[makkan00]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

BTW, I would change out my tweeters and crossovers to the Morels in a heartbeat!

Got you.

Now if I go down the morel route and give the option that I can buy

1- HYBRID OVATION II 4"
2- DOTECH OVATION 4"

I do not see much difference in their specifications except that dotech has higher xover point (3200Hz 6dB/octave).

Both of them are brand new but Dotech are $160 cheaper than Hybrid.

Which should I go for?

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by rcurley55

It's a lot of propaganda IMO, but Scott is one of only guys who will show the goods and how he prepares an install log:

http://nobodybeatshybrid.net/scott-buwalda/

Thanks for the link.

Originally Posted by rcurley55

First I wouldn't put a 3" where a 4" would fit. If you are convinced you want the L3, start at 200 and see how it reacts. I just don't know why you would want to use an ultra wideband driver in this application.

I've discarded the idea now. So I'd go for Morels.

Originally Posted by rcurley55

FWIW, I have the 4" HO IIs in my E60 - they have been great off of a JL HD600/4 and off of an Arc 125.4 mini. The car got (what I would consider to be) stupid loud with the JL amps and a 200 Hz HP.

Are you feeding them 150W@ 4 ohms each?

I have earthquakes and they are meaningful only upto 150Hz. So buying a driver which should play low to 150Hz is essential for me.

[rcurley55]

I had them hooked up to an amplifier that could produce 150W @ 4 ohm. It was highly unlikely that they ever actually saw that kind of power. Right now they are on an Arc KS125.4 mini (that amp makes closer to 75W).

I run them with the Jenherts, so I can't comment on the earthquakes.

[kaigoss69]

The Morels should be able to play at 150Hz, perhaps even a bit lower, depending on the crossover slope and the listening volume.

[makkan00]

Thanks curley and kaigoss.

Now hybrid VS dotech? which one?

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by makkan00

Now hybrid VS dotech? which one?

To answer my own question, here is a quick comparison of these

[kaigoss69]

I believe specs are almost meaningless at this point. It comes down to how they sound. Nothing more, nothing less!

[ctuna]

I thought the dotechs have been replaced by virtus.
Can you even get dotechs anymore?
See the Morel site.

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

I believe specs are almost meaningless at this point. It comes down to how they sound. Nothing more, nothing less!

They may not kaigoss to you....
But to me, I wanted to check which one was better.
Difference is insignificant, but it does still matter (at least on papers )

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by ctuna

I thought the dotechs have been replaced by virtus.
Can you even get dotechs anymore?
See the Morel site.

Dotechs can still be bought BNIB. Here in UK difference b/w Dotech and HO is approx $200.

[makkan00]

Originally Posted by kaigoss69

I personally would not go any higher than 3500 Hz (My Rainbow crossovers are 3400 Hz), and 5000 is definitely way too high for my liking.

Kaigoss, I am going to try your recommendations.
At the moment my mid crossovers are set LP @ 6Khz.

I was going through L3 manual and I came across something interesting. As we know that HAT team has won mutliple awards and their recommended setting are;


your desired crossover frequency for the Legatia midrange and/or midbass should be one that allows the midbass or midrange to play as much of the audible spectrum of the spoken voice to ensure point-source delivery of the tones and pinpoint image definition. In many cases, this would be around 200-250 Hz for high pass, and around 6,000 Hz, or higher, for low pass. In all cases, the chosen crossover frequencies should be evaluated for sonic character, while balancing distortion and power compression at high amplitude levels.


Have your tried your mids at higher LP frequencies?

[Hopeful]

Dotechs can still be bought BNIB

From the US I guess? How much are Morels (Dotech or HO or Virtus or whatever's replaced HO)? I've previously seen a quote of £250 on here (when comparing with £200 for Focal KRS100's) but I've never seen them that cheap.

[kaigoss69]

Originally Posted by makkan00

Kaigoss, I am going to try your recommendations.
At the moment my mid crossovers are set LP @ 6Khz.

I was going through L3 manual and I came across something interesting. As we know that HAT team has won mutliple awars and their recommended setting are;


your desired crossover frequency for the Legatia midrange and/or midbass should be one that allows the midbass or midrange to play as much of the audible spectrum of the spoken voice to ensure point-source delivery of the tones and pinpoint image definition. In many cases, this would be around 200-250 Hz for high pass, and around 6,000 Hz, or higher, for low pass. In all cases, the chosen crossover frequencies should be evaluated for sonic character, while balancing distortion and power compression at high amplitude levels.

I hear all that and it would work great if the drivers were more on-axis, but they are not. The driver's side mid is more than 60 degrees off-axis. This means the higher the frequencies, the more narrow the dispersion cone becomes. Below you will see the frequency response of the Dynaudio Esotar2 430 midrange (I was not able to find one for the Legatia with off-axis data). It is arguably one of the best midranges money can buy. Look at the 60-degree off-axis response at above 5kHz. It would require some very heavy EQ just to correct the 5kHz range. Now I'm not saying it can't be done (and I have done it) but you will need a LOT of EQ processing just to make those corrections, and I am a firm believer in the theory that the less corrections the MS-8 needs to make, the more "headroom" it has available to do its "magic". One other consideration is reflections and it ties in with what I just said... if you are heavily boosting to compensate for cone beaming, then the reflections off glass and other surfaces in the car will become louder and more of a distraction, and it will require more adjustments by the processor (if possible). I hope you see where I'm going with this. If the mids were less than 30 degrees off-axis, you could probably cross them above 10kHz and they would sound beautiful, but at 60 degrees IMO you're just doing more harm than good if you raise the LPF outside of the speaker's cone beaming range.

So much for the theory. Having said all that I did run the L3SE's full range at one time and it did sound very good. However, I believe it sounds better now with the tweeters added.

[mulletboy2]

Hi guys,

This is my first post here, so I hope I don't tread on any toes. I used to be the Hybrid Audio UK distributor and am currently the competition team captain, so I have a reasonable level of experience of L3s, L3v2 and L3SE.

I saw some posts about available speaker diameter and I'm not sure what constraints the car has. The L3 family are all 3.7", and there are likely to be more significant factors for choosing between a 3.7 and a 4" driver than diameter alone. If it's more like 4.5" hole, then things get a little more clear cut. The L4 and L4SE are 4.65" diameter, so they might be an option with a little work?

With regard to the 60 degree off-axis comment, it should be noted that drivers with phase plugs act as if they were half the diameter at higher frequencies - what this means is that beaming doesn't occur until a much higher frequency.

So whilst the original L3 (sans phase plug) would struggle to reach much above 5KHz at 60 degrees off axis, both the replacement L3v2 and the L3SE can play cleanly to 10KHz at 60 degrees off-axis. There is no problem at all in this configuration and there wouldn't need to be any significant processing at all, except to compensate for environment/any install-related issues.

As for the specific application in this instance, unfortunately I'm not particularly familiar with the cars in question, so can't really give any platform-specific advice. What I can do is say that in my experience, higher crossover points for mids are preferable to lower ones. Our ears are most sensitive to 500Hz through to 3-4KHz (the range of the human voice, and general "danger" or "food" sounds - what they've evolved to hear). Crossovers in this range are likely to be much more audible than crossovers above or below. Any slight mismatch in phase and you'll hear the crossovers.

HAT's first speaker was the L3 and it was designed to play this high even at 60 degrees off-axis (I suspect even the diameter comes down to the maximum diameter mid that can be crossed over at at least 5KHz), specifically so that users can have a "point source" driver. The entire range was then designed to fit in with this principle, and it's one that's served competitors well all over the world.

It's not the only way to go, but it can definitely work.

Even the L6/L6v2 with their phase plugs are capable of playing to 5KHz at 60 degrees off-axis - same reason

Having heard the difference, I wouldn't want to cross over any midrange in the lower frequency ranges anymore. Unfortunately many manufacturers need a low mid to tweeter crossover in their 2-way systems because they choose cone materials/surrounds which exhibit harsher breakup modes than the HAT paper cones do, so they simply sound awful played higher - and then they share the speakers and/or crossover components on their 3-way systems, so even then they sometimes don't get around it. As a consequence, a low-playing tweeter is required, and the crossover moves in to the worst range for it.

I didn't intend to get this technical, but I love car audio, specifically in-car, and love to see people make informed decisions. If anyone has any HAT specific questions at any point, please feel free to message me. As I say, I'm not longer distributor/dealer, so there's no financial motivation.

Cheers

Mark