Split off from http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/193934-visaton-b80.html 
The Visaton B200 are different from the Tangband 8" and Alpair 10/12. It's like comparing low power tube amp to high power solid state. There is a market for the "vintage sound signature" of the Visaton and no doubt their high Qts makes them usable in open baffle and sealed cabs while the Tangband 8" and Alpair 10/12 are more suitable in bass reflex cabs.Good joke
There are other FR drivers producing clean bass so what. What is the reason for buying a huge FR driver and putting that thing in a huge cabinet but you can't use it for the lower registers. The TangBand 8" drivers & Gradient & Alpair are all capable in the bass region and they do sound tight & fast. Even more reasons not to use the B200.
You are simply wrong in all cases!
1. I see no reason why some cannot compare a FR driver with another FR driver? Your analogy is illogical at the utmost.
2. What has the B200 to do with "vintage sound signature"??? They are sounding utterly different than Lowther or Saba Greencones or vintage Philips FR or vintage Pioneer drivers.
3. There are more OB TangBand 8" and Alpair projects than with the B200! The TB and the Alpairs are suitable for OB.
Only some examples:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/162529-alpair-12-open-baffle-designs.html
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/170079-new-alpair-7-small-ob-project.html
http://forums.audioreview.com/speakers/tang-band-open-baffles-33376.html
http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...cd=2&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de&source=www.google.de
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/167334-tang-band-w8-1808-open-baffle-impressions.html
http://diyaudioprojects.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3313
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=79668.0
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I don't see much "rights or wrongs" in these.You are simply wrong in all cases!
1. I see no reason why some cannot compare a FR driver with another FR driver? Your analogy is illogical in the utmost term.
2. What has the B200 to do with "vintage sound signature"??? They are sounding utterly different than Lowther or Saba Greencones or vintage Philips FR or vintage Pioneer drivers.
3. There are more OB TangBand 8" and Alpair projects than with the B200! The TB and the Alpairs are suitable for OB.
The hard facts are:
One, Lotus Elise is a sports car, Ferrari F430 is another sports car. Shall we compare these directly and say Lotus Elise is a really slow car? Well, you CAN compare apples to oranges, but why would I do so. Different people have different tastes, you may not like the B200s but are here for a reason. Not everyone's a dumbass.
Second, it depends on your definition of "vintage sound signature". There's some midrange shout to it and high frequency roll off and it is definitely not a modern driver signature, which is more focused on obtaining flat frequency response. Of course you may argue not all modern high end drivers are designed that way.
Third, you can mount any driver to OB, but with the high Qts, B200 is easier to work with in OB than other drivers like Lowther and the Tangband W8. It needs less low frequency compensation via DSP.
Again, it's easier to criticize everything than doing something constructive.
Just to support that B200 is OB friendly:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/41911-visaton-b200-dipole-experience.html (read Dave a.k.a. Planet 10's comment)
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-80864.html
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0606/visation_nobox_bb_loudspeaker.htm (The writer was honest enough to mention the B200 costs just $140, in contrary to TangBand W8's $300 or the insane price of Lowther drivers.)
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Regardless where it is made of, more important the QC of a particular product.
Most of the products having factories in Asian countries. Like Intel and AMD have their factory in Malaysia, but are they low built quality? We may have their factory in US, but can we still enjoy the cheap price?
Back to topic, I would agree that B200 are not the best driver, as it is a 96dB driver, I found it quite harsh especially at the 3k-6k region....
As for B80, just placed my order on this, waiting it to be shipped from Germany, but being a 85dB driver, I think it won't pierce my ears like B200 does....
Most of the products having factories in Asian countries. Like Intel and AMD have their factory in Malaysia, but are they low built quality? We may have their factory in US, but can we still enjoy the cheap price?
Back to topic, I would agree that B200 are not the best driver, as it is a 96dB driver, I found it quite harsh especially at the 3k-6k region....
As for B80, just placed my order on this, waiting it to be shipped from Germany, but being a 85dB driver, I think it won't pierce my ears like B200 does....
It sure would be nice if people that come on here making accusations would back them up with anything more than just defamatory words.
What evidence do you have that they are cheap?
Why do you say they are fake, and how can you support that claim? Documentation of facts is usually required.
Please prove their website is fake in any way. Otherwise please refrain from this conversation as those interested in finding out the TRUTH, not unsupported accusations, are following this thread to find what experiences others have had with this driver good or bad compared to other full range drivers.
T
Terry, never mind. If you check back Horntube's past posts, you'll know he's such an extreme gentleman. He even put me on his block list simply because I tried to tell him how people would have loved different sound signatures.
@HornTube
I think you are an ex-visaton worker. You were fired not long time ago.
I have listened to some very good Visaton drivers in the past and B200 is among them. And yes, comparing 96dB driver with 88db driver is stupid. Completly different drivers. Why not compare Alpair with 8"/80dB subwoofer? And than declare Alpair a piece of sheet because it does not have the same bass.
I think you are an ex-visaton worker. You were fired not long time ago.
I have listened to some very good Visaton drivers in the past and B200 is among them. And yes, comparing 96dB driver with 88db driver is stupid. Completly different drivers. Why not compare Alpair with 8"/80dB subwoofer? And than declare Alpair a piece of sheet because it does not have the same bass.
Of course... how in the world can I compare two 20cm fullrange drivers.
Stupid? Yes, one of us is really stupid!
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I know that Visaton employees spend quite some time on their forum helping customers. I really appreciate that. So enough bashing already, this is ridiculous. The consistency of their drivers is pretty good, Chinese made or not.
About this little driver, it seems a little expensive and to my taste the Qts is a little high. Otherwise it looks decently built with a nice and smooth FR; impedance also looks smooth, no signs of resonances! Power handling is good for such a small speaker.
Xmax could be slightly more, but it's pretty good compared to many 3" Tangbands. It also has a slightly larger surface area than most 3" drivers.
About this little driver, it seems a little expensive and to my taste the Qts is a little high. Otherwise it looks decently built with a nice and smooth FR; impedance also looks smooth, no signs of resonances! Power handling is good for such a small speaker.
Xmax could be slightly more, but it's pretty good compared to many 3" Tangbands. It also has a slightly larger surface area than most 3" drivers.
Factory specs are optimistic. Early pairs i've had measured just over 91, the last pair i had thru here were just under 89.
dave
Dave,
Did you look at Visaton's specs and curves?
Look at their website, see that the curve reaches 96dB at some 1500Hz (88dB at 200Hz), and when your German is not up-to-date, they speak of "midrange sound pressure level" of 96dB (mittlerer Schalldruckpegel).
You are a loudspeaker man, and you seem to have commercial interest in a competing product when I am right; may I suggest to check things before suggesting that the B200 does not deliver what Visaton claims?
Did you look at Visaton's specs and curves?
Look at their website, see that the curve reaches 96dB at some 1500Hz (88dB at 200Hz), and when your German is not up-to-date, they speak of "midrange sound pressure level" of 96dB (mittlerer Schalldruckpegel).
You are a loudspeaker man, and you seem to have commercial interest in a competing product when I am right; may I suggest to check things before suggesting that the B200 does not deliver what Visaton claims?
That's pure nonsense! "Mittlerer Schaldruckpegel" means "Average sound pressure level" and has NOTHING to do with the mids!
As always, you are right Dave. There were measurements in German forums stating only 88-89dB for the ASPL (mittlerer Schaldruckpegel) & some nasty HF drop off in the frequency range, many B200 stopping at 10kHz. So in reality Visaton fails to deliver the claimed specs again and again.
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I do have commercial interests, but the reason i can report measured data (and that is all i am doing) on the B200 is because they are one of the drivers i sell modifed. Once the rising FR is flattened out and DDR improved they are a very nice driver.
dave
From the Visaton curves some 90dB seems plausible when flattened out, which correlates with your findings.
It does not seem right to me when the B200 is presented as a driver not meeting its specifications; it's all in the curves.
The claim of 96dB can't be upheld by any means - end of discussion.
Heard the B200 (unmodified) against the W8-1772 & the Alpair 10. IMO the B200 looses badly in all categories I can think of (with transistor amp). With SET amp (300B monos) the B200 sounds even worse in comparison to the 2 mentioned drivers, the bass is clearly unlistanable, woody, coarse, blurred, bloated & slow. It is here where the W8-1772 shines brightly.
The B80 seems to be matching the claims, so it will maybe attract some users but not the SET lover like me.
Heard the B200 (unmodified) against the W8-1772 & the Alpair 10. IMO the B200 looses badly in all categories I can think of (with transistor amp). With SET amp (300B monos) the B200 sounds even worse in comparison to the 2 mentioned drivers, the bass is clearly unlistanable, woody, coarse, blurred, bloated & slow. It is here where the W8-1772 shines brightly.
The B80 seems to be matching the claims, so it will maybe attract some users but not the SET lover like me.
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Horn Tube,
You are right: mittlerer = average.
Look at the frequency curve of the B200, from their website.
There is clearly a rising response; when we take 90 dB (at 200 Hz) as a start even reaching 100dB.
Above 10 kHz the response drops, it is some 10 dB lower at 20 kHz.
So it does not seem too difficult to conclude that we deal with a 90 dB or so loudspeaker when flattened out, and I don't agree with the "false claims".
I have seen socalled full range units which looked worse.
You are right: mittlerer = average.
Look at the frequency curve of the B200, from their website.
There is clearly a rising response; when we take 90 dB (at 200 Hz) as a start even reaching 100dB.
Above 10 kHz the response drops, it is some 10 dB lower at 20 kHz.
So it does not seem too difficult to conclude that we deal with a 90 dB or so loudspeaker when flattened out, and I don't agree with the "false claims".
I have seen socalled full range units which looked worse.
Attachments
You are trying to manipulate the reality here or maybe you do not know what ASPL means. The B200 has NOT an ASPL of 96dB WITHOUT correction, with correction you land somewhere at 87dB in th ereal world. Even the manipulated Visaton freq.resp. does not add up to 96dB ASPL.
The claim of 96dB by Visaton is pure wrong, false, untrue like the photos of the non-existing manufacturing line on their website.
The claim of 96dB by Visaton is pure wrong, false, untrue like the photos of the non-existing manufacturing line on their website.
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