curve, and transmits any
heat picked up from the lower region of the voice coil into the top plate.
The Top Ring and the Top Plate (of steel) form a tight sandwich with heat
sink compound between them. And the Top Ring is a massive thick chunk of
aluminum that now completely connects the basket to the voice coil heat wise.
Both rings also force any flux movement to fall near to zero, especially
combined with the already massive copper ring and solid aluminum phase plug.
Other than that, they are exactly the same drivers. "
Nick
more;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/Apollo.html
The prototype TD15 woofer's response;
On axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x00.gif
30 degrees off axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x30.gif
45 degrees off axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x45.gif
Impedance;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15ximp.gif
I don't have the final plots of the production Lambda TD. These charts don't
do the driver justice as you have to listen to a Lambda with faraday motor
playing in a wide band operation to hear what it can do. It's a niche woofer for
certain applications. The cool part is Nick was able to keep sensitivity high
at 94dB {8 ohm version}, keep xmax near 16mm {tested} and the woofer works great sealed
and even better ported tuned to 30 - 35hz while it can do full range operation
playing very cleanly. This isn't a monster subwoofer, it's a speciatly SQ woofer
for a wider bandwidth with good excursion {rated at 10mm, tested near 16mm xmax}
I've collected ten Apollo for a home audio project, the TD15H.
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/TD15H.html
More info by John Janowitz;
Why Faraday ring is expensive to do
Posted By: John E. Janowitz
The faraday ring in itself is not that expensive. Making a driver with one IS.
Say you have a woofer with parameters you like. We'll use the HE15 for example
because I have real numbers to work with. Fs 26hz, Qes .345, Bl 27.3tM with coils in
series, Le about 6mH.
Now you want to add the faraday ring to Lower Le and distortion for higher end
response. For a woofer you need to add a significant amount of copper to the pole to
make it worthwhile. You need to consider how much you need to lower Le in order to get
the appropriate high end response. This can often be a LOT of copper. For example, to
lower the Le of the HE15 from about 6mH to 2mH took 60thousandths of copper. To go up to
2KHz you'll want your Le to be lowered down to .5mH or lower. You can see on the HE15
that wouldn't really be possible. Taking a 2mH driver and bringing it down to .5mH or so
has been done with 25th of copper on the Lambda drivers.
So you know that copper has to get on the pole. You can't just add 60th of copper in
the gap, or the coil won't have clearance. So you need to turn down the pole to make it
fit in there. You turn down the pole, widening the gap, and Bl goes down, thus raising
Qes. The 60th of copper on the HE15 lowered Bl to 20.3Tm and raised the Qes to about
.623.
Now you have the Le lowered, distortion lowered, but the woofer parameters are
nothing like the original. Here comes the expensive part. Somehow you have to get back
the 25% of Bl that was lost. There are a few ways to gain back a little, depending on
the coil originally used in the driver. Going from roundwire to flatwire gains a little.
Going from aluminum to copper gains a little also, but also raises Mms, changing Fs and
again raising Qes. There is only so much you can do with the coil itself.
To get the Bl back up you're going to have to add more motor. In this case a LOT
more motor. Going with the 4HP motor instead of the 3HP motor adds a lot of Bl, but the
4" coil instead of 3" coil raises the original Le even more. In this case to do an HE15
with copper and have the original parameters yet with the lower Le and distortion
requires the driver to be about 2x the cost of the original.
Some other examples aren't as extreme. Some can be done for only a small price
increase. It also depends on how the copper is done as well. Lambda had copper machined
to fit properly on the pole wihtout a lot of force to put it on. TC uses a press to put
the copper on the pole first, then machine off the extra. When you are talking about the
multiple smaller rings of the Apollo motor, you can't just press it into place because
the copper will warp too much.
This is just a small insight into the building of a proper copper faraday driver. As
it was said, the copper itself isn't that expensive, but making the driver the same as a
non-faraday driver can be."
John
The SQ from a TD15 Apollo will beat a TAD 16" woofer costing $775 each, Focal Audiom costing {$800 ea},
give Scanning woofer a run for the money and completely outclass any other pro audio driver like a $500 JBL.
John sells the standard non Apollos for $279 ea for the first one, $179 for the second one {Discount for buying a pair}.
If you want Apollo, he needs to have parts machined so expect higher pricing.
You would have to have a very good ear to hear the difference between an Apollo vs. standard design as the standard
Lambda faraday motor is ultra sweet in SQ. Adding the hardware on the Apollo is just more sweeter.
It also boosts power handling from 500w rms to 1000w rms if you install the 'long john' phase plug as it also
acts as a heatsink.
Group in 1999 here.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LambdaDrivers/messages/1
You can read about all the drama involved with starting a business making woofers.
After years he bailed out of the speaker making business to seek other ventures
and sold his Lambda inventory to John Janowitz at Acoustic Elegance. He now builds
Lambda woofers.
Nick made woofers, 10", 12" and 15" for different applications based in his
Lambda motor 001 design seen here.
http://ldsg.snippets.org/motors.php3
When Nick received license from Tom Danley to make the Unity Horns for DIY, Nick
needed a wideband woofer to mate with his Unity design. He made a cool wideband woofer
called the TD series. It came in different Q flavors from low to high, dubbed TDH, TDX,
TDS and a special midrange only version called TDM. The best sounding was the TD15
series, then TD12, and the TD10 last, see here;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/TDdrivers.html
One day he wanted to make his 'dream woofer' and he added more shorting
rings to the Lambda motor, he called it the 'steriod' version Lambda. He wanted
these for himself and to make loudspeakers on the side for people. When he told
the DIY folks the skinny on this verison, everyone got a boner and wanted in
on the action. So he did a limited run and called it an Apollo motor.
What is an Apollo upgrade? Nick said;
"The Apollo drivers use 2 more Faraday rings on the outside of the voice coil.
The top plate (steel air gap) has been modified substantially, it has 18
threaded holes for all the mounting bolts and also the magnetic path shape
was changed slightly so we could lower the weight of the driver as well (we
removed steel from places it was not needed magnetically).
The Top Faraday ring is ~6" wide and 5/8" thick at its largest points. Its
inside dimension is held to a tolerance of 0.002" so that it is spaced just
a few thousandths from the voice coil. It pulls the heat from the top of
the voice coil directly and sinks it into the cast aluminum basket, which
is about 5 lbs of solid aluminum.
The Lower Faraday ring is spaced under the air gap and inside the magnet
stack. it allows a more linear inductance to xmax curve, and transmits any
heat picked up from the lower region of the voice coil into the top plate.
The Top Ring and the Top Plate (of steel) form a tight sandwich with heat
sink compound between them. And the Top Ring is a massive thick chunk of
aluminum that now completely connects the basket to the voice coil heat wise.
Both rings also force any flux movement to fall near to zero, especially
combined with the already massive copper ring and solid aluminum phase plug.
Other than that, they are exactly the same drivers. "
Nick
more;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/Apollo.html
The prototype TD15 woofer's response;
On axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x00.gif
30 degrees off axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x30.gif
45 degrees off axis;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15x45.gif
Impedance;
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/td15ximp.gif
I don't have the final plots of the production Lambda TD. These charts don't
do the driver justice as you have to listen to a Lambda with faraday motor
playing in a wide band operation to hear what it can do. It's a niche woofer for
certain applications. The cool part is Nick was able to keep sensitivity high
at 94dB {8 ohm version}, keep xmax near 16mm {tested} and the woofer works great sealed
and even better ported tuned to 30 - 35hz while it can do full range operation
playing very cleanly. This isn't a monster subwoofer, it's a speciatly SQ woofer
for a wider bandwidth with good excursion {rated at 10mm, tested near 16mm xmax}
I've collected ten Apollo for a home audio project, the TD15H.
http://home.pacbell.net/lordpk/lambda/TD15H.html
More info by John Janowitz;
Why Faraday ring is expensive to do
Posted By: John E. Janowitz
The faraday ring in itself is not that expensive. Making a driver with one IS.
Say you have a woofer with parameters you like. We'll use the HE15 for example
because I have real numbers to work with. Fs 26hz, Qes .345, Bl 27.3tM with coils in
series, Le about 6mH.
Now you want to add the faraday ring to Lower Le and distortion for higher end
response. For a woofer you need to add a significant amount of copper to the pole to
make it worthwhile. You need to consider how much you need to lower Le in order to get
the appropriate high end response. This can often be a LOT of copper. For example, to
lower the Le of the HE15 from about 6mH to 2mH took 60thousandths of copper. To go up to
2KHz you'll want your Le to be lowered down to .5mH or lower. You can see on the HE15
that wouldn't really be possible. Taking a 2mH driver and bringing it down to .5mH or so
has been done with 25th of copper on the Lambda drivers.
So you know that copper has to get on the pole. You can't just add 60th of copper in
the gap, or the coil won't have clearance. So you need to turn down the pole to make it
fit in there. You turn down the pole, widening the gap, and Bl goes down, thus raising
Qes. The 60th of copper on the HE15 lowered Bl to 20.3Tm and raised the Qes to about
.623.
Now you have the Le lowered, distortion lowered, but the woofer parameters are
nothing like the original. Here comes the expensive part. Somehow you have to get back
the 25% of Bl that was lost. There are a few ways to gain back a little, depending on
the coil originally used in the driver. Going from roundwire to flatwire gains a little.
Going from aluminum to copper gains a little also, but also raises Mms, changing Fs and
again raising Qes. There is only so much you can do with the coil itself.
To get the Bl back up you're going to have to add more motor. In this case a LOT
more motor. Going with the 4HP motor instead of the 3HP motor adds a lot of Bl, but the
4" coil instead of 3" coil raises the original Le even more. In this case to do an HE15
with copper and have the original parameters yet with the lower Le and distortion
requires the driver to be about 2x the cost of the original.
Some other examples aren't as extreme. Some can be done for only a small price
increase. It also depends on how the copper is done as well. Lambda had copper machined
to fit properly on the pole wihtout a lot of force to put it on. TC uses a press to put
the copper on the pole first, then machine off the extra. When you are talking about the
multiple smaller rings of the Apollo motor, you can't just press it into place because
the copper will warp too much.
This is just a small insight into the building of a proper copper faraday driver. As
it was said, the copper itself isn't that expensive, but making the driver the same as a
non-faraday driver can be."
John
The SQ from a TD15 Apollo will beat a TAD 16" woofer costing $775 each, Focal Audiom costing {$800 ea},
give Scanning woofer a run for the money and completely outclass any other pro audio driver like a $500 JBL.
John sells the standard non Apollos for $279 ea for the first one, $179 for the second one {Discount for buying a pair}.
If you want Apollo, he needs to have parts machined so expect higher pricing.
You would have to have a very good ear to hear the difference between an Apollo vs. standard design as the standard
Lambda faraday motor is ultra sweet in SQ. Adding the hardware on the Apollo is just more sweeter.
It also boosts power handling from 500w rms to 1000w rms if you install the 'long john' phase plug as it also
acts as a heatsink.
- Thread Starter
- #26
they will be less than $60 each... at least for the preliminary frame...
that exact price below $60 is still up in the air as I'm not sure if I will copper plate the phase plugs or not //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif
- Thread Starter
- #27
read the above message....
it realistically might be a few dollars lower than that... but I figured I should do high quote until I figure out all the features
Also likely I will only run this order once... no more than that... so this speaker won't exist after I'm done... though the warranty will still be in effect
- Thread Starter
- #28
read what thy posted but just to clear things up a bit
XBL2 already lowers inductance nicely (meaning it keeps more of the "field" inside the motor"
but faradays are copper shortening rings placed about the gap... these lower inductance to OBSCENE LEVELS! which means incredibly detailed sound and very very high extension (generally speaking)
for instance the Apollo's top and bottom plates were shorted together via alum sleeve around the VC... identical to the method in this 6.5"... it just happened that the apollo was $500 each
in this speaker inductance is likely to be below 0.09mh per coil...
- Thread Starter
- #29
a visual might be in order to demonstrate this
the green area is the gap... where the coil moves back and forth
from left to right:
far left: no faradays
middle: faraday on top plate
far right: faradays on top and bottom (like this speaker and the apollo)
all that stray stuff is the magnetic field... within the motor itself... this is at 1khz
http://feandil.tripod.com/motor_pics/
to my knowledge there are less than 10 speakers in production right now using faradays... at least for wide range usage
and most if not all of them are way larger than 6.5" (the lambda's smallest size is 10")
the SS 8545 is the closest I know of to this... but it around 4-5x more expensive... and not nearly as beefy... not even close
the green area is the gap... where the coil moves back and forth
from left to right:
far left: no faradays
middle: faraday on top plate
far right: faradays on top and bottom (like this speaker and the apollo)
all that stray stuff is the magnetic field... within the motor itself... this is at 1khz
http://feandil.tripod.com/motor_pics/
to my knowledge there are less than 10 speakers in production right now using faradays... at least for wide range usage
and most if not all of them are way larger than 6.5" (the lambda's smallest size is 10")
the SS 8545 is the closest I know of to this... but it around 4-5x more expensive... and not nearly as beefy... not even close
oh... shit... I'm down then, would you please try to get ahold of me when they're available?
please?
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