Design	2-way (Apr 24, 2013)
High Frequency	Selenium D220Ti OMF 1" Titanium Compression Driver
Horn	Pyle PH715 Asymmetric horn
Low Frequency	Peerless 830869 8" Mid-Woofer
Crossover	Synergy (Bi-Amp) at 1,500Hz (18dB/oct)

Overview

With the Nightingale-V, the mid-woofer has been replaced with another 8", this time a Peerless 830869. The horn section remains the same, a Pyle PH715 Asymmetric Horn coupled to a Selenium D220Ti 1" Compression Driver.

Potential buyers should be aware that the mounting holes of the PH715 do not comform to standard 3" hole to hole spacing. New holes must be drilled to mount a "bolt-on" driver.

Peerless 830869

The Peerless 830869 is another one of those drivers whose Thiele & Small Parameters do not correlate with the manufacturers'. Even with my own measurements, I had difficulties trying to make this Peerless "Sing".

My initial design was a 2-way with a JBL2425 coupled to a JBL2342 Bi-Radial Horn (Fig 1). The Peerless was loaded in a Bass Reflex box of 35 Liters. On paper, it should be outstanding. However, in reality, it was massively disappointing. For some reason, the dynamics were missing. The music simply wasn't engaging.

Against conventional wisdom, I re-loaded the 830869 with a smaller 20 Liters Bass Reflex box. At this volume, the Peerless suddenly came alive. So much for computer simulation. Surprisingly, this Peerless is more musical than the Dayton RS180s and the HiVi M8a.

 

Fig 1 - Peerless 830869 with JBL2342

Hybrid Nightingale-V

Fig 2 below shows the responses of the 830869 (Black trace) and the D220Ti/PH715 (Red trace). Disregard the region below 500Hz. The series of peaks and dips are due to room interaction.

Both drivers have passive components for contouring. The Synergy crossover was set at 1,500Hz. From the plots, we can see that acoustically, the drivers do in fact cross at 1,500Hz. This is one design where the crossover sums cleanly at 0dB.

Fig 3 are the In-Room Responses of the Nightingale-V with the compression driver in Reversed Phase (Blue) and In-Phase (Orange). Note the deep notch when it's wrongly connected.

Fig 2 - Hybrid Crossover of Peerless 830869 and D220Ti/PH715

 

Fig 3 - Hybrid Nightingale-V Frequency Response

Hybrid Contouring Network

Fig 4 - Hybrid Nightingale-V Passive Contouring

 

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