diyhifisupply Crescendo User manual
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIE
2 CRESCENDO DRIVER SPECIFICATIONS
2.1 CRESCENDO LF DRIVER
2.2 CRESCENDO HF DRIVER SPECIFICATIONS
2.3 DYNAFONE SU ASS DRIVER SPECIFICATIONS
3 CRESCENDO ENCLOSURE DESIGNS
3.1 CRESCENDO 2 WAY
3.2 CRESCENDO SU WOOFER
4 CRESCENDO CROSSOVER AND CONNECTIONS
4.1 CRESCENDO 2 WAY CROSSOVER
4.2 CRESCENDO SU WOOFER CONNECTIONS
5 CRESCENDO ASSEMBLY PICTORIAL
6 CRESCENDO CONNECTIONS AND SETUP
6.1 CRESCENDO SETUP
6.2 CRESCENDO CONNECTIONS
7 TECHNICAL DATA
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
1 Introduction and Overview
High Efficiency, friendly size, reasonable bandwidth and good
sound. SET friendly. Impossible dream?
Unfortunately horns with any bandwidth are the size of a
refrigerator. So…we have developed a horn ribbon based system
which achieves our goals. The wide band horn ribbon covers from
about 600hz to 23khz. The special carbon fiber reinforced paper
cone cast frame 8” Driver covers below that, using 1st order
(phase-coherent) crossovers.
The 600Hz Crossovers uses extreme
quality parts: all film caps, oil paper and
copper foil inductors, Silver Wire,
Kiwame Resistors etc.
The Systems sensitivity is an honest
98db/w (100db in room as specified by
many speaker manufacturers), nomi-
nally 8 ohms. The box is 30L and covers
from about 60hz to 23khz in room. The
Crescendo can be used with many
commercial Subwoofers to extend the
low frequency response.
The -6d coverage angle for the
Crescendo HF 50 degrees horizontal
and 30 degrees vertical. Such controlled dispersion over such a
wide frequency range ensures that even in acoustically difficult
rooms and the midrange and treble remain from excessive
reflections and room reverb.
There is an option for bass modules – making the Crescendo into
the the Crescendo Grande System. We wanted a cabinet that
could slip under the Crescendos and take the place of the stand.
For this a really beefy, quick bass driver was needed, which
happens to be exactly what the DynaFone is. The cabinet is about
50L and tuned to cover down to 25hz flat.
Also needed was lots of power to drive the bass modules. We use
some high quality plate Amplifiers which give us about 250w in a
small footprint integrated into
the woofer cabinet. This
bass system has no problem
keeping up with the Cres-
cendo horn ribbons while at
the same time giving up
really clean earthquake
tones in our 170m2 shop.
How does it sound? The
dynamics from this combo
are pretty scary at times.
Since the ribbon is horn
loaded, wideband and closed
on the back (doesn’t need
nor use the box) it gives
Electrostatic levels of trans-
parency and immediacy, and
the coherence of a full-range
driver.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
2 Crescendo Driver Specifications
2.1 Crescendo LF Driver
Diameter: 8"(210mm) to basket rim edge.
Cone Material: Aluminium Alloy
Impedance: 6Ohm
Power Handling: 50W continous
100W programme
Xmax: 3mm peak-peak
Re: 5.2 Ohm
Moving Mass: 19.5 gramm
Fs: 90Hz
Qts: 0.45
Spl (2.83V/1m): 98db
Rec. Enclosure: 30 Liter Net Volume
70 Hz Port Tuning
(110cm2 port crossection,
13cm port length)
* Frequency AND Impedance Response in recommended enclosure
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
2.2 Crescendo HF Driver Specifications
Dimensions: 220mm X 275mm
Waveguide Material: Aluminium Alloy
Diaphragm Material: Kapton
Ribbon Surface: 91cm2
Fs: 480Hz
Impedance: 6Ohm
Power Handling: 60W continous
120W programme
Spl (2.83V/1m): 102db
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
2.3 DynaFone Subbass Driver Specifications
Diameter: 10"(260mm) to basket rim edge.
Cone Material: Aluminium Alloy
Impedance: 8 Ohm
Power Handling: 200W continous
400W programme
Xmax: 14mm peak-peak
Re: 7.6 Ohm
Moving Mass: 75 gramm
Fs: 35Hz
Qts: 0.34
Spl (2.83V/1m): 87.5db
Rec. Enclosure: 33 Liter Net Volume
26 Hz Port Tuning
(110cm2 port crossection,
95cm port length)
* Frequency AND Impedance Response in recommended enclosure
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
3 Crescendo Enclosure Designs
3.1 Crescendo 2 ay
The Enclosure for the Crescendo System can be arranged quite
wide arrangements as long as the volume and tuning is preserved.
Here the design we use and recommend. It
uses a simple box with a large cross-section
port, to avoid compression and port noise.
The material should be void-free plywood,
18mm thick. Of course, Corian or Natural
stone or solid stave-glued hardwood, or
bamboo may also be used.
Glue with good filling properties is
recommended for any of the wood materials,
Grip-Fill (the professional version of liquid
nails) or similar work well, as can resin based
glues. Stone requires special glues.
The ack Panel is kept removable to allow
the low frequency drivers to be mounted from
behind. Unless you wish to use an external
enclosure for your crossover building it on the
removable back panel allows easy access for
modification.
We suggest to first try the box without any
stuffing or damping material. All the
resonance modes caused by the enclosure
dimensions are high enough in frequency to
not appear within the operating bandwidth of
the low frequency driver, mainly due to the
low crossover point.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
3.2 Crescendo Subwoofer
The Crescendo Subwoofer uses an enclosure that is a “cross”
between a traditional vented box and a transmission line, called a
mass-loaded transmission line.
The enclosure material comes down to similar choices as the
Crescendo 2-way speaker. Make sure all seams etc. are well
sealed.
Again, you can choose other
mechanical arrangements as long
as you keep the volume and port
cross-section as well as port length.
The Plate Amplifier is mounted into
the side of the enclosure in a
suitable cutout.
The Amplifier includes the
necessary sealing strips, to make
sure the mounting is air-tight and the
correct mounting screws.
The Dynafone driver is directly
connected to the output leads fitted
to the Amplifier.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
4 Crescendo Crossover and connections
4.1 Crescendo 2 Way Crossover
The Crossover is as shown below. One possible way to assemble
this crossover is shown on the right hand side.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
4.2 Crescendo Su woofer connections
The Amplifier build into the Crescendo subwoofer is required to
boost the signal a good deal (around 14d or five times the
voltage, or 25 times the power) to to allow the subwoofer to match
the Crescendo 2 Way.
We generally do not recommend to use line-level feeds or active
crossovers, instead simply connect the speaker level feed via an
adapter cable as shown to the RCA Input (L or R does not matter).
The final crossover and level settings for the Subwoofer depend at
least to a degree on room size and personal preference. As a
starting point, set as shown below:
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
5 Crescendo Assem ly Pictorial
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
6 Crescendo connections and setup
6.1 Crescendo Setup
The system produces large amounts of SPL and very high levels
of low frequency sounds. Placing the speaker rigidly coupled to the
floor not only aids the sound quality, but is essentially to keep the
speakers from “wandering about”. We recommend spikes or
cones. Equally, it is essential to create an interface between
Subwoofer and 2-Way that is rigid or at least prevents 2-Ways
from moving (e.g. small patches of blue-tack).
6.2 Crescendo Connections
As designed the Crescendo 2-Way has binding pots for bi-wiring.
If you do not use i-Wiring speaker cables you need to link both
the negative and positive binding posts.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
You also need to connect the inputs of the subwoofer amplifier, as
shown in the example below.
diyhifisupply®
The Crescendo (Grande) Speaker System
7 Technical Data
Woofer: One – 10 inch (26 cm) Aluminum Cone
Woofer Amp: One – 250W Amplifier with electronic
crossover
Midrange: One – 8 inch (21 cm) Carbon Fiber / Paper
Tweeter: One – 14in2 (91cm2) magnetic planar driver
Sensitivity: 98 d @ 2.83V @ one meter @ 1 kHz
Impedance: 8 ohms, 5 ohms minimum @ 300 Hz
Frequency Resp.: +/-3 d 26 Hz - 20kHz
Min. rec. power: 2 watts per channel
Overall Dimensions:Height – 110 cm w/o spikes
Width – 25.6 cm
Depth – 35.6 cm
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