Tang Band W3-1878

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@cal Lol, you are really stoked on those spiral speakers. That thread got so long so fast. Anyway, I've never heard that speaker but I've repaired woofers and loudspeaker for several years and know a thing or two about materials; looking at the info on parts express gives me the suspicion that there is some real engineering going on here.
1. Bamboo fibers have a high average length; it's the third longest conventional fiber behind palm and hemp. The fibers in bamboo, depending on how they are processed, have a very course lignocellolose structure that would create more friction on the microscale giving it good damping properties. The combination of length and coefficient of friction of the fiber surface can yield relatively high strength, light materials.
2. The vented pole phase plug, to me, doesn't really look like the engineer's primary objective was controlling the phase. I'm sure it has some effect there in but it would have a major impact on the electrical part of the system. Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it possible that the plug extends the magnetic field? That wouldn't increase Bl but would give an underhung motor more xmax(given xmax << xlim). Also it seems to be ideally positioned and shaped to help cool the VC.

3. The frame looks optimized for low resonance.

4.The T/S parameters look great.

However... I would strongly consider RK1's comments a being fact. That phase plug appears to be great for dealing with power compression as well as providing more xmax, but looks terrible for phase.

-Matt
 
@cal Lol, you are really stoked on those spiral speakers. That thread got so long so fast. Anyway, I've never heard that speaker but I've repaired woofers and loudspeaker for several years and know a thing or two about materials; looking at the info on parts express gives me the suspicion that there is some real engineering going on here.
1. Bamboo fibers have a high average length; it's the third longest conventional fiber behind palm and hemp. The fibers in bamboo, depending on how they are processed, have a very course lignocellolose structure that would create more friction on the microscale giving it good damping properties. The combination of length and coefficient of friction of the fiber surface can yield relatively high strength, light materials.
2. The vented pole phase plug, to me, doesn't really look like the engineer's primary objective was controlling the phase. I'm sure it has some effect there in but it would have a major impact on the electrical part of the system. Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it possible that the plug extends the magnetic field? That wouldn't increase Bl but would give an underhung motor more xmax(given xmax << xlim). Also it seems to be ideally positioned and shaped to help cool the VC.

3. The frame looks optimized for low resonance.

4.The T/S parameters look great.

However... I would strongly consider RK1's comments a being fact. That phase plug appears to be great for dealing with power compression as well as providing more xmax, but looks terrible for phase.

-Matt

Thanks a lot MATT!!! Now that's the type of insights I were looking for :D

Thanks a lot for your time and shared expertise.

If the phase plug is annoying and useless, I could replace them with a conventional bullet phase plug, do you think this could make a positive difference ?

Thanks again for your time!

Arvin
 
Arvin,
I do appreciate your appreciation =). There are many, more experienced designers than I on this site, but I think there are a few areas here and there where I can hold my own in a discussion. Accurate electroacoustic analysis of phase response based on physical boundaries in the vicinity of a driver is not one of them.

There are two engineering challenges that this driver appears to address well that would merit its higher price: Resonance/Damping and Thermal Compression. The phase plug, which I would be inclined to call a pole piece heat sink, plays a role in both though it's effect would be primarily thermal. I would bet that the engineer has read several papers by Wolfgang Klippel. Thermal compression is an often under-addressed issues in transducer design and for a pro-audio guy like me, it's a critical concern. If I were considering this woofer for a project of mine I would be happy to trade phase linearity for good thermal handling as long as it didn't make crossover alignment too difficult.

Concerning a mod, I would have to see more pictures of the existing plug structure to make a recommendation, but I doubt I could make a dramatic improvement without many iterations if at all. Keep in mind though that I have little experience with phase plugs. What I do know comes from working with Funktion One speakers, reading a few lengthy threads on the topic, and (if I recall correctly)looking over brief sections in books by Beranek, Borwick, and Ballou.

I hope we hear back from RK1. I'm really curious to see those measurements.

-Matt
 
I have listened to this and the bigger 4" and 5" ones in BR enclosures.

They produce plenty of bass for the size and the FR is very benign.
The 4" fills my living-room with a nice full bass and "sparkly" treble.
The downside is beaming. A deep cone profile and a loooong stroke can not be rectified by a "spacy" looking phase-plug, unfortunately.

I'd say they are nice drivers if you can get them at a discount, otherwise too expensive.

Running FR: They can be a bit fiddly to set up (4 and 5 more than 3"). The baffle, placement and room can give very suboptimal results. If you have a dedicated listening-room they can be very good (especially the 3" + sub). the 4" and 5" will have a small-to-tiny sweetspot. If you have a normal living-room (like mine) you could find the staging and perspective "messy". It's like a lamp with a very comfortable light but the coverage is "spotty". It's not harsh-sounding, but rather towards sweet. It's just that the perspective is twitchy and not always consistent imaging suffers badly.

In a 3-way I believe the 4" (W4-1879) could really shine crossed to a tweeter pretty high. I already feel everything is "cleaning up" A LOT by crossing to a sub at 100Hz. This leads me to believe that the long-stroke bass on a deep cone doesn't play well with the HF (phase-wise) on the same diapragm. Also the phase-plug doesn't help dispersion any more than the W4-1337, W4-1320 or the W3-871 (which have conventional plugs) so I believe it's more a gimmick.

Conclusion:
Running FR: YES and NO! Cross to a Sub at 100-150 Hz as a FAST for optimal results (which is sort of a waste considering the huge X-max) or deal with less than optimal dispersion.
In a 2-3 way: consider the bigger siblings.

These are just my impressions. I have heard others had great success with the W3-1878 in TABAQ and Needles. Just know that the 4-5" brothers are impossibly beamy and that the 3 prefers to be offloaded in the bass.
 
id love to see the measures showing the plug to be the cause of poor phase. Distortion plots would help also.

All that has occurred here so far is a circular conversation based on a post by a guy who says "dont buy these drivers" without data to show why.

We could guess all year, lets just wait and see if the data emerges and proves the TB to be an audiophile train wreck...
 
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Well I heard the Bamboo 4 inch drivers for the first time at a hi-fi show last march. I thought they sounded really nice. I wonder how the neodymium vs the newer ceramic ferrite magnets measure side by side? I also wonder how they sound next ot each other? I have heard their suger cane 4 inch fullrange driver that comes in a kit only. It has a very balanced and natural sound. Very open and a little live sounding. I just can't see me dropping $500.00 for kit with 2 4 inch fullrange drivers no matter who makes them? C.R.
 
I have good experience with my Tangbands, and they sound clean to me. I even prefer them to my Alpair 6 gen1. The rise in their last octave isnt as audible as a graph would imply, but also fairly easy to deal with if felt necessary.

Are they good value?
No.

Would I buy again?
Yes.
 
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although the tangbands i have show a ~10db rise above 10khz, it is less audibly offensive than the broad peak centred around ~7khz that the A6 gen1 has. It requires a notch to be flat through 5k and to the upper limits of audibility. The W3 1285 does not. Since it also has no dome the radiation pattern is narrow above 10k in the TB, and a slight increase in toe in deals with the laser like last octave, and the rest of the lower HF is flat.

As far as value goes, the alpairs in general are very good value but the TBs are much easier to build for and listen to.

Also the lack of rear spider means you can literally rock the voice coil from one side of the magnetic gap to the other. As far as im concerned that makes them more susceptable to bell mode resonances. I havent tested to see if this occurs in actuality though.
 
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Hey Aarvin,
I did some research and I think I have a solution for you:
Tangband W4-1337SA Price $67

Granted it's a 4" but this is what Zaph had to say:

"This is a very wide bandwith driver that could work as a small woofer, a dedicated midrange or even a full range driver provided a filter is used to tame the top end. This driver's breakup node above 10kHz does not propagate as harmonic distortion lower in frequency, meaning you can cross it over as high as you want. Harmonic distortion is merely average, but the smoothness of the response curve is class leading - a fair trade to many. This is a titanium cone, but it exhibits very "non-metal" behavior due to the thin, light cone with exponential profile. Generally good value and consistency. It has a underhung voice coil that is vented under the spider, a cast frame and great build quality all around. Tested June 2007."
Usability:
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Build Quality:
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Consistency:
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Value:
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You can see his measured T/S here. Click on the w4-1337 and the t/s radio button.

-Matt
 
If neutral 3 incher is what you are looking for, are you stuck with Tang Band? If staying with TB, the w3-315e is quite nice for much less cost. Almost as flat with slight bump at very high end which you can't hear anyway.

Price is not a problem actually :)

Have you experienced both the w3-1878 and the w3-315e ??

By the way frequency graphs only tell 1/8 of the whole story.

The W3-1878 has great Qts, better construction materials, good BL etc
 
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