a new waveguide to try: 18Sound XT1464

Posted on by

There aren’t many constant directivity waveguides for 1.4″ compression drivers, but one I had not been aware of until Paul Spencer and SvenR on SNA forums brought it to my attention was the 18sound Xt1464.

After reading up on it I found it online for sale (inc shipping) not too expensive at www.thomann.de. It did take ages to show up though, with very detailed notifications of the first and last 2 days of shipping, and nothing for the 3 weeks inbetween.

I’ve decided to read up on doing the crossover “properly” so also have ordered a copy of “Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms” by Floyd Toole, as I have the speakers in a working state already I can take my time and learn some stuff on the way.

One odd thing with the XT1464 waveguides – despite the claims of super hiogh tech the tolerance on the holes for bolting them to the waveguides seemed a bit off, I ended up having to file them a bit to get them to fit. Other than that they appear very well made and strong plastic though.

Now I’m building up quite a collection of 1.4″ throat entry bolt on waveguides:

Even with a “quick and dirty” adaption of the previous MiniDSP used with the Pyle PH916 they sounded not bad at all, and doing a “from scratch” config, choosing a 600hz crossover point I got them sounding very nice with fairly rudimentary measurements and MiniDSP / Room EQ Wizard autoconfig.

2 thoughts on “a new waveguide to try: 18Sound XT1464”

  1. Hello ZOG, I am trying to cut the right ellipse for my XT1464 in this moment. Did you leave your horn free to air or was it built in an enclosure ? I plan to use it with 2 15″ drivers, Xover above 1000 Hz, with a CD from B&C DE82TN. How is the balance with the pyle woofer ?
    how high does the horn go and what CD do you use ? thanks and good luck Marcello

    • Hi,

      I have just left the waveguide sitting on the top of the woofer box free to air, I haven’t tried to mount it – although I think my wife would like me to.
      Right now I’m crossing over very low, about 550Hz – which works OK though I have tried settings from 600-700Hz as well. The crossover settings are still to be perfected, that is an ongoing task I will return to.
      Even though I’m crossing over lower than the specs for the waveguide it still sounds OK, but I’m at domestic stereo volumes not PA volumes. Also I just like the sound of the compression driver more than the cone speaker, so the lower the crossover the better for me.

      I am using an single Australian made 15″ woofer, Lorantz C390X-B1-8 on each side. The Pyle reference is one of the other waveguides I tried, not a woofer.
      The CD I’m using is a FaitalPro HF144 – all of this is mentioned in other posts though I guess it’s all spread out over a lot of blog posts 🙂

Comments are closed.