MicroWrecker build thread

[m_ms]

Oh well, the ever-delayed two MicroWrecker's of @lilmike will now see completion (dare I say it?) on Wednesday. Pics - a few, at least - should start rolling in Monday or Tuesday. The main reasons for the delay are: an extremely busy cabinet maker (working at a theater with some big productions just about to premiere), and that the CNC-cut panels had two of them, the driver panels, with a wrongly aligned driver hole cut-out (driver panels have been re-cut). Fortunately everything else fits perfectly, and the assembly has slowly started up (to speed up from Monday). A few days ago we double-checked the fit of the holes for the driver bolts. Speakon terminals will by mounted at the bottom tilted back panel. 13-ply birch looks great. 

Initial pic of the B&C 15TBX100 on the driver panel for screw hole mark-up, and two CAD-pics of the MW attached. 

[m_ms]

Finally some pics of the assembly process. The MW's of @lilmike are finished on Wednesday. 

 

[Ricci]

Looks good...

[dgage]

It’s not quite a sealed 24 but it might wreck something.  Lol!  I kid.  Looking great so far.

[m_ms]

14 hours ago, dgage said:

It’s not quite a sealed 24 but it might wreck something.  Lol!  I kid.  Looking great so far.

It would be interesting nonetheless to do a comparison between a MW and a 24" sealed sub From what I can read here and there the magnifying power of something like a tapped horn is in the vicinity of factor 3 (or even more), so a 15" in a TH would roughly equate into two 18" direct radiating units or thereabouts? Reading through the big "Danley DTS-10 "Super Spud" DIY kit"-thread though it's quite obvious the DTS-10 sports a different kind of overall sound delivery and impact compared to a series of 18" DR's (poster 'MKtheater' in particular provided a lot of intel in the form of actual listening impressions here), which points to the tapped horn itself as something that leads to a distinctive bass imprinting (which, perhaps, could also be said about direct radiating solutions, so not to hand a "character-baton" to TH's as such). 

On a side note I saw my completed MW's today (at the cabinet maker's workshop at a local theater), that is: one of them only needed some clear oil and finishing touches around the edges, while the second one had just been assembled today and was still wrapped in clamps.

What dawned on me though when I finally laid eyes on them "in the flesh," so to speak, was their sheer size. Holy freakin' moly - they're huge..! 😱 I've measured out these things at home to plan for their placement, but nothing prepared me for the solid surfaces of these when I finally saw them for real. Subjectively they look something like 50% bigger than I'd imagined. A lighting technician from the theater came by as the cabinet maker and I stood there looking at the (almost) finished MW, me still in amazement, and wryly asked: "Isn't one of them enough?" Having now been confronted with the sight of these I hesitated a bit, then replied: "Ooh yes, certainly going by the sheer output this will be able to produce, but.. " and then followed a less than convincing speech, possibly because I now felt it to be quite hilarious, about smoother room respons with 2 differently placed subs (or more) and all that jazz. Needless to say the lighting technician seemed skeptical about my explanation. With a smile on his face the cabinet maker then followed with the question "For how long will you be allowed to keep these, and at what cost?" We just laughed  

Tomorrow they'll be transported to our home, a second floor apartment. More to come, if we'll survive the endeavor of getting them up the stairs.. 

[dgage]

8 hours ago, m_ms said:

Tomorrow they'll be transported to our home, a second floor apartment. More to come, if we'll survive the endeavor of getting them up the stairs.. 

Second floor apartment?  Really?  When I have people ask about my subs and find out they’re in an apartment or connected condo, I tell them my subs come with eviction notices.  Good luck with those and the fight to keep them.  When I first turned on 3 sealed 18s for my wife, I said if that was too much vibration, we could put rubber feet under the couch. She looked at me and said, “you most certainly will not, that was awesome.”

And I’m sure people ask why do you need a car as fast as a Bugatti.  If you have to ask, you just don’t understand. Luckily, our subs are a heck of a lot less expensive for their capabilities than someone buying an exotic car.

[Ricci]

11 hours ago, dgage said:

Second floor apartment?  Really?  When I have people ask about my subs and find out they’re in an apartment or connected condo, I tell them my subs come with eviction notices.

Ugh...2 Microwreckers in a 2nd floor apartment...I hope the downstairs neighbors are VERY understanding.

[m_ms]

3 hours ago, Ricci said:

Ugh...2 Microwreckers in a 2nd floor apartment...I hope the downstairs neighbors are VERY understanding.

When I used the SVS SB16-Ultra over the entirety of my ownership of it (i.e.: about a year and a half), I had not once received a complaint from the neighbor above or below. And believe me, I've watched countless Blu-ray films and given them a good run, music as well. I know, compared to you guys and the subs you're used to this may equate to iPhone-levels, but still. It even got so far that I wondered why my neighbors didn't complain, so I asked them to their faces, several times: "Have my watching films and listening to music ever bothered you?" Their answer, repeatedly: No, no and no. Color me surprised. 

I see you're already on your way to the keyboard wanting to let me know 2 MicroWreckers vs. a single SB16 is like comparing a ship cannon to a bebe gun. Granted, I may invite hell and flynders here with the MW's - I hope not. 

Oh, btw. - the MW's were safely transported to our 2nd floor apartment. The cabinet maker and I fought for it, but we succeeded. Now I only need to sand the edges a bit, and apply a clear oil. Then comes the mounting of the drivers. And did I say the MW's are huge? Heavens..

[m_ms]

16 hours ago, dgage said:

Second floor apartment?  Really?  When I have people ask about my subs and find out they’re in an apartment or connected condo, I tell them my subs come with eviction notices.  Good luck with those and the fight to keep them.  When I first turned on 3 sealed 18s for my wife, I said if that was too much vibration, we could put rubber feet under the couch. She looked at me and said, “you most certainly will not, that was awesome.”

Haha, what a great reply from your wife As I just replied to Ricci, the MW's may prove a challenge re: neighbors. But so far they've been very tolerant.

Quote

And I’m sure people ask why do you need a car as fast as a Bugatti.  If you have to ask, you just don’t understand. Luckily, our subs are a heck of a lot less expensive for their capabilities than someone buying an exotic car.

Good answer. Indeed Denmark is a small country. I know of one in the whole of this country (Norway, different matter) - yes, only one who's using horn subs in his home setup. I'm sure there're more of them out there, but I bet they're far between. The one I do know has an awesome all-horn setup (all-horn from top to bottom is even more rare): 4-6 FLH's (can't remember how many exactly) with a 15" Fane Colossus driver in each that extends to 25Hz, and paper horns from Inlow. All active. Subs take up some 4 square meters total volume. Impressive..

[m_ms]

Two pics of the MW's in my listening room, only partly unwrapped (and not oil-finished). I also placed the B&C driver in one of them just for fun.

The Uccello main speakers aren't small by any measure, or so I thought.. The plan is for one of the MW's to be placed on its side between the Uccello's, and the second MW against the rear wall behind the listening sofa. We'll see how that fares. 

After the clear oil finish the MW's should attain a light-golden appearance not too far from the mains. I like the look of good, "naked" quality ply.

[Droogne]

I have a similar living situation (2nd floor with up and downstairs neighbours, both with little children), and I also never had any noise complaints from them. I dont have a lot of contact with them, except passing them in the hall, but they did jokingly (and friendly at that) call me 'the guy with music right?'. Both my large horn sub and my 2x 18" 2kW subs never caused any trouble. 

[dgage]

You guys are lucky that construction quality is that good. Even following code, construction is often not that great depending on where you live in the US, so if you’re in a normal apartment in the US, I doubt you could have even a Sb16 without getting into trouble even on low volume. Now bigger/taller buildings might have concrete floor construction and likely wouldn’t bother neighbors as much but that’s definitely not the norm where I’m at.  Looking good and sounds like a good plan. 

[m_ms]

1 hour ago, dgage said:

You guys are lucky that construction quality is that good. Even following code, construction is often not that great depending on where you live in the US, so if you’re in a normal apartment in the US, I doubt you could have even a Sb16 without getting into trouble even on low volume. Now bigger/taller buildings might have concrete floor construction and likely wouldn’t bother neighbors as much but that’s definitely not the norm where I’m at.  Looking good and sounds like a good plan. 

Construction quality of the building is likely the primary reason for the neighbors not being rattled out of their minds, indeed, added to (fortunate) inventory layout of my neighbors homes and how they relate to the placement of my listening room. In other words: luck is also a factor here, I guess. 

Had a near DEFCON 1 moment earlier this evening. Being that I need a rack build over the on-the-side-lying MW between the main speakers I thought I would just manually measure out the height of the MW, and somehow surprised by the number I saw was later horrified when my measurement didn't correspond to that of @lilmike's orig. Sketch-Up drawing. I was devastated, panicked, made more measurements, all of which were off - what the hell would all this effort be worth with a pair of huge, heavy bass horns with a likely misaligned horn expansion?! I was shut down for over an hour - close to weeping even. Desperate I contacted Simon Mears (who made the CAD-drawings from Mike's orig. plans, and is also the man behind my main speakers), and he gave me the height spec from his CAD drawing: some 1206mm's. Hey, this corresponded precisely with my own actual measurement, which veered off from what I thought should be about 1170mm's. Another measurement from Simon as requested from me of the horn mouth, and that fit my measurement to the mm as well. I then divided Simon's measurements in mm's with those from Mike in inches, and got 2,54. Blood went to my head again - I had used the crude 2,50 as a conversion value from US inches to mm, and with the correct 2,54 value all actual measurements were spot on down to the damn millimeter. Now I was even closer to weeping - the day's small miracle!  

[SME]

I doubt those kinds of errors in dimensions would have made much of a difference, but anyway units matter.  :)

 

[dgage]

1 hour ago, SME said:

I doubt those kinds of errors in dimensions would have made much of a difference, but anyway units matter. 

 

Yep.  

https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf

 

I primarily use metric for my designs, which was primarily driven by my purchasing a Festool track saw over a decade ago.  I have no clue why the US doesn’t join the rest of the smart world in switching to the metric system but there’s no discussion of that, I guess the US has too many other problems to try to solve. 

[SME]

1 hour ago, dgage said:

I primarily use metric for my designs, which was primarily driven by my purchasing a Festool track saw over a decade ago.  I have no clue why the US doesn’t join the rest of the smart world in switching to the metric system but there’s no discussion of that, I guess the US has too many other problems to try to solve. 

^ I almost wrote something very close to that.  I used Festool equipment to build my speakers and subs, and its reliance on metric was a big plus for me to invest in it.  I hate fractional inches and all the inane conversions of the Imperial system with a passion.

While we're putting the Imperial system of unit to rest, can we also abolish Daylight Savings Time?  It is a pointless bi-annual exercise that literally kills people, but it seems that the U.S. isn't the only country unable to wean itself away from this vestigial ritual.

I must admit though that all this sounds like a lot of whining in light of current events in the UK, and I dare say things are looking a bit shaky in a number of other countries too.

[Ricci]

What are the overall outside dimensions of the MW's anyway?

[m_ms]

4 hours ago, Ricci said:

What are the overall outside dimensions of the MW's anyway?

1206 x 608 x 768mm's (H/W/D).

[m_ms]

16 hours ago, SME said:

I doubt those kinds of errors in dimensions would have made much of a difference, but anyway units matter. 

 

That was certainly "Plan B" hoping that the errors wouldn't affect performance severely, but that's not a desirable option when the outset is going "all in" and fuzzing over single millimeters. Fortunately it didn't get to that  

[SME]

Wow!  Those are a lot bigger than my D.O. 21" subs (800mm x 700m x 600mm).  Now I want to know how big the MegaWrecker is.  😵

[m_ms]

17 minutes ago, SME said:

Wow!  Those are a lot bigger than my D.O. 21" subs (800mm x 700m x 600mm).  Now I want to know how big the MegaWrecker is.  😵

But you got 4 of those 21" subs, right? Are they sealed? Don't know why I never realized how big the MW's really are when crawling through my listening room measuring them out for placement options. There's something about seeing those solid surfaces for real that blows away one's idea of size formed from a measuring tape.

I've thought about that myself: what does @lilmike have in store for us to come when the biggest, current creation of his is a "LilWrecker"? 😲 A Mega-iteration would have to be an extension of the house.. 

 

[SME]

Each cabinet has two subs in dual-opposed configuration, and I have two cabinets.

[m_ms]

14 minutes ago, SME said:

Each cabinet has two subs in dual-opposed configuration, and I have two cabinets.

Sound like beasts. What's the in-room low corner from a pair of those, and how big is your listening room (in square meters)? 

Not that I believe it's really necessary, but I plan on applying a HP-filter at about 18Hz for the MW's. What's the opinion on this from you guys - do I need to bother with a HP-filter if I don't go past 110-115dB max. in my listening room? My reason to go with a HP would be to keep distortion at bay, rather than protection of the driver per se in my particular setup. The B&C driver does have limited Xmax, so it might be a good idea..

[Ricci]

21 hours ago, m_ms said:

1206 x 608 x 768mm's (H/W/D).

Roughly 47.5x24x30.25". They aren't lightweights that's for sure!

[m_ms]

1 hour ago, Ricci said:

Roughly 47.5x24x30.25". They aren't lightweights that's for sure!

To think that I once considered the Gjallarhorn, though only briefly because of its monstrous size (this thing would have never gotten up the stairs to our 2nd floor apartment, both due to its shape and weight), fairly limited upper band and out-of-production driver. 

Speaking of which (i.e.: the driver) I'm hoping the B&C unit will do well in the MW's. It's never been tested in this tapped horn before, though it models very well. Hoping to get the MW's up and running Sunday or sometime next week.