BYOFRFR - Build Your Own FRFR

Patzag

Patzag

Fractal Fanatic
I have had the opportunity to play through some amazing speaker systems. My Axe FX III - main stage - set up includes a D&B Max12 wedge with a D&B E-Pac amplifier. The sound is spectacular. I've also used Meyer Sound, L'Acoustics and a few other brands.
Many sound great. A few are terrible.

The benchmark is: If you play music through it, does it sound great? If it does, it should be able to handle the output of a modeler. if it sounds like playing through crappy monitors, then it definitely mangles your sound.

But I have a need for a small, portable unit I can use for small gigs.

Recently I played through an AER Compact 60/4 acoustic combo. It handles voice real well, music quite well and made my FM3 sing. So I looked into it. It's not a Coaxial speaker in there, it's a Beyma extended range speaker. A dual cone (wizzer cone) "full" range speaker. Sounds real smooth and best of all, there's no crossover phase issues like you encounter with some of the cheaper co-axial offerings out there which are used by some well known FRFR manufacturers.

What I didn't like about the Compact 60 (apart form the price tag) is that there's a limiter that kicks in a little too enthusiastically. So when the singer belts it out, my guitar sound gets squashed.

Looking further: The "amplifier" in that little amp is a chip. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's a little underpowered. The chip can handle 60 W, starts compressing at 50W and I bet there's a wide knee on the compressor that starts to kick in way earlier.

So - I'm looking at building my own unit. I'm still in search mode for components. I want to slap a Beyma speaker in an empty closed back 1x8 or 1x12 cabinet and stick an amp in there.

Finding the speaker is easy. The cabinet is also easy. Where I'm having trouble is the amp. So - I'm open to suggestions. Anyone?
 
The Hypex Fusion amps seem to be some of the best plate amps going right now. They come in various output ratings and channel counts. For example FA 501=1 Ch of 500/250w @ 4/8 ohms, FA 502=2 CH, FA 251 = 250/125w @ 4/8 Ohms. They use the Ncore 500 modules, which are some of the best sounding Class D amps if that matters. More importantly they have built in dsp that can be configured. Maybe pricier than you need, but they can be found used.
 
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If your handy, you could assembly an amp with a Hypex UCD 400 or UCD 700 plus a Hypex Power supply for cheaper.

Of course Matrix has a really popular plate amp that a lot of people use.
 
I am not sure why you feel that "the speaker is easy" and "the cabinet is easy".. ?

Now, mebbe perhaps I do not have any idea of your background, however loudspeaker design is not a simple process. A closed or ported cab needs to be sized and tuned to a particular speaker... you cannot simply toss a driver into any box and imagine its going to work at an optimum level.. and while sure you can use DSP or global eq to force fit anything, maintaining phase coherency and feel under such circumstances is a real challenge..

checkout the program winlsd here.. WINLSD

This will allow you to predict the low frequency response of a projected cab.. i suggest at least get the driver t/s parameters and toss it into there with the calculated interior volume of a cabinet.... and if you are going for a coaxial speaker i would strongly suggest one with included crossover..unless you have circuit design experience and are familiar with Spice.

the amp is actually the easiest part of a powered FRFR system.. Dayton Audio have a good range of plate amps, including some that have DSP based programmable EQ, or a class D module, and any number of solid state rack and bass amps... the hypex ucd400 is highly regarded as mentioned by lapo.. but none of these will make a bad design sound good.
 
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Mystic38 said:
I am not sure why you feel that "the speaker is easy" and "the cabinet is easy".. ?

Now, mebbe perhaps I do not have any idea of your background, however loudspeaker design is not a simple process. A closed or ported cab needs to be sized and tuned to a particular speaker... you cannot simply toss a driver into any box and imagine its going to work at an optimum level.. and while sure you can use DSP or global eq to force fit anything, maintaining phase coherency and feel under such circumstances is a real challenge..

checkout the program winlsd here.. WINLSD

This will allow you to predict the low frequency response of a projected cab.. i suggest at least get the driver t/s parameters and toss it into there with the calculated interior volume of a cabinet.... and if you are going for a coaxial speaker i would strongly suggest one with included crossover..unless you have circuit design experience and are familiar with Spice.

the amp is actually the easiest part of a powered FRFR system.. Dayton Audio have a good range of pate amps, including some that have DSP based programmable EQ, or a class D module, and any number of solid state rack and bass amps... the hypex ucd400 is highly regarded as mentioned by lapo.. but none of these will make a bad design sound good.
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Thank you. I spent a good time of my youth designing speaker cabinets. I was lucky enough to have access to powerful computers in the early 80s to help me calculate Snyder/Thiele parameters for ported enclosures and I even wrote software back then for optimum folded line ports enclosures. (Sorry, not sure of the terminology for this in English as I did all this work before I learned that language! I am less familiar with closed enclosures but I am working on improving that knowledge.
That being said, the dimensions of closed back, un-ported enclosures are a lot less critical than ported systems.

As I wrote above, I am not interested in a co-axial system for this experiment. I want to try the Beyma speaker. No crossover needed.

I didn't like Dayton Audio's plate amp. Possibly because the crossover design built in was poorly programmed, I don't know. But the unit I have here (not mine but at my disposal) sounds bad and has serious phase / comb-filtering issues. Possibly the unit would sound better with a single full range speaker. That's one of the things I will try.

In any case, thanks for the recommendation @Lapo and you have provided on the Hypex systems.
 
I’m searching for modules myself right now. Another very high quality amp with dsp is this Pascal. Not quite as highly rated in SQ as Ncore 500 and a few others, but it’s close and the next best after those. From what I’ve read the Pascal are more on the detailed and precise end but can lack warmth comparatively. Though they don’t lack bass or punch at all and are used in high end bass cabs. It’s a bit cheaper than the Hypex as well.

And for those who might read this thinking the idea of different amps sounding different is untrue, here is an excerpt of a comparison between a Pascal Module, an Ncore, and a Purifi (Slightly improved Ncore by the same designer)

From https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/purifi-vs-pascal-what-is-going-on.20177/

“Now the Pascal turned out to be a suprise: It sounded brighter/more sterile, but ran absolute circles around the purifi in every area other than "tonality" or "musicality" (what ever you want to call it, the purifi sounded warmer). Everything sounded MUCH more precise on the Pascal...

Now just to check if it was my own lunacy/bias whatever you want to call it, or my room or speakers, I tested it in multiple systems, and had numerous people listen, without telling them what I was switching or what they were listening for, all with the same impressions of the results (though preferences differed).”


https://speakersandamps.com/product...nnel-power-amplifier-module-authorized-dealer
 
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