jay michael

Thanks for the formula, I had read an article by Nathan lively that described this but his formula was a bit different, allowed even wider spacing. When you say 3.3 feet apart that should be center to center yeah? Or 3.3 feet between cabinets? And what frequency would you use in the formula? The crossover frequency? I guess you would want them tight enough so that any frequency produced by the subs would fall within 1/4 wavelength of each other? And yeah, better to have more than enough horsepower on tap, I would rather run them conservatively vs full tilt all night. Ill have to keep my eyes on driver prices, perhaps after some more rental revenue ill try and pick up another pair.

Agreed... Chocolate chip trip was the most exciting for me as well, it was literally a trip to experience Very cool sound experience, felt like an amusement park ride. I could maybe justify the cost of building another pair simply to give more flexibility to set up arrangements... but so far the 4 have been giving me the horsepower needed for my needs, Ive yet to feel like I needed to run them up to limiting to get the output I needed. They feel very balanced when carrying them, doable with 2 people but a 4 person carry is most desirable, it feels light and easily to maneuver with 4. The show on Saturday went well, client was impressed and has already indicated he wants to use the rig again. It was a weird room, concrete industrial bay, cement walls with metal ceiling. Only 20 feet wide, about 140 feet long with 50 foot ceilings.... basically a worst case scenario for good sound..... I clustered the subs all upright vents on the bottom slightly off center in the room hoping to somewhat reduce low frequency cancellations down the length of the room. It mostly worked, with the room empty walking front to back bass energy did rise and fall a couple times over the length of the room... but once the room got packed (was a humid sweaty mess) it evened out nicely. I ran the Danley's upright in 40 degree horizontal mode which worked awesome keeping sound off the walls, also tilted them downwards enough to keep sound off the metal roof. Bass music all night, low sub frequencies sounded full and clean, mids and highs were impressive considering the room. I did feel like it lacked some kick definition up the middle however, close to the walls the kick energy felt great, but up the sweet spot in the middle of the room it felt a bit lacking... not sure if this was room related or if the upright vents on the bottom configuration contributed to it. Considering the music styles, It wasn't really an issue, I don't think anybody other than me (worst self critic) would have noticed. Next time ill try double stacked vents in the middle, or possibly coupling all the subs on one wall. Considering the venue is only 20 feet wide, I think all 4 subs stacked with vents against the wall might actually work the best in such a narrow long room... should at least minimize cancellations. As mentioned I never felt the need to run it up to my limiting which was set at 44 volts. I certainly did have heat in the back of mind as the room got terribly hot and humid. They sounded rowdy and clean, never distressed and could not feel any discernible temperature on the cabinets. I did have to move a handful of people away from sitting up against the vents... it seemed people were really enjoying ride the skrams were putting out Def worth a listen regardless if your a fan or not. Simply from a production and sound design level its a treat for your ears.

So far I have only tried deploying my 4 in a center block 2 stacked on top of the other 2 with all mouths facing each other. It worked great, nice wide and even dispersion out front with impressive rejection behind them. I wish I would have measured dB in front vs behind but take my work for it they were much much quieter behind the stack, which is super helpful keeping the energy off the stage. Tomorrow I’ll be deploying them in a warehouse space, I plan to run them 4 side by side mouths on the ground, will update how it goes. I do want to experiment with left right stacks at some point, I have wondered how it would work 2 per side stacked in a tower with the vents coupled together.... meaning the vents would be coming out of the middle of the stack off the ground. I suspect they may not couple well with the ground plane like that... but it would make a convenient way to get my danleys up high without needing scaffolding. Might not be best for bass music but maybe work good for house and techno, who knows. Probably best just to build another pair to do 3 per side stacked on their sides haha.

Yeah man! Josh has given us an incredible gift, deepest bows to a true master in his craft.

Na, they are in our studio with the big Danleys. Had about a dozen friends over last night for a listening party with the new Tool Album. Holy shit! I am continually blown away with these Skram subs. Danny Carey's drums sounded so immense! kick drums right in the soul haha! In all seriousness we collectively agreed that none of us have ever heard kick drums sound this good out of a soundsystem. Made for a super memorable night, fuck going to concerts lol!

I figured why store them in the garage. https://imgur.com/gallery/0sg23w4

Its a bit of an awkward cabinet to fit handles for sure. I skipped the side handles on mine. Instead of the knife edge on the mouth I rounded that edge so the mouth could be a handle. 2 people can carry from the hatch handles and 2 from the mouth, makes for a comfortable 4 person carry, but 2 people can carry from the same placement. I did put casters on mine.

Really appreciating this thread, thanks for everyone's input. It seems every step of the way in this game there are so many new layers of learning that are required.

Yeah, Phone videos don't do it justice for sure. I've often thought about getting a good video camera with a quality external mic to get better video and sound from our shows, another item on the to do list.

Butterworth 24db filters at 80hz. Crest prolite 7.5 on the Danley sh-46 and powersoft k10 2 skrams per channel 2 ohms load

Ok... report after 3 full days of Skram use. Josh, thank you for this amazing design! I am simply blown away that this kind of performance can be had through diy designs, you are doing the music world a huge service with your knowledge and plans! I do feel I need to apologize if I created any doubt in my previous posts about the low frequency output of these things.... a stack of 4 center clustered with all the mouths centered to each other create just a crazy amount of output, they blur your vision and make your voice change haha! After the feedback from earlier discussions I added some parametric eq to flatten the the raw response (thanks SME) and they really seemed to respond well to that. They still retained the incredible kick and midbass impact while also having literal giggle inducing deep gobs of sub bass output. They are just so incredibly clean and powerful no matter what you put into them, just stunning really. Following some recommendations in another thread I had my limiters set as per the recommendations for 45 volts / 500 watts during bass music acts and lowered it to about 35 volts or 300 watts during our techno and psytrance acts. I never needed to run them up to these limits, they provided tons of output to easily keep up with my sh-46's. The combination of the skrams and danleys is just amazing, I couldn't be happier. I didn't take any videos myself as I was running my ass off all weekend, but a friend shared this iphone video with me. Ben Rama from Techgnosis records playing some super minimal atmospheric tech trance. If you listen with headphones you can get a sense of how powerful and clean the dynamics of the skrams are. Kick drums and bass feel immense, and clean clean clean. Video taken at about 150 feet from our visuals booth. And a pic of the set up https://i.imgur.com/IGh2BDp.jpg

Also, to echo what sme has been saying, I have been chatting with a guy on fb who uses a few skhorns in high stress club environments. He mentions that he gets noticeable heat build up in his cabinets when he is working them real hard, to a point where he cycles them out for periods of time to give them breaks. Perhaps what sme mentioned in regards to this style of cabinet might have some merit, a little extra safety buffer may not be a bad idea?

Good timing on this discussion, this is has been my focus over the last couple days. Starting to feel better about my Danley limiter settings with the help from the guys on the Danley FB page.... but now taking a harder look at my 21sw152's in the skrams. Taking cues from some points found in the bassboss post, the danley white papers and some comments made here, I have come up with the following numbers that I am considering to use with my 21sw152 4 ohm Skrams. I am running 2 drivers per channel at 2 ohms loads on a powersoft k10. I plan to use the peak limiting function on the k10 and set up my venu360 to operate in rms limiting mode. Using the recommendations listed by Paul for techno trance he's saying use 1/3 to 1/2 aes power (2000 watts) Using 1/3 to be conservative would give me about 666 watts and 51 volts. The Danley article suggests at least 100ms but up to 2-3 seconds for attack, which falls in line similar to what Paul is saying plus adding 2-4 seconds release. What do you guys think, seem like a reasonable place to start?

Man that sucks, sorry to hear about it Following this thread for sure

SME, thanks for the thoughtful information here. I should have some free time next week before we head off to our site to start production. Ill give your peq suggestion a try and let you know how it goes. When you say I may prefer having a substantial rise towards the bottom I am not sure if I gather what you mean? Are you suggesting a peak near 30 that falls the higher the frequency goes?

Ok thanks for the suggestions. Next time I have it up and running ill tame that peak at 200 a bit. I had the subs pretty close to my fence this time so perhaps that's what was happening around 85. Agreed fully on increasing the sub output. I kept it flat-ish to not completely drive my neighborhood nuts. In your opinion which is the better way to do this? Reading the manual for my venu360 dbx seems to suggest I should turn down the attenuators on my amp powering the Danleys until the desired top vs sub balance is achieved. I have read from other sources to just boost eq for the range controlling the subs.

I would say the Othorn sounds considerably different than direct radiators...in a good way! At least compared to the rcf 18's that I owned previous. I have seen it written more than a few times from Othorn users that there is a "sound" to them that people really enjoy, and I can completely agree with that. Perhaps it is due to the driver placement, I cant say for sure. I haven't come across anyone who figured the Othorn was well suited for playback up to 150, I crossed mine around 70 most times and let my tops do most of the kick region. I would have been entirely happy to keep the othorns to be honest. The release of the skram plans happened pretty much right when I was gearing up to build another pair of Othorns. After estimating costs, factoring wood and cnc time in Canadian dollars it cost me roughly 1500 dollars to build 2 othorns and about 1600 dollars to build 4 skrams. With both cabinets built I am happy with changing directions, I think the skrams fit my needs better and will cost less to build more if the time comes. I will likely load the othorns again when I have some spare cash, my living room needs a major stereo upgrade

Sorry Alexlel, I'm hoping my posts will help and not make decisions harder A couple things. I have pulled the drivers out of my Othorns to go in my second pair of Skrams so I am not doing a proper a/b between the two of them.... so my reflections are based on memory so take that how you will. Like SME said, perhaps a little eq might be all that's needed to add a little bump to the low freq of the skram.... I can't stress enough how similar they are, I'm talking a 9.7 vs a 10 rating at 30hz. With the Othorns and my old rcf tops I was adding a substantial eq bump to the rcf's kick range as the Othorns just didn't quite give me the visceral feel that I wanted, the skram's excite me in that range. I've never heard the es18bph but I strongly considered building them. I actually also own 6 martin audio b115 bins that I picked up in the spring, I'm almost done reconditioning them. I will eventually experiment using those in between the skrams and the danleys.

Yeah I suspect that its entirely possible that some eq tuning could change the character of the sound from the skram. The only eq applied so far is the recommended dsp settings that Danley provide for the sh46's. I didn't experiment with higher crossover points above 80 hz, its something that I want to do the next time I have them out. I will have the full system outdoors for 4-5 days aug 15 weekend so I will get lots of time to experiment some more. Here is the response of just the skram as I had it processed meeting the sh46 https://imgur.com/mTse4If If one was to try applying some individual eq just to the sub to improve it, what should I strive for? More of a flat response? what about the notch's at 85 and 150 ish? Should I try to even those out? Here is the response of both speakers together https://imgur.com/gallery/EMtk6eN Certainly open to suggestions if anybody has some!

Yeah..... Spent a good 6 hours or so yesterday in my back yard messing around..... Much love to my neighbors! Played around with a bunch of crossover variables, at the moment I am liking what 75hz-ish with a 24 db butterworth slope is sounding like. My impressions are super positive so far. The Danley and the skram seem to be a good match. The Skram has a really nice tight, clean and impactful sound. I hate using the word but it feels and sounds fast, never sounds muddy or distorted, nice separation between different sounds. I notice that I can feel punch in my body from sounds where I don't expect them to give me a felt impact.... if that makes any sense. The sound is so much cleaner than I am used to coming from front radiating subs, it makes me want to turn the ratio of sub to top up more than I am used to, yet it doesn't sound like the bass is overloading the tops. As for the Danleys, wow! If you haven't every heard them you need to track some down. I would describe the sound as mid forward, every little sound no matter how subtle is right there plain and pure and with unreal clarity and seperation. My buddy that was hanging out with me described it as being able to hear and feel the textures of each sound. Really breathtaking large stereo field, the sound doesn't feel directional from the horns at all, seems to just envelope you from everywhere. We played a bit of everything, metal, rock, folk and a bunch of our favorite electronic tracks, everything sounded amazing and exciting. The mix between the Danley and the Skram seems very fitting, the clean punchy attack of the skrams compliments the Danleys sound nicely. Of note. The skram's have a powerful 30hz grunt to them, very clean and hifi sounding..... but I think the Othorn sounds slightly more exciting with those really low frequencies. The Othorn has some sort of a unique harmonic growl to its 30hz output that is just really sexy. The Skram's are seriously almost there... they are just ever so slightly perhaps a little cleaner so it doesn't sound quite as rowdy as the Othorn does down low. On the other hand the skram up higher is noticeably more impactful and punchy which for most types of music I think is going to serve you better. If you are strictly a bass music lover the Othorn is a pretty amazing beast, If your musical tastes are wider I think the Skram is the way to go. Someone previously mentioned adding kick bins to their system.... you were me a year ago, that's what I figured I needed for the sound I was chasing. I would try the skram first with a nice beefy top cabinet, you may likely agree that kick bins are not needed, the skram's kick plenty. If your stuck on the kickbin idea then maybe the Othorn might be your ticket.

Pocket screws are great for bracing and any other piece where you need to secure the panel from moving while the glue drys. I wouldn’t use them for outer panels, it creates more finishing work where just gluing, brad nailing and clamps will work just as well. I use pl premium 3x, works great

The wife can blow dry her hair.

It’s not how I will normally deploy them... but figured they should hang and and get to know each other https://imgur.com/gallery/r5UkOor

Yup! Try this

Calgary Alberta Canada