High End Single Drivers

[Aura]

Just wondering about commercial releases... what else is out there besides Voxativ, Rethm, etc?

[Dusty Chalk]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=single+driver+speakers

Also lots of kits.

Just giving you a hard time -- I actually found a couple of desktop units, which interests me.

Edited August 6, 2015 by Dusty Chalk

[acidbasement]

On the diy side of things, I've been thinking about a BIB design for my living room, because a ) easy build, b ) good in corners, c ) tall but small footprint.

Disadvantage might be that many designs are open at the top, which would allow my birds to deposit filth into them.

[luvdunhill]

Feastrex

[naamanf]

http://www.commonsenseaudio.com/

[skullguise]

For commercial/pre-made, there are some nice ones from Omega (cheaper price) and Teresonic (mid to high).  Lowther USA used to sell some decent pre-made bass reflex designs with options for the drivers, I used to own a pair that were pretty nice.  Audience The One (or multi-driver variations all with single drivers being driven full range) have been on my "I ought to try them out" radar, too.

A bunch of individual people/companies pop up as well.  Blumenstein, John Blue, etc.

I have been looking for cabinets like Occam Audio's FR-4 (discontinued, and they won't make any more).  I have a set of 3 CSS FR-125 drivers and would like to try that for desktop or very small space.

Then of course are the discontinued: Loth-X (maybe still around), Moth, Cain & Cain (unless someone kept it going after Terry's death), etc.

[Sherwood]

Moth used to make a speaker I think you would have liked...

[Aura]

Thanks for all the suggestions, fellas. I will never (and I repeat, NEVER) sell the Alerions but I'm curious if other implementations of things like widebanders can be that much better than what the DX55s already deliver. 

Voxativ Ampeggio looks really interesting. Anyone heard these before?

[Voltron]

Didn't Sammich come close to buying some big Voxativs?

[Aura]

@aardvark baguette Voxativ - tell us your thoughts...

Oh yeah.... tagging. I can dig this.

[Voltron]

The end of the story is that he recognized the supremacy of ATC's large self powered full range speakers, but he might have thoughts on those other ones anyway. :cool:

[Aura]

[Hopstretch]

The end of the story is that he recognized the supremacy of ATC's large self powered full range speakers, but he might have thoughts on those other ones anyway. :cool:

Objection! Leading the witness.

[Voltron]

Overruled, Hedonist!

[recstar24]

Bryan,

the drivers in your Algerians are dx65's, not 55's (I told you that). Completely different beast. And they are like $2000+ drivers. You are going to have to get really esoteric to beat those I'm afraid...

[Aura]

Ah thanks for the correction, Ryan! Again, no changes pending to either power amp or the speakers because I'm just that happy with where I ended up and realized that I prefer single driver to everything. All that being said I'm still curious about different flavors ;).

BTW you should come over sometime soon for tunes and booze.

[aardvark baguette]

@aardvark baguette Voxativ - tell us your thoughts...

Oh yeah.... tagging. I can dig this.

i never actually heard them, just lusted after them.  the single driver speakers i had definitely did some things no other speakers do.  just really quick.  but at the expense of lots of stuff.

in the end though, its hard to believe i'd be getting a better value with ampeggios over ATC.  Plus I don't want to commit to having no low end.  

i can imagine having two setups just to indulge my curiosity, but it's really quite a bit of money for paper drivers.  I have that kind of spidey sense tingle that tells me it may be a bit of snake oil hype.

 

my current ethos is to embrace physics and get fuckin' big speakers.  it feels more objective to me.

 

i can definitely say that it's likely i won't ever buy a different brand (or pair) of speakers, i don't really feel a wanting for anything.  

if i ever move into a fancy urban setting i may be forced to switch or just run them very low, but  who knows.

[swt61]

Was not aware of these ATC EL150's. Beautiful!

[RudeWolf]

A month or so ago two studio monitors came in our lab. The designers wanted to hear what we think about their speakers. Technically their monitors were pretty interesting - 5" fullrange drivers in a bass reflex bookshelf enclosure driven by a Hypex amp and DSP to equalize the speaker. Ultimately the guys behind the box told us that they were shooting for time coherency (with a ported box???).

We did our usual set of measurements and AFR wise the thing was pretty good if not spectacular. A slight room mode appeared around 150Hz, which was understandable. Problems started to appear once we moved to dispersion - things beamed like crazy. We threw in our Dynaudio BM5-III's for comparison due to both of them residing in a similar price bracket. The BM5 sounded pretty good even off-axis, you could make out much of high frequency info.The fullranger sounded like a boombox. It also suffered from limited SPL and one interesting phenomenon - Doppler effect. On high excursion when you have the cone doing large low frequency swings and smaller high frequency vibrations the higher frequencies change depending on which direction the cone is traveling. Think - ambulance or just a car coming towards you. When it's closing in the siren or engine sound has a higher pitch and once it passes you the pitch immediately becomes lower. Some coax drivers also suffer from this if a stationary tweeter waveguide isn't used. To measure Doppler effect we set up a two tone IMD measurement - 60Hz and 7KHz, so we can get enough cone travel and a high frequency which should get messed up. The BM5 passed the test with around 2% IMD, the fullranger didn't do too well - 27%.

All in all it was an interesting experience. I just never understood if the problems battled by our fullranger friends were actually real and worth the trade-offs.

Edited August 9, 2015 by RudeWolf

[Dusty Chalk]

You ever heard any of the ---6 (Solo6, Twin6) line of Focal monitors or even the SM9?  Just curious.

[recstar24]

active monitors FTMFW

[Grahame]

+1

[cetoole]

http://www.quad-hifi.co.uk/product-detail.php?pid=11

That is basically a single driver (parallel but separate panels exempted), right?

[Dusty Chalk]

They run them both full-range?  Judges say yes, qualifies!

[RudeWolf]

You ever heard any of the ---6 (Solo6, Twin6) line of Focal monitors or even the SM9?  Just curious.

My guys have measured a few studios with Focal monitors. They really liked what they heard, especially the tweeter. As far as studio monitors go, I really liked Genelec as well. They're pricy, but I'm a sucker for creative enclosure designs.