BobEllis said:
It's hard to say for sure, it depends on the goal. If the goal was to lower FS, the weights are probably heavy and drastically affect the energy storage in the midrange. If the goal was to lower energy storage, the weights are probably lighter, and strategically positioned. (possibly using laser interferometry or something) Those are two completely different issues the weights might address, and I couldn't really begin to guess what their purpose was without doing before and after tests.
John
It's obviously an overpriced driver recommanded for snobbish DIYers only.
You will note that Focal marketing service is honest... considering the response graph I am astonished that someone spent more than $1 in such driver.
If you want to save time and money it's better to stay out of the Focal Audiom range.
Lionel said:
It's obviously an overpriced driver recommanded for snobbish DIYers only.
You will note that Focal marketing service is honest... considering the response graph I am astonished that someone spent more than $1 in such driver.
If you want to save time and money it's better to stay out of the Focal Audiom range.
No, the obvious fact is that you dont know what your talking about. Have you heard them? There are people on this forum telling you that they love how the driver sounds and your here takling about how ugly the response graph is! Not acceptable. Some advice people: before formulating your opinions HEAR the driver in a setup. If you think that that driver is overprice @ $90 then what is your budget for drivers? $0.35? It truly is amazing to have such a beautiful sounding midrange that cheap.
Heres the data sheet:
http://www.zalytron.com/pictures/6WSpecifications.pdf
playa - the audiom 6wm is the one with the really ugly fr - would seem difficult to use and at $155 is not a very good value compared to the similarly priced Excel line. You used the one I like, which I think is a good value. But I will try some other drivers after seeing Zaphs measurements
Interesting that you didn't change the level of the mid in the swap. It would be an interesting experiment to swap the GR back in and pad it down by the 2.3 db difference in sensitivity. that would be a fair(er) comparison. Ideally you'd optimize the xo for each driver, which may mean significant changes. You may find that the 6W4254 sounds even better with a 7 dB notch to take care of that breakup peak at 4500.
I went to the 6W4254 from the 7C-ZLT (a zalytron custom with a doped paper cone.) Both use the T120TD5. The detail and clarity difference is amazing. the 7Cs still sound OK rocking out but are otherwise hard to listen to after the 6W (electra 906 semiclone). The 7Cs are going to be my son's xbox speakers. I took the 6Ws to my fiance's house while horse sitting for her, and cannot get them back.
I've got another set of 6W/Fountek JP-3s in the works.
Interesting that you didn't change the level of the mid in the swap. It would be an interesting experiment to swap the GR back in and pad it down by the 2.3 db difference in sensitivity. that would be a fair(er) comparison. Ideally you'd optimize the xo for each driver, which may mean significant changes. You may find that the 6W4254 sounds even better with a 7 dB notch to take care of that breakup peak at 4500.
I went to the 6W4254 from the 7C-ZLT (a zalytron custom with a doped paper cone.) Both use the T120TD5. The detail and clarity difference is amazing. the 7Cs still sound OK rocking out but are otherwise hard to listen to after the 6W (electra 906 semiclone). The 7Cs are going to be my son's xbox speakers. I took the 6Ws to my fiance's house while horse sitting for her, and cannot get them back.
I've got another set of 6W/Fountek JP-3s in the works.
Getting flamed
Well congratulations playazinc. You're the first. No one has ever said our M-130 woofer sucks and I think those that have used them in a properly implemented designs would have to disagree with you.
Having been a Focal distributor for years I'd have to disagree as well. To be honest I had a hard time justifying selling some of the the Focal line when I had other drivers that were as good and often better for a lot less money.
As a result of that plus other factors, I am no longer a dealer for the Focal line.
I does not bother me in the least though if you prefer the Focal woofer, but that does not mean our M-130 woofer sucks. In fact it is one of the most popular woofers on the DIY market in its price range and then some.
Furthermore these are not two woofers that can be substituted in and out with a change in the network. What did you use for a network with these by the way?
One is a 6" woofer the other a 5.25" woofer. Air space requirements are different, sensitivity is different, and the acoustic response curves are very different.
The Focal is also four times the price of our woofer.
Find a better woofer for $23.95 a piece and I'll buy it for you.
Funny thing is that years ago when the North American importer for Focal heard a couple of our commercial designs using our woofer, the GR-130 (predecessor to the M-130) and Focal tweeter combo together in a two way design at the CES, he was floored. He couldn't believe how good the woofer sounded and he wanted some of them to offer.
We shared some information with him about our source and he had a bunch of similar woofers made and sold them under the Axon name.
The North American importer for Focal didn't think or woofer sucked either.
Well congratulations playazinc. You're the first. No one has ever said our M-130 woofer sucks and I think those that have used them in a properly implemented designs would have to disagree with you.
Having been a Focal distributor for years I'd have to disagree as well. To be honest I had a hard time justifying selling some of the the Focal line when I had other drivers that were as good and often better for a lot less money.
As a result of that plus other factors, I am no longer a dealer for the Focal line.
I does not bother me in the least though if you prefer the Focal woofer, but that does not mean our M-130 woofer sucks. In fact it is one of the most popular woofers on the DIY market in its price range and then some.
Furthermore these are not two woofers that can be substituted in and out with a change in the network. What did you use for a network with these by the way?
One is a 6" woofer the other a 5.25" woofer. Air space requirements are different, sensitivity is different, and the acoustic response curves are very different.
The Focal is also four times the price of our woofer.
Find a better woofer for $23.95 a piece and I'll buy it for you.
Funny thing is that years ago when the North American importer for Focal heard a couple of our commercial designs using our woofer, the GR-130 (predecessor to the M-130) and Focal tweeter combo together in a two way design at the CES, he was floored. He couldn't believe how good the woofer sounded and he wanted some of them to offer.
We shared some information with him about our source and he had a bunch of similar woofers made and sold them under the Axon name.
The North American importer for Focal didn't think or woofer sucked either.
My point is that as a driver the m-130 is extremley low quality, plastic frame, cheap cone material, & in my given application it just sounded closed and was bringing the beautiful hiquphon tweeter down. Now with the focal unit, the sound is, as i said spacious and very integrated, i widened out my baffle with a little custom made coping saw and plopped it in. Sound was beautiful compared to M-130. The resaon your M-130 is so popular is that, as you know the internet is full of hype which you and some of your friends (dennis murphy, john kuttke) help spread to new and inexperienced diyers (GREAT buisness theory) who, much to your buissness enjoyment pick up the bait, send you their money and think that what they have is some "HI-FI AUDIO" althogh its just a cheap woofer with a high quality focal tweeter to help mask it. If you have somting that uses your m130 that sounds astounding, then let me know (i have the m-130 lying around anyway), im open minded and if it really does sound great with youreconomy mid then thats awesome (litteraly), kudos to you, but from my experience you woofer sucked compared to the focal, (scan speak, dont even get me started). The driver isnt the worst mid i have ever heard (for its price) but it IS pretty low on the list.
Re: Getting flamed
I use firefox, pop-up blockers, ad-removers for a reason.
I say "Not today thankyou!"
Cheap shot on the implementation too, not impressed.
Playazinc:
I'd ignore most of the folks here, they're all pretty rude in my book.
Its obvious that you are happy with the speakers, yet they feel the need to point out that it didn't work for them. Most folks do this to make themselves feel better, by tearing down someone elses choices.
Trust me, if you met them in person they'd be different again. The internet turns decent folks into kids sometimes.
Danny said:
I use firefox, pop-up blockers, ad-removers for a reason.
I say "Not today thankyou!"
Cheap shot on the implementation too, not impressed.
Playazinc:
I'd ignore most of the folks here, they're all pretty rude in my book.
Its obvious that you are happy with the speakers, yet they feel the need to point out that it didn't work for them. Most folks do this to make themselves feel better, by tearing down someone elses choices.
Trust me, if you met them in person they'd be different again. The internet turns decent folks into kids sometimes.
As someone that regularly designs custom drivers all the time, I'd have to disagree. It is of very high quality. The frame is a polymer that is very strong and does not transmit resonances into the front baffle that way a metal frame does. The cone material, while inexpensive is still commonly accepted to be one of the best sounding materials used. It's paper.
That's is quite an imagination you have there. Actually Dennis and John are very experienced designers. I did not ask them to choose our drivers or design speakers using our drivers. They selected them for their merits only. As did several other hi-end commercial loudspeaker companies that currently use our woofers in their product lines. The DIY community has loved that woofer, and glowing reviews are all over the Internet in various forums posted by our customers. You are the first to ever make such statements.
If you are so unhappy with them why don't you send them back to me and I'll give you a full refund.
I take it you didn't like the scan-speak?
Which model did you use BTW?
I've used a few scan drivers : 2904-7000, 15W-8530, 18W-8531 and 25W-8567, I'd recommend everyone to a certain extent,.
Just goes to show how people do prefer the sound of different drivers whether technically good or not - nothing wrong with that.
what does this mean? I can't see the relation toDanny's text which was quoted above it.
How is it a cheap shot? I thought it was common knowledge that you can't take a well designed 3way like the MBOW1, and start slapping in different drivers without making appropriate XO changes. Certainly you can't evaluate the quality of drivers by throwing them into an existing design without making any adjustments... you end up evaluating which driver fits the existing XO and enclosure size best as much as the quality of the drivers.
For example, If I throw a Seas Excel midrange into a design using a paper cone with a first order lowpass on it, it will sound harsh as all get out. Does that mean the driver is a POS? Or what if I replace the tweeter with another that is 6db more sensitive? The system will sound very unbalanced, but does that mean the new tweeter is a POS?
WTF? Sorry, but just because you've completed your first DIY project, with very nice woodworking and a sound that pleases you, doesn't mean you can make broad statements discrediting those who have contributed a great deal to the DIY community, AND insinuating some sort of cronyism between them. I know you're only 14, but you need to grow up a little IMO if you intend to keep posting here. FWIW, I completed my first DIY project when I was 15 as well, but I didnt assume that made me an instant expert on drivers and designs, and start insulting those who had forgotten more about speaker design then I ever knew.
ShinOBIWAN said:
IMO there is something wrong with plopping a new driver into a circuit in place of another, with no change to the crossover despite a 2dB difference in efficiency and who knows what difference in impedance. I'm not familiar with either driver, but using that scenario as a reason for bad-mouthing one of them is not fair play.
I'm anxous to hear Playazinc's reason for dissing Scan-Speak. I'm betting it's equally flawed. He's supposedly 14 years old. How many drivers can he have heard?
morbo said:
WTF? Sorry, but just because you've completed your first DIY project, with very nice woodworking and a sound that pleases you, doesn't mean you can make broad statements discrediting those who have contributed a great deal to the DIY community, AND insinuating some sort of cronyism between them. I know you're only 14, but you need to grow up a little IMO if you intend to keep posting here. FWIW, I completed my first DIY project when I was 15 as well, but I didnt assume that made me an instant expert on drivers and designs, and start insulting those who had forgotten more about speaker design then I ever knew.
the difference between me and you is that i can see the difference in sound between a Gr M130 and a Focal. Im not nearly saying that i know everything about drivers was i? i only said that in my implementation the driver sucked and it had chap construction. THATS ALL. These speakers were my first diy project, in reality ive been tagging along with my dad since i was 8. Ive also been watching the madisound forum since 10 and ive had experience with these guys- if you want the rest just e-mail me.
audiobomber said:
And I agree with you.
When you quoted me in that reply, I was voicing my concerns over opinions regarding drivers, if someone is happy with a design then why go to the trouble of pulling it down? In no way did I ever mention anything relating to XO over execution or extracting the best qualities from a driver - for some that isn't possible.
In fact I'd rather avoid passing any opinions on exact implimenation here.
That's what I was getting at, before the misdirection in your reply.
morbo said:
Don't worry its all related to personal issues regarding manufacturers posting on forums. SVS is a prime example. But I really don't have the energy to go into all this again, I fear it would be a losing battle.
Sorry but I hadn't actually realised that this project was just the MBOW1 with different drivers. In that case the XO hasn't been thoroughly explored.
The problem with this subjective opinion is that it is totally misguided. You can in no way compare drivers by dropping them willy-nilly into another design without redesigning the crossover. That would require measurements, modeling and then building and testing the design.
I'm not one of Danny's minions either. I'm a competitor that has nothing to gain by defending his driver.
I'm not one of Danny's minions either. I'm a competitor that has nothing to gain by defending his driver.
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