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[Dave Rickard]

You forgot one choice:

Apparently, the polarity was reversed on the horns, causing a giant suckout at the crossover frequency.

http://billfitzmaurice.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5846#5846

Glad to hear that got worked out.

Dave

[Peter Morris]

Though that was cover under build quality  .... anyway nice to see it all working.

I wonder how close it is to the KF760 killing DR300 in performance  

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

Hi chaps just to fill you in on my thoughts so far.

I have posted some photos of the RTA pink noise plots with and without eq here as well as my first test results:-

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/prosoundhire/dr290.htm

I am keeping a very subjective point of view regarding this cab even after spending the time building it.  In fact to be fair this gives me all the more reason to be sure it does what I want of it before commiting to spending more time building the next cab.

Its very time consuming and you have to be very accurate as all of the cab is built with curved panels and an overall 4deg slope top and btm.  You have to bear in mind these things are a very complex design/build next to any other cab design.

As far as testing the cab:-

It was simply superb on the vocal output.
My Current tops sounded better with some cd source material but the DR's sounded better with other's.  Still room for further EQ improvement on the DR290.

After setting the system flat, and then tweaking a little more down on the top end, the Vocal check with a mic was the last thing I did.

Next to the DR290 my current tops sounded pretty thin in the lower mids.

It was simply superb on the vocal output.

The output of the DR290 was higher than my existing tops at high levels.

I dont have a laptop to use Smaart, so can't carry out any tests other than the RTA measurement and time delay/phase settings using my Ultradrive (I understand the Behringer measurement mic is not accurate for phase response but good for flat eq response)

I plan on building another cab design before I commit to the time building another DR290.  

I have plans for a coaxial 1x12 & 2".  I am going to mock up the horn and again do a full A/B/C listening test to try and get a subjective result between all three top packs.

One thing I need to check out is the horn impedence again as I was pretty sure they where both 16ohm units, simply because next to the 2416 was a 16 in a circle.  But if they are both actually 8ohm units then I was pushing way to much into the HF component which would explain the high un eq'd RTA level of the DR290 as seen on the RTA plot.

Not sure about the polarity issue though as the Ultradrive swapped both the 12" and the pair of 1" drivers around. Its more than likely that I have a cocked up the polarity of one of the patch cables I made to test the system out on this last test as the polarity was not swapped when I first tested the cab.

Dont quite understand why one poster thinks that I am trying to rubbish Bills designs, Dont think I would have committed to the long and complex build if that was the case.

Dave

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

bgavin (Bruce Gavin) wrote on Mon, 04 September 2006 14:07

Considering so MANY have great success with this design, and you do not, one cannot dismiss the probability of a build error.

I would agree with this, but even after posting on this forum, Bills own forum and Speakerplans.com forum, only a handfull of people replied with what cabs they had replaced with the DR range cabs. Most of the people who did reply had replaced pretty low level cabs (very old Peavey SP range stuff etc). or had built the system to do a very different job (replace a small system with a multiple top packs for large outdoor gigs).

I have found very little actually comparisons of quality cabs being replaced.  This in itself was hard to justify making the build.

Lots of people have had great success with his subs, but as the DR290-300 is pretty new not many have built them yet. You maybe thinking about his DR250 (smaller 10" driver)

Bills forum has been a fantastic source of help during the build, and I hope that the cab will shine a little more with some more eq work.

Even on my first test the cabs sounded great on there own, and the two other PA guys down with me both said they would be very happy with them. But it was the comparison against two other quality cabs that highlited that they where not quit as sparkling as expected with the initial EQ.

Dave

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

Bill Fitzmaurice.....I salute you

DR290 - Awesome
After all the problems I have had in getting this thing perfect the end result has been magic.

Biggest thing I think was changing the HF horns to run in series and pretty sure changing the B&C to the Delta Pro has been a massive change.

Stunning lower mids...superb. I am very, very happy and relieved

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/prosoundhire/dr290.htm

Glad I did not throw in the towel at the first hurdle

I did originally model the coaxial using hornresp with the same horn mouth area as the DR290, but the actual LF response dropped , (very possible that it is user error !!).  

I was still very impressed with the co-axial, it sounded great, far better than my front loaded, but lacked the low mids of the DR.

When I check out any similar co-axial horn loaded top packs, all of them have a low cut off of a about 140-160hz, which is the area that I am missing in my PA.  Ok if I go four way but I dont want to do that.  Maybe with a lot of processing I could get the low mids to be bumbed up, but I would rather not have to artifically increase those levels.

Any Uk builder is more than welcome to take a listen once I have the second up and running.

Dave

[Alan Star]

leon douven wrote on Tue, 18 July 2006 15:13

Hi Alan, Keep us posted please, I'm verry curious of the combination LAB-sub / dr300. Regards, Leon

Well after a bit of a mix up we only ended up with 2 dr's for the gig, the other 2 somehow ended up on a boat instead of a plane, even though they were dropped off at the airport ?

The 2 dr300's we couldnt get set up/eq'd properly in time so we ended up using 4 nexo ps15's with the 8 lab subs, the sound guys rekoned the nexo's would keep up with the labs but I dont rekon they did, they had to keep the labs on a leash I rekon.

Very happy with the sound of the labs so far, needless to say.

Will have the other pair of dr300's here soon so will have a play with them then.

My first impressions of the first pair of dr300's is that they sounded harsh, they were being run with passive crossovers inside, i will bi amp these next ones and see how that goes.

[DAVID_L_PERRY]

Ahh welcome to my world....

At least its only money you speant rather than masses of build time.

Corrective EQ is the absolute mother to get these to work for you. No question.

just started the build of the next set of DR290's following the (long awaited)success of my first.

The other major factor for me was putting the pair of 1" horns in series rather than parallal, dropping the sensitivity.

Dave

[Alan Star]

Thanks David, I was planning to run the comp. drivers in series, so a fair bit of eq adjustment was necessary for yours then ?

I have a drive rack pa and my partner has an rta mic so will try and pink them and see what results that returns, will be curious to see how they sound flat first though of course.

I have a pair of mackie sa1521's that I want to do a comparitive AB test with the dr's. Although I know there are probably many speakers with higher fidelity than the mackies, I thenk the sa's would give a pretty good benchmark to go by.

[Jeff Babcock]

Alan,
I would look forward to your comparisons and findings as well on the DR290's, especially to the Mackie tops which are a fairly common item and many users have probably encountered.  I would expect the 290's to leave the Mackies in the dust in terms of output, but your thoughts regarding the overall characteristics would be great.

I have been closely following David's progress with the 290's as I am considering some of these myself since he worked out the initial issues and ended up extremely satisfied.  Once the horns were in series David noticed a big improvement and less eq required, however looking at Bill F's specs they are not as flat as some boxes - eq definitely is required to get them really happening.

These look like outstanding boxes, especially since they require such little power to get such substantial output.

[Alan Star]

Yes by all accounts the dr300's should be a lot louder and throw further than the mackies, I would be surprised if they didn't, it's the fidelity I am more concerned about and and even more to the point...my ability to get the eq right. ...which is why I like the mackies.

Just so you know, I have chosen, eminence kappa pro's and eminence 2" psd comp. drivers on Bill's recomendation. He recomended the definimax instead of the kappa pro but said the kappa pro would work well also and I think it may have better handling in upper mid range or something like that.