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A very elegant solution, and solid execution, instant sub. People somehow think these should do it all, rather than just a driver with frequency limitations. The 600hz 24db sealed makes me wish I had a DSP, and not a 20$ P.E. sale amp. Someone below mentioned AMT tweeters. I just installed a set of the car audio version, in my truck (does have DSP, active 4 way) They sound amazing, and have a dispersion that could nicely complement the way DMLs "fill" space. The pro4 even has a removable back, if you wanted to run dipole(!) Or sealed. Playing down to 800hz, all the options for frequency and rolloff. The idea for the exciter tweeter tho! Got me wanting to go look in my box of future projects, and see if I have any minis in there... Nicely done sir, look forward to where it goes from here! Edit: found some 13mm coins in the box, time to stick one to I dunno... Maybe a CD to start.

If you present these graphs, please show the noise floor as well. Since all measurements are only valid if the speaker noise is X db more than the noise floor. Thank you.

czcams.com/video/haKoMOiOqhod/video.htmlifferent material

So my cast wax board suspicions were correct. The volume and clarity are leaps and bounds better than any polystyrene panel I’ve made so far. If you can’t find them online(if you do find them lmk where please) go to your local farmers market and see if they have any produce boxes they will part ways with. Thats all mine is. I cut the bottom of the box out. Used a bar of paraffin wax to fill in the now exposed the edge, along with any divots or weird spots along the surface, used a lighter to melt away the spot where I was going to mount the exciter put on several coats of super glue it out and let it dry and then put VHB tape on that and then attached the exciter, but I imagine you can probably just use epoxy

Thanks for this! Have you considered reversing the polarity of the subwoofer or chasing the phase at the crossover point?

Interesting! I can’t remember where, It might have been the forums or the tectonic engineers spoke of acoustic centres on dml. Although DML is immune to many traditional ills, it has been suggested that the radiating area reduces with rising frequency, also the initial impulse in the signal helps spacial localisation and imaging. If that is the case for critical listening you may want to get the bmr as close the panel exciters as possible. Any difference maybe more noticeable if your crossover slopes are shallow. The space between sources for interference at 10k is effectively nothing, In traditional speakers you would expect an interference pattern, but in DML it most likely manifests as a loss of imaging or just perceiving separateness.

good progress . . the slap echo in that room seems horrendous . .

Great video, the bass or low mids seem a bit absent. It might be the little Hotone mini amp is a bit shrill. Not that your speaker sounds shrill and no ice picky highs, its treble biased but sounds smooth so that's a great start. You could try running your Fender SS amp through the test speaker if the amp has a phono jack socket to plugin the speaker, just plug in your new flat panel instead. The panel seems very small to reproduce lower frequencies. I wonder if a bigger 500 x 1200 mm bass panel with a bass exciter hung behind the existing one might fill in the sound? You'd need a simple crossover too. There is a flat guitar speaker recently gone on sale from Eminent (not Eminence, different company), it's not much larger than yours.

I... tentatively feel like we're working backwards. I thought the whole point of DMLs was that they could handle everything from 125hz up to 16khz or so in a natural fashion. The whole point of MY research on audio in general is to have as few driver types with as wide, accurate, and natural of a response range as possible. Trying to tune and aim 4+ driver types is kinda a non-starter to me. I'd rather focus on broadening usage and off-axis performance so there's less to faff about with with physical setup. (I'm also focusing on car audio, and all that stuff (packaging in general, I mean) is by default more difficult in a car, hence my aversion to it.)

Garbage, even Bose is better...

Good video as always Ben, have you thought about adding wave guides to your tweeters ?, may help the tweeters dispersion even more.

So I think I randomly stumbled upon what could be IN THEORY the fucking best material for dml panels ever… absurdly light and shockingly rigid. I plan on making one over the weekend and will try to remember to report back. Anyways look into wax dipped/coated corrugated fiber board. Not like pizza box cardboard but the double walled stuff. I haven’t looked for it online yet but fingers crossed someone has it incase it sounds good.. which I’m thinking it’s going to.

Hi, from what I have seen of that tweeter it is not so good in the frequency range that you want to cover. Also it's open back and he is having his backwaves directly reflected on the plexy right behind. I don't think that is an ideal situation. As DML is essentially a dipolar I would instead go toward a better dipole planar driver on top of the frame to be consistent. (EDIT: FYI I am using a Radian LT2 with Waveguide but I had to cut the back myself)

Have you considered covering your frame in flexible material then gluing the panels to the material. The material would act as a suspension mechanism, which would flex with the vibration. Potentially allow the mounting of multiple panels to the same material? Might look a lot more attractive also. Just a thought, although too be fair I've never built one of these. Just an observation after watching a few videos :)

first. I'm going to build those DML speakers if it's the last thing I do before I die

Esse cara faz experimentos científicos sonoros e nesse vídeo ele testou um monte de configuração, materiais, frequências, várias configurações justamente de som de ressonadores assim. czcams.com/video/CKIye4RZ-5k/video.htmlsi=tzcsZOHg3fQOmorB

czcams.com/video/CKIye4RZ-5k/video.htmlsi=tzcsZOHg3fQOmorB

Youve got th best unfo on dml speakers I could find on youtube. I am loving your videos. I pesonally built a dml speaker foe my living room, and used a 2x4 pannel of foam progect board painted to match th walls. Whwn i first tested it, i hung it from the wall, and was dissapointed by thw sound. So, I moved it to the corner of the ceiling and the entryway, lile youve got on the top right hand side of your house in this video. Once their the speakers sounded great, but lacked bass(as expected, I suplemented with an external sub). Anyway point beig i would loke to see some expeiements with differnt shapes and sizes for an enclosed rear box for your speakers

Has anyone ever tried to make a slightly concave face of the panels? Something to replicate a cone for a traditional type speaker. It probably doesn't have to be very deep, but a gradual change in face depth across the panel.

Informative and practical! Good job!

What program did you use to add delay on the panels?

The shirt got my like!

Have you tried a composite panel? Plastic core with very thin aluminum on both sides.

I like the acrylic panel better. I just finished my first acrylic experiment. Still tweaking because I used really thin pieces of acrylic. It's actually vibrating too much. Im only using 4 watt 4ohm exciters, 2 on each panel to get 8 ohns. I didn't see anyone using acrylic until today. I'm completely new to this. It's very satisfying . Ever tweak is an improvement so far😊.

Sounds like there is some cancellations going on like comb filtering. Also I hear some static noise just when you stood up? This is my DML>czcams.com/video/00spcs18MeU/video.html

Beautiful build! Around 10:27 you mention the BMR & DML acting as dipole, which you commented on in the video. DML panels operate as bipole in that front/back radiation is in phase. There is a reduction in output to the side of DMLs because of a lack of output from the edges of the panels and not not due to cancelation. A BMR acting as DML in high frequencies experiences this, but as frequency lowers and pistonic action takes over, those frequecies are dipole. So, a BMR has a mechanical "crossover", if you will, where low and high frequencies use different mechanics to produce their sound. It's not too different from a driver with a whizzer cone. Keep the videos coming!

You do know you can get rew to autogenerate the filters for you and import direct to minidsp.

Dome tweeters have great dispersion. They're a dome, after all.

Dude, your volume is all over the place in this video, mainly so low not audible... at least for me.

Are the next tweeters gonna be Air Motion Transformers?

I wonder how it would work out using 2 of those on each panel. Maybe go with one on each top corner and you could put some sort of cover that goes across to make it look more uniform.

noice

noice

Plywood as a resonant material is not the best idea. Example the cheapest guitars are plywood.

This is definitely not how you wire them together. Good idea but you cant run power thru a speaker. You have the positive from the first to the negative on the second then the negative on the second to the positive on the third. Then with 4 its even weirder with the ground not connected to anything but another speaker. Not sure how or why you did it this way but pretty sure you got this completely wrong and almost positive most of them wernt even working for your test.

Ben, Initially, I would like to commend you for your content and I particularly liked this build and the final result. I have a question for you if you are still monitoring this thread and inclined to respond. My Audio system consists of Denon 4311 9 channel audio visual receiver, Front speakers are JBL ND310ii (2 x 10 inch drivers, 4 inch Mid and a 1 inch titanium tweeter) Front surround and rear surrounds JBL TLX140 (single 10 inch woofer, 4 inch midrange and 1 inch titanium) 2 by JBL 10 inch subwoofers You may notice no centre speaker and 2 speaker channel not utilised as yet. My question is, I am thinking of using a DML panel speaker for a centre speaker now, and possibly 2 DML panel speakers to complete the 9.2 system in the near future. The plan is to use 4 x 40 watt Dayton Audio exciters and a JBL tweeter for the centre and possibly the same configuration for the front high speakers in the future. Could you possible advise whether the DML system is practical or even good for the centre and front high speakers. MY audio room is dedicated to music and is 4 x 6 meters with all the walls totally covered in 2 inch foam and that is also covered by a carpet. The only furniture in the room is a cabinet 2 meters long and 600 high for the audio components and a single arm chair centrally located for maximum surround sound. Very much Man Cave stuff. I am an Aged Pensioner and Australian expat living in Indonesia where the adivce is impossible to get. For that reason, any advice would be very much appreciated. Regards Tony Chilcott

Just keep having fun with it, please bye some cloths man.

Has anyone tried balsa wood? It is light and stiff. I am thinking of building a set for fun.

why so much noise?

Unfortunately, I can see your measurements are not valid from upper midrange to higher frequencies, please investigate.

Great video!!

I recently discovered DML panels through Tech Ingredients channel because I had an idea I want to play around with... I was originally considering turning a couple of cheap used drum kits off Gumtree (using the skins of both bass drums and different size toms & snares as drivers) into a tall pair of DIY planar floorstanding speakers by using adhesive sheets of aluminium to cut the trace and stick to the back of the skin and mount the magnet array on the inside, close enough to the skin to vibrate it. Then use an external active crossover to distribute the different frequency ranges to each of the different width drum skin drivers (the smaller the drum, the higher the frequency). But this would've probably taken a %@$%-ton of power and multiple amps to work, I don't know. Then by pure algorithmic chance I was recommended videos on DML panels using these exciters. I'd seen the bass shaker type transducers used before in gaming sim-rig setups. They're generally cheap, low wattage and pretty good for output so I thought "Why not try these instead!?". What do you think? I realise it probably wouldn't compete with proper floorstanding speakers like Magnepans and a sub or 2, but could it potentially be tuned to sound good enough for rock and metal music? I don't listen all that critically. Especially to music like classical, quiet vocal-focused music or jazz. I'm no audiophile and I have mild tinnitus anyway.

Good job! :) By adding a high-Q bandpass peak to the bass at 20-something Hz, you basically converted the subs into ported subs for all acoustical intents and purposes. You get all the group delay and phase shift just as you would by adding a port, you just use wattage and excursion to do it in stead of a Helmholz resonoance :D (the added distortion comes for free) It would be really interesting to see the separate bass/panel responses too, not just the combined response. I very much suspect you have a phase issue between 2-300 Hz where the bass still will play pretty strong with a 2nd order electric xo. The peak-and-trough response here might either be phase mismatching, or it might be already in the panel response? I'd go to a third order for the bass slope, and then play around with the delay between 1-4 ms to get maximum integration addition. Remember that ALL phase misalignments require an increase in driver power for both adjacent drivers, increasing distortion for both. On a totally different matter, when I played around with DML's I used the common foamcore boards that seemingly everyone uses. One very interesting (IMO) that I tried was to add 45mm rockwool to the entire backside of the panel inside the frames. This converted the polar response from almost perfect dipole to something more like a semi-cardioid. Not surpising when you think about what happens when you dampen the rear wave of a dipole. That was the best I ever managed to make that panel sound in-room.

👍

Great job!

Love the work, and I have to say those look and sound amazing. I like the DIY groove. The kind of minimalistic design is very, very nice. You have inspired me. sir! I am going to start working on my system, I want to try all DML speakers for my Sony Dolby Atmos. Why not!?

Good stuff! You've made some significant progress here, I'm real curious now to see which way you go for room treatment. I documented my entire room treatment ordeal from beginning to end with measurements every step of the way proving state of change. Check it out if ya like: czcams.com/video/2PTnZ7BU-X8/video.html I'm really not a fan of the common multi panel approach, and I don't love the large panels that I built either, but they are very effective. So I'm really curious to see what you come up with. Cheers 🍻

I thought after looking at the use of multi exciters on other sites that a second exciter should be placed in the centre? Yet you went to the opposite side of the first one towards the edge, is there a reason for that, that the others have not seen?

I dig that whole eastern vibe you got going on that setup.