FANE SPEAKERS

Hints & Tips for Building Professional Speakers

Choice of timber

We recommend multi-layer 18mm/ 7/10” Birch plywood as the best material to withstand the rigours of intensive ‘life on the road’ or likely exposure to damp conditions. Alternatively, 18mm/ 7/10”  Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) offers good acoustic properties with the advantage of being less expensive (although heavier ), and may be used where the cabinet will be permanently installed in a dry environment. Both materials accept any type of paint finish extremely well.

Construction technique

All joints should be totally airtight, liberally glued with PVA adhesive and screwed at 200mm (8”) centres with 4.2mm or 4.8mm (No.8 or No.10) x 50 mm (2”) self-tapping screws. The bracing panels are designed to ensure rigidity of construction, making the cabinet as free as possible from panel resonances caused by the internal forces generated by the loudspeaker drive unit and resulting in unwanted vibration and colouration of the sound. Again, these joints should be glued and screwed using the same method.

Porting

The length and area of the ports as specified in the drawing should be strictly adhered to.

Acoustic insulation

To aid panel damping and prevent internal reflections and standing waves, all internal panels of the cabinet ( with the exception of the front baffle ) should be lagged with acoustically absorptive material. We recommend the use of acoustic foam wadding. This should be glued, stapled or tacked to the inside of the cabinet, taking care to ensure that port tubes are not obstructed.

Crossover network

This cabinet is designed as a passive unit, and adequate external signal processing arrangements should be made to filter out high-frequency signals.

Internal wiring

Wiring should be kept away from moving loudspeaker parts and fastened to internal panelling to avoid buzzing. We encourage the use of colour coded wiring to identify polarity (red for +ve and black for -ve), and recommend carrying out a phase check before first using the cabinet. This is achieved by applying the positive terminal of a battery to the positive cabinet input which should result in the speakercone moving forwards if in phase (or by using a dedicated polarity checker).

Drive unit fixing

The drive unit should be front mounted to the baffle using T-nuts and fixing bolts, and is supplied with a length of self adhesive foam sealing strip which should be fitted around the front edge of the speaker cut-outs to guarantee airtight conditions.

Loudspeaker protection

The exposed front of all speaker drive units is of course vulnerable to damage, necessitating some means of protection which must be robust but acoustically transparent. Cloth/foam type grilles are feasible for fixed cabinets, but a metal mesh grille is certainly the preferred and superior option (Pro Audio Stash can manufacture these on request). It is recommended that a foam gasket material is used between the wooden cabinet and the metal grille to prevent any unwanted resonances.

Cabinet hardware

Handles, terminal panels, protective corners, pole mounting accessories etc. are all available through Pro Audio Stash.

Cabinet finishing

Generally cabinets are either painted or covered in carpet or vinyl material. If a carpet material is chosen it is recommended that a very dense tight pile type is used and that metal corner protectors are fitted. Corner  protectors will have a defined radius that the edges of the cabinet should be finished to.

There are various types of handles and terminal panels available and again details of these have been omitted. It is recommended that these be purchased and cutouts be made in an appropriate position in the panels before final build. Be aware that handles and terminals are not necessarily airtight, which will be detrimental to performance but can be easily remedied using a silicone sealant or polyurethane mastic to seal all joints.

Warning!

There are safety regulations regarding the installation of loudspeaker systems. This document is intended as a guide to construct a suitable acoustic enclosure for our components. Pro Audio Stash can hold no responsibility for the structural integrity of the finished system. The system will be no stronger than the material it is made from and the joinery techniques used to assemble it. Suspending the finished system will require additional hanging hardware.

The Fane Range

The FANE Professional Series

The Professional Series represents the flagship range of FANE professional components and the XB models have long been the benchmark of the industry for superlative sub bass performance.

The loudspeakers incorporate many unique features within their design to reduce the temperature in the critical voice coil region, allied with heat dissipation devices to maintain outstanding performance levels and give many years of long term reliability. Instantaneous and long term power compression are amongst the lowest available and ensure that the Colossus is the world’s most enduring sub bass loudspeaker.

The FANE Sovereign Series

The Sovereign Series drivers are designed for a broad spectrum of sound reinforcement situations. Midrange, full range, bass-mid and dedicated bass applications are comprehensively covered.

Featuring heavy duty FANE pressed steel chassis providing rugged durability and consistent performance in even the most demanding of environments, glass fibre voice coils capable of delivering outstanding power handling capabilities and carefully selected cone materials for smooth tonal characteristics and extended bass response, the Sovereign represents an exciting and versatile answer to the demands of a varied and demanding range of audio applications.

The FANE Sovereign Pro Series

Designed for the professional user needing to combine the outstanding durability and performance associated with touring systems with exceptional value, the new FANE Sovereign Pro represents a no compromise approach to achieving both objectives from the robust cast aluminium frames to the glass fibre voice coils which effortlessly deliver high power handling at the same time as demonstrating considerable technical finesse, providing a range of high power bass units of rare distinction.

Manufactured with unrivalled engineering accuracy, the FANE Sovereign Pro provides the performance you demand with the musicality that you require.