BOSSOBASS Raptor system 3

[Bossobass Dave]

BTW Adam, I'm actually the guilty party for initially telling you to bump the subs when we set them up and I have to say, your system is one helluva an experience. I would no doubt lower the SW trim for multi-channel music favorites but with the movies we watched it sounded amazingly powerful and clean. I would probably be running the subs as hot as you do (that is, now that you settled down to 'only' +10dB hot)   

[Madaeel]

Hahaha yah I know Dave. I just remember we talked about people running their subs ridiculously hot before I got the Raptors and then afterward I was like "damn I'm one of THEM". It's no coincidence most of them are in a basement as well. As long as the purist Paul doesn't start busting my balls too I'll be ok.   

 

Yah Pop's are a little misleading up against the wall but even then that's a good 8db difference. I kinda wanna do that experiment in my own room now. I guess I'll need a set of all white Raptors...oh yah and the Anithorn in all 9 locations just because. You know that would be badass.

 

Man I love Pop. He makes me look sane running 25-30db hot. Would love to hear his set-ups. Actually all this nearfield talk makes me wanna hear some guys' systems. I think I'll post on AVS I'll demo the Raptors to get some interchange of experiences.

[MKtheater]

Adam,

Forget it, you will never go back to flat once you had Hot! Hot is awesome as long as it is clean.

 

Bosso,

I will as soon as I seal my wall. Do you want me to show all the graphs combined? How do you add the arrows and descriptions to the graphs?

[maxmercy]

Can you measure far/near/both with mic in same position for all 3 as well?

 

I may be able to do that this wknd, seeing if the Denon Pro unit will be worth it.

 

I'll post each sub cluster by themselves at MLP, then together, then together with delay.

 

My nearfields are less than 1' away from MLP, but that 1' has a futon mattress there that keeps too much upper bass from coming from behind you.

 

JSS

[BeastAudio]

 @Ricci

Hahaha man you made me lol. I'm one of "those guys". Dave gives me shit all the time for it but the *only* reason I run hot is because flat I can't feel anything. Around 10db hot is perfect in my room. If it weren't for the basement I know I would be running flat. Upstairs I'm running the BB flat and it's TOO potent. That thing scares the crap outta me. Suspended floors are amazing.

 

@ Brandon

No I meant the 15" SI's I had. I know 8 SI 18's would make a difference.

 

How you did it makes sense and maybe next time I head down to see Dave I can hear your set-up. I wonder is everyone running their nearfield subs like that though? Also are those 2 HST's capable of ULF on their own? You have an amp just for them correct? They still fall under the same rules as the farfield subs. With only roughly 17 liters of air between them, and your room is roughly 3500cuft right, how can they even do ULF without the help of your other 18's? IOW whatever you're getting for ULF is with ALL subs running so those HST's are only doing so much and are more usefull above 15hz or so than below when placed nearfield. Not to mention you have to boost the ULF considerably and risk clipping the amp. I'm curious without the farfield subs how much they'd do on their own. With enough displacement, like Pop's it woudn't matter, but then what's the point if you don't have enough.

Gotcha. I actually listen at night after the wife is asleep with just the nearfield on as the farfield 8 travel right up the exterior wall and shake her out of bed...two floors up. I have full intentions of messing around a good bit this weekend, along with EQing the nearfield a little more as well as tweaking the LT on the fronts. I will do new measurements of the effect of the nearfield vs farfield and everything in between. FWIW, here was my old EQ setup, looking at the green close mic response and the EQ to bring that to flat which is the gold trace. This was with the mic about 12 inches from the cone of one of the front SI 18's

 

And then this was what that EQ looked like measured at the MLP. Whoa, nice house curve.... The other flatter trace is the close mic EQ'd response, so you see the gain from the room as the mic gets further from the sub. My attempts will be to get the response of the nearfields to similar, we shall see how it goes.

 

Hahaha yah I know Dave. I just remember we talked about people running their subs ridiculously hot before I got the Raptors and then afterward I was like "damn I'm one of THEM". It's no coincidence most of them are in a basement as well. As long as the purist Paul doesn't start busting my balls too I'll be ok.   

 

Yah Pop's are a little misleading up against the wall but even then that's a good 8db difference. I kinda wanna do that experiment in my own room now. I guess I'll need a set of all white Raptors...oh yah and the Anithorn in all 9 locations just because. You know that would be badass.

 

Man I love Pop. He makes me look sane running 25-30db hot. Would love to hear his set-ups. Actually all this nearfield talk makes me wanna hear some guys' systems. I think I'll post on AVS I'll demo the Raptors to get some interchange of experiences.

Dude, anytime you want to check it out, I would love to host. Perhaps you, Dave, and Paul can all come up this way for one day, and I come down there for the other would make for pretty fun weekend to say the least! 

[Bossobass Dave]

Here's a series of stuff since it's too damned cold to work in the shop today:

 

The drivers FINALLY got here. West coast longshoremen probs sent the boat around to NYC where the security apparatus X-rayed, probed and whatever else they did before the container could be forwarded to us. In the meanwhile, we had a rush on amplifiers and had to order a fresh batch before Chinese NY, which lasts until March 6. So, we're busy testing, building, assembling.

 

Next, I got wind of an AVS member stirring up the pot re; Brandon's GTG, specifically the SP-2 8000 shut down with the HS24 driver.

 

I wanted to jump in and defend my 2 buds, Nick & Brandon. The HS24 is easily the highest quality subwoofer driver I've ever messed with, and that includes 100+ different 12, 15 and 18 inchers over the past 15 or so years. I don't care how it fairs in GP tests or what anyone else's opinion of it or it's T/S parameters or it's construction compared to any other driver. Our intent that day was simply to test it subjectively against a pair of LMS Ultras with no inserted EQ, limiters, compressors, etc., and to verify the subjective consensus with spectrographs.

 

The HS24 trounced the pair of Ultras.

 

After the exercise (thanks, Dave Gage for the hardware and great attitude, thanks Nick for the driver and great attitude), Nick suggested we dump Brandon's IPR 7500 into the HS24 to "do your worst". After the Peavey shut down when pushed to it's limit, Dave suggested using his SpeakerPower SP-2 8000.

 

The SP is a 2 channel, 4KW (rated) per channel into 2 ohms nominal amplifier. The amp cannot be bridged because each channel is already a full bridge configuration. The HS24 was a D2 configuration, so the most-power configuration was to wire each 2 ohm VC to a channel of the SP amp, running 2 ohms nominal per channel, each VC actually measured at 1.7 ohms at rest.

 

The SP also shut down when pushed. The driver showed some very slight distress, but no way to know if that was indeed the driver or the amplifier.

 

Since then, Seaton has said that the ensuing convo in Brandon's GTG thread was "amusing". He offered the opinion that the amp shut down was due to "line sag". He has also subsequently mentioned that he played a 14 Hz sine wave into an HS24 for an extended length of time until the VC melted off the former. He is said to have wired the drivers VCs in parallel to an Re of 0.85 ohms into a SP 4000.

 

Others have since chided Brandon for poor electrical wiring in his HT, poor electric power service to his house, poor test results, poor collection of data regarding the test, etc... all in so many words, of course.

 

Here is a SL cap of some insane dub step music whereupon the input signal was switched from the LMS pair to the HS24, all else being pretty darned equal:

 

 

I don't think I have to tell anyone which is which?   I also challenge the "line sag" theory for the shut down. There was no indication of mains sag at any point during the entire day. The amps just couldn't cut it. I saod then and still maintain if we had brought an A14K and wired the 2 VCs in series to 4 ohms nominal, the bridged A14K would not have gone into one of it's protect modes before the HS24 cried uncle.

 

Making excuses for the SP amp by putting down the quality of the methodology, AC mains service or dissing the driver are really silly tactics, unfounded and uncalled for.

 

See next post for my thoughts on a single frequency sine wave vs the test we conducted...

[Bossobass Dave]

Here's a scene I recently capped from The Amazing Spiderman 2 from chapter 14, where the to airliners survive a near miss:

 

 

I have included the bar graph and expanded it so that you can, if so inclined, count the number of simultaneous frequencies in this effect, which lasts for roughly 8 seconds, played at +5dBFS at the seats, momentarily clipping the Edirol interface in 2 instances.

 

So, why do I think this is a much more stringent test for a subwoofer system that a single frequency sine wave at 'x' Hz >10 Hz? Really, I have to answer that?

 

Again, here's the dub step music clip:

 

 

Someone commented that this isn't presenting much of a challenge to the subwoofer. Well, if, like Brandon's and Adam's systems, there are no choking compressor/limiters inserted, and the signal chain is flat to 5 Hz, then oh, hell yes it is. Spidey? Even moreso. And, we played B:LA, HULK, WOTW, etc., as high as +15dRL. To track these transients so that the waveform and waterfall graphs are nearly identical to the digital copy is as rare as line sag on Brandon's dedicated 30 Amp home run outlet.

[Bossobass Dave]

Finally, I wanted to show a comparison to underscore how soundtracks have become more and more demanding over the years.

 

Since 2004, when Open Range hit the streets, people have raved about the sound, specifically the thunderstorm and gun fights. I decide, after just watching and graphing John Wick, to show a comparison between the two soundtracks.

 

Thanks to an extensive archive of SL caps that others have capped digitally over the years, I was able to pull a gunfight scene done with SL settings close enough to the ones I use for comparison's sake.

 

 

Hahaha. NO COMPARISON.   It actually made me wonder what all the Open Range fuss was about.

 

We scream and moan when a filtered soundtrack pops up and say there's nothing we can do about it, but I think otherwise. Someone must be listening because the soundtracks are getting harder and harder to accurately reproduce compared to a decade ago. I remember when one of Ed Mullen's go-to demos in his reviews was the "Sock Detonation" in Monsters Inc.

 

Just sayin...

[dominguez1]

Dave, et. al.,

 

Thanks for you frequency charts between nearfield and farfield responses. Completely agree with the analysis around SPL response. 

 

The question is, what is the Sound Intensity response look like? Difficult to tell as no one has the proper measuring equipment to analyze particle velocity level.

 

My hypothesis based on my tests is that the sound intensity in the nearfield is stronger than in the farfield. Perhaps the nearfield SPL response doesn't have to be eq'd to be 'as flat' as the farfield response to generate the equivalent PVL; meaning the nearfield sub might be more tactile down low, even though it measures less SPL as the farfield. The reason for this is because the nearfield sub produces more PVL in the nearfield and equates to greater sound intensity.

 

In my tests, I played a 15hz sine wave of subs 13.5 ft away, and 3 ft away. There was a big difference in tactile feeling between the two. In order to get to the same tactile feeling as the nearfield subs, I had to increase the volume of the farfield subs by ~20dbs.

 

Love your old school sig BTW! Go ASCII!

[chrapladm]

Dave thanks for info regarding the 24". I already knew that if it was Bosso approved than it would be a damn good driver. Then when word got mentioned that AE might build on out came the attacks of Nick on SI 24. I dont have the knowledge or time to constantly be battling these people. I have chatted with Nick for hours now and he is a great guy in my books. I have some 15's coming from him over the next few months. And dont forget I live in Australia and he called me. Awesome guy.

 

But ya it seems DIY speaker dude or whatever is always attacking the 24. I like the AVS forum but am starting to get sick of a lot of the BS that goes on there. Makes threads less enjoyable. And I have seen quite a few threads with Bosso vs Seaton so I was hoping you would have said something. But also glad you didnt so it can be less of a headache for you.

 

There is always someone somewhere that has blow this driver at this amount of wattage and that is now written in stone. Just gets old is all. I think I will stick with a this forum, modding HTS and just glance over at a handful of guys threads on AVS.

 

Bosso will you ever be selling a Bosso 9K(Fp9K)?

 

Just curious. I will probably buy the 14K much later down the road but was curious.

[Bossobass Dave]

Dave, et. al.,

 

Thanks for you frequency charts between nearfield and farfield responses. Completely agree with the analysis around SPL response. 

 

The question is, what is the Sound Intensity response look like? Difficult to tell as no one has the proper measuring equipment to analyze particle velocity level.

 

My hypothesis based on my tests is that the sound intensity in the nearfield is stronger than in the farfield. Perhaps the nearfield SPL response doesn't have to be eq'd to be 'as flat' as the farfield response to generate the equivalent PVL; meaning the nearfield sub might be more tactile down low, even though it measures less SPL as the farfield. The reason for this is because the nearfield sub produces more PVL in the nearfield and equates to greater sound intensity.

 

In my tests, I played a 15hz sine wave of subs 13.5 ft away, and 3 ft away. There was a big difference in tactile feeling between the two. In order to get to the same tactile feeling as the nearfield subs, I had to increase the volume of the farfield subs by ~20dbs.

 

Love your old school sig BTW! Go ASCII!

Hi Dom,

 

The difficult thing here is to be able to define the terms so that anyone reading can grasp them. I don't know what sound intensity is, nor it's direct relationship to sound pressure level, nor how it may or may not change in different rooms. I can't easily grasp particle velocity because the speed of sound is constant in a given room. So, there is obviously a relationship of these phenomena that yourself and others have failed to show, explain, flesh out.

 

Since sound intensity is defined as watts per unit of area, it would seem to follow that a far field sub's low end is produced more so by the room's boundaries than by the driver piston. I've mentioned this before and I still see it as the likely explanation, but that still does not change the fact that the near field sub has a radically different FR. My own testing concludes that you do indeed have to have the same FR or use a much lower cross point for the near field sub.

 

IMO, it doesn't matter if the subs are worn as headphones, frequency response is still the dominant factor. I also grow more convinced every day that single frequency sine waves are not a relevant test input. In your test, any FR difference between the near and far placed subs is lost because you are only using a single frequency.

 

Thigpen has said his testing resulted in a standard of 105dB for ULF frequencies. I think he's a great reference in the field because of the rarity of persons to choose from and my own experiences and soundtrack source seem to agree, so I tend to agree with him. I think beyond that standard, which some want to push beyond 120dB and in the future, no doubt, the target will be ever-increasing, is simply a peripheral and extracurricular area of interest.

[Bossobass Dave]

Dave thanks for info regarding the 24". I already knew that if it was Bosso approved than it would be a damn good driver. Then when word got mentioned that AE might build on out came the attacks of Nick on SI 24. I dont have the knowledge or time to constantly be battling these people. I have chatted with Nick for hours now and he is a great guy in my books. I have some 15's coming from him over the next few months. And dont forget I live in Australia and he called me. Awesome guy.

 

But ya it seems DIY speaker dude or whatever is always attacking the 24. I like the AVS forum but am starting to get sick of a lot of the BS that goes on there. Makes threads less enjoyable. And I have seen quite a few threads with Bosso vs Seaton so I was hoping you would have said something. But also glad you didnt so it can be less of a headache for you.

 

There is always someone somewhere that has blow this driver at this amount of wattage and that is now written in stone. Just gets old is all. I think I will stick with a this forum, modding HTS and just glance over at a handful of guys threads on AVS.

 

Bosso will you ever be selling a Bosso 9K(Fp9K)?

 

Just curious. I will probably buy the 14K much later down the road but was curious.

 

 

I know that Nick knows what the hell he's doing and his product is first rate and very reasonably priced so the last thing the DIY crowd needs is to chase one of the few available great driver builders away. Especially for a guy like Janowitz, who has kept people on hold for years and never delivered, more than once.

 

John is a business associate of Seaton's and Seaton is a SP dealer who also uses the amps in his own line, so there is just a twinge of bias there, wouldn't one think?

 

I was also sad to learn that John (LTD) is still throwing his usual "sound behaves like vodka in the near field" or whatever that out-of-context stuff might do to a serious conversation on the subject. A guy who has never built or listened to or measured a subwoofer should have a much more humble approach, IMO.

[chrapladm]

I think there are quite a few people that think LTD is this guy lol:

 

Either way the forum is getting tiring at times. I miss chatting with Penngray and a few others that have all left because of the same BS that goes on. BUT anyways not ruining this thread.

[vxds11]

It amazes me how much that forum deteriorated over such a short period of time. After leaving in 2009 and then returning (to a f*cking forum I created) and witnessing the nonsense I dealt with is beyond me. Within the recent months I was subjected to some hostility for a few simple questions and at that point, I just threw up my hands and bounced. I know my build is taking forever (life happens), but at least I know that I have you guys here when a little of support, class and civility is needed. Sorry for the OT rant.

[maxmercy]

You are not the only one who feels this way. At least the archives are there.

 

JSS

[Bossobass Dave]

UPDATE: I've sent an inquiry to a supplier in India for a particle velocity probe. I guess I'll have to buy the damned thing and accompanying software and suffer the learning curve so that we can get some measurement results up and bump the general accumulated knowledge of the subject up a few notches.

[BeastAudio]

Hey Dave, thanks for the kind words. That dude can sit on one for all I care. It appears he just loves to follow around SI posts and trash them. Maybe he is Thilo and we just don't know it  

 

AFA the AVS stuff, I choose to just distance myself for the most part from people like DIY and Mogorf (audyssey troll). Life is too short to get caught up in all that garbage. I know what we heard and witnessed that day at my house, and although I am not an electrical engineer, line sag/brown out/wtf else was not an issue on my 30a home run. The impedance load and the PS of the amps were more than likely the cause, but hey, we didn't clamp it so who knows. There was a limit in the chain, it was the amps, we found it! 

 

I understand the griping and frustration with AVS as well. I prefer to keep to the DIY section and honestly at this point, I stick to the threads I am subscribed in and leave the rest alone. Keeping an eye out for those folks that I am friends with posting new threads that tend to keep it pretty casual. There are too many folks that are keyboard jockeys these days. AVS is still a wonderful resource for info, and I have it to thank (and hate) for where I am today :D  

[maxmercy]

UPDATE: I've sent an inquiry to a supplier in India for a particle velocity probe. I guess I'll have to buy the damned thing and accompanying software and suffer the learning curve so that we can get some measurement results up and bump the general accumulated knowledge of the subject up a few notches.

Very interested in what you find out....I am very ignorant on the particle velocity/sound intensity front...

 

JSS

[BeastAudio]

This is going to be awesome. What is the kit going to run if you don't mind me asking bosso? Your contributions to the "science" are priceless. Just another selfless move to better our understanding of audio spectrum. Cheers to you dude! 

[dominguez1]

UPDATE: I've sent an inquiry to a supplier in India for a particle velocity probe. I guess I'll have to buy the damned thing and accompanying software and suffer the learning curve so that we can get some measurement results up and bump the general accumulated knowledge of the subject up a few notches.

Wow! This would be killer, and like others have said, advance the topic to where it has not yet gone. It's certainly been used in other capacities such as machinery, etc., but I've yet to see anything in regards to subwoofers.

 

I'd be happy to pitch in...just let me know. 

[Ricci]

UPDATE: I've sent an inquiry to a supplier in India for a particle velocity probe. I guess I'll have to buy the damned thing and accompanying software and suffer the learning curve so that we can get some measurement results up and bump the general accumulated knowledge of the subject up a few notches.

Great!...Now I can not add this to a long list of projects. I briefly looked at the microflown site last week and though I didn't get pricing it has the look of many Benjamins. Let me know what the damage is on one of these if you don't mind. If it's reasonable I may still pick it up. If not maybe some of us can pitch in on yours.

[maxmercy]

This is going to be awesome. What is the kit going to run if you don't mind me asking bosso? Your contributions to the "science" are priceless. Just another selfless move to better our understanding of audio spectrum. Cheers to you dude! 

 

Any way we can help?

 

JSS

[chrapladm]

If someone can setup a paypal or kickstart account I would send money for this also. Dont have big dollars as I am a family man with four children but Bosso has always been a huge help so I would send what I can to help.

[maxmercy]

Here's my data:

 

REW, HDMI input, Umik, no EQ applied.  Denon Professional Pre/Pro, followed by MiniDSP Open-DRC-AN for delays.

 

Front Subs (at rooms 1/4 points)

 

 

 

Nearfield Subs (4 sub cluster directly behind MLP)

 

 

 

Both sub clusters with no delay on nearfield subs:

 

 

 

Both sub clusters with 10ms delay on nearfield subs:

 

 

As you can see, the nearfield subs really help fill in the suckouts with the proper delay applied, and all I need to do is apply cuts and I have a terrific FR.

 

JSS

[MemX]

Great graphs, thanks

 

I have been pondering nearfield myself recently - perhaps a couple of nearfield would fill my huge 30Hz null nicely and also give some added tactile effect, same as yours do?  I will have to do some room modelling to see if I can find an ideal solution... (I'm not too keen on the idea of subs over downstair's living space, at least where the current ones are now they are over the entrance hall, but if needs must... lol.  I could allways turn them off of an evening!)

 

Do you find adding the delay to the nearfield subs makes them sound a bit 'smeared' and a little less punchy?  Or is it the case that you add a delay that means the front subs' wavefront hits you as the delayed nearfield subs kick you in the back, meaning you get a tight, time-aligned wavefront and maximum impact?