Tweeters and SDA's

ben62670

I have been playing with custom SDA-SRS's for a while now. I have been in search of the right tweeter for the job for a long time now. I have tried all flavors of Polk's including RDO's. I have tried ADS, SEAS, Infinity emits for haha's, and now Morel's. Out of all the morels are a present favorite. With the stock crossovers they are not efficient enough to keep up with the 8 mids. I have some mills 2.7 in there as are stock for single tweeter configurations. I have paralleled the stock 2.7's with the Mills, and they are just a tad higher than they should be. They combined resistance is 1.35. I will be replacing the resistor with Mills 2 ohms soon. I realize what I am doing isn't a lot of help to people who don't want to mod their cabs(round face plate but a drop in no less), but to the serious DIY guy who understands the problems of having an array of tweeters can posses. I have been doing a lot of research on arrays lately, and have decided to go with one, maybe 2 tweets at most. The big SDA's with 3 and 4 tweets the outer tweets roll of at a lower frequency to help combat the problems related to high frequency drivers not being mounted closer together than physically possible. I was very lucky that the 20uf caps, and the .4 inductors actually worked excellent with the Morel tweeters.
The imaging is far better than any other tweet that I have used so far. Vocals have improved as well. They are much smoother, and defined than before. Just better all across the board. At $33 each these are a steal.
Back to tweaking.
Ben

ben62670

Amazing. I have been doing some critical listening for a couple hours, and I am just blown away by the openness, smoothness, and sound stage the tweeters have improved. Some of what I was listening to was Fleetwood Mac, and the male vocals just sent shivers up my spine! Dynamics are just incredible now. I highly recommend this upgrade for old Polk's.

madmax

Just something I have noticed, Fleetwood Mac (at least everything from Rumors on) seems to work really well with a sharp high definition hard tweeter sound which SDA tweets have none of. Not saying anything bad about FM or your latest tweeter choice but I would suggest you try some other stuff before making up your mind. BTW, I'm a huge FM fan.
madmax

Neskahi

Ben, what Fleetwood Mac recording are you refering to? My wife and I used the Tusk album in order to decide if we preferred the upgraded tweeter's or the
originals. I think it's a newer recording and of better quality mixing than Rumors.
That's what I've heard anyway. After swapping the tweets "several" times, we
preferred the upgrades.

ben62670

I have tried many different types of music other than Fleetwood Mac. I just gave them as an example because every other tweeter either did the highs well or the mids well. The male vocals of FM seemed muffled before. The Morel does it all excellent. Everything sounds so right it is unbelievable to me at this price point. The sound stage is just incredible. I feel whole now, complete:p

ben62670

Neskahi wrote: »

Ben, what Fleetwood Mac recording are you refering to? My wife and I used the Tusk album in order to decide if we preferred the upgraded tweeter's or the
originals. I think it's a newer recording and of better quality mixing than Rumors.
That's what I've heard anyway. After swapping the tweets "several" times, we
preferred the upgrades.

http://www.yourmusic.com/browse/album/Fleetwood-Mac--The-Very-Best-Of-Fleetwood-Mac-48727.html?cname=BROWSE_DISCO_694_ALBUMS

This CD is very well recorded. Lots of Cd's sound really weak, but this set is very well recorded. It has nearly every song by FM that I like.

madmax

Tusk is my favorite. I've always wondered if I could wear the holes out on a cd, given this one I guess not...
madmax

ben62670

My musician buddy stopped in for a listen today. He said "It sounds like I am in a concert. Are the rears speakers on? It sound like there is a speaker over there (he pointed to the side slightly forward) Every time you do an upgrade they sound noticeable better, and better. I had never heard speakers that sounded this good. The bass is right there. Its nice and tight, but not overpowering". These are my custom built SDA-SRS's with the Morel tweeters, and the SonoSub. I had the sonosub turned down a bit. With good music I don't like to kill the mids, and highs with an abundance of bass. I am very pleased with the SonoSub. I just can't get over how the sound stage is presented. It isn't all over the place, just wide, and detailed. I can't wait to get my new speakers done with 16 mw's, 2 tweets, and 4 PR's divided into stereo, and dimensional partitions. I will be driving them with 3 stereo amps line level pasive crossovers(Adcom GFA-5800, 585, and 7500):D

ben62670

BTW they are an excellent timber match for the RDO's.

zingo

Nice going. It's always rewarding with projects go well and turn out as well, or better than hoped.

read-alot

It's a given that anyone who comes to listen at the house will be looking for the non existant other speakers. I have a hard time believing there are only 2 sometimes with different recordings and mine are just stock non-frankenpolk variety.

ben62670

read-alot wrote: »

It's a given that anyone who comes to listen at the house will be looking for the non existant other speakers. I have a hard time believing there are only 2 sometimes with different recordings and mine are just stock non-frankenpolk variety.

I don't understand why the tweeters have made as much of a difference in the SDA effect, but the sound stage has really improved a lot. He has heard these since day one of the project, and has noticed a more defined, and spread out sound stage with the new tweets, and modding the resistors in the CO.

engtaz

I have had Morel's in my car audio and they were great, smooth and silky.

MillerLiteScott

I demoed my SDA 2B's for my brother and he told me that my surround speakers were to loud. I told him I was only playing my two channel rig through 2 channels of my 5 channel amp.

He then said, Wow.