Even a 10 inch struggles with bass.
I go for 12 inch as a minimum and prefer a full range 15 inch.
Hey Dave! Interesting. I've not heard any ringing, but I'm sure we've all got different sensitivities to these things.
The Pluvia 11's have around 30% more cone area (109cm^2 vs 79cm^2), so I guess that shouldn't shock me. How low do they go?
Have you heard a pair of EAD E100HD Mk II? I love my EJ Jordan stuff (you may have noticed), but I confess they may be the Eikona's betters.
2" driver "fullrange"? I don't think so. 3" driver "fullrange"? Drivers this size will not rattle the windows but they can reproduce the lowest notes on a string bass. The Alpair 5.2 in the FH-lite are reported to be amazing. The larger fullrange drivers tend to need tweeter support. 4" drivers seem to be the best all around size.
Not that anyone gives a flying donut, but for me the “best” is several things:
- moving target; while the basic mechanical model on which most moving coil transducers we’re talking about hasn’t changed much in the past almost 90yrs( depending on where you define the genesis), it’d probably be shortsighted to say there haven’t been advancement in materials and manufacturing precision/consistency that allow for demonstrably “better performance” at lower costs than ever before - at all price ranges. For example, I started my journey with “full-range” drivers approx 20(?) yrs ago with recycled Foster OEM drivers that were the predecessor of the FE103/ Radio Shack 40-1197. Numerous variants of that particular model have been in production and very widespread use for at least 40yrs. As “magical” as the midrange of a well functioning pair of vintage Alnico magnet Fosters may be, to compare them to say an Alpair5.2 would be very lopsided.
-“best” at what exactly? Exhibiting the fewest sins of commission while being affordable and doing so in an enclosure that is easy to build and move are high on my personal priority list.
Full- range for me has always meant that with its operating limits the driver can be fed full bandwidth signal without almost immediate destruction- some do a much better job of surviving such duty cycles and sounding overall musical enough to be enjoyable.
I’ve been living with a range of models of Mark Audio drivers for the past several years, and regardless whatever their shortcomings that can be measured or described by others, I can certainly get on with my listening /watching enjoyment without shame or guilt.
I hope soon to have the spare time to give the Eikonas a good listen in Dave’s system. The monolith boxes weren’t the hardest of builds, but they are an awkward load to carry up the stairs.
- moving target; while the basic mechanical model on which most moving coil transducers we’re talking about hasn’t changed much in the past almost 90yrs( depending on where you define the genesis), it’d probably be shortsighted to say there haven’t been advancement in materials and manufacturing precision/consistency that allow for demonstrably “better performance” at lower costs than ever before - at all price ranges. For example, I started my journey with “full-range” drivers approx 20(?) yrs ago with recycled Foster OEM drivers that were the predecessor of the FE103/ Radio Shack 40-1197. Numerous variants of that particular model have been in production and very widespread use for at least 40yrs. As “magical” as the midrange of a well functioning pair of vintage Alnico magnet Fosters may be, to compare them to say an Alpair5.2 would be very lopsided.
-“best” at what exactly? Exhibiting the fewest sins of commission while being affordable and doing so in an enclosure that is easy to build and move are high on my personal priority list.
Full- range for me has always meant that with its operating limits the driver can be fed full bandwidth signal without almost immediate destruction- some do a much better job of surviving such duty cycles and sounding overall musical enough to be enjoyable.
I’ve been living with a range of models of Mark Audio drivers for the past several years, and regardless whatever their shortcomings that can be measured or described by others, I can certainly get on with my listening /watching enjoyment without shame or guilt.
I hope soon to have the spare time to give the Eikonas a good listen in Dave’s system. The monolith boxes weren’t the hardest of builds, but they are an awkward load to carry up the stairs.
What is best depends on whose ears are listening. One of the best bang for buck would be the Foxtex FE166en 6.5" in a rear horn loaded cabinet. But then the OP's question is best with no regard to price. I would probably look at some of Japanese ones, forget which brands but with google should not be hard to find the ones generally considered as superior. Nelson Pass in some of his articles points to the ones he says are outstanding but expect to spend money in the thousands for a pair. Our store is now selling a full range speaker with a lot of promise you may want to check out.
I recently finished building a full range front loaded horn speaker utilising a 6.5 inch 15 watt Jensen guitar speaker/driver. It has a circular mouth just over 4ft wide. With careful use of 7 band EQ, it sounds very good indeed - so long as I keep the volume to a level where it doesn't stress the cone too much. The bass, during less complex musical passages is nice, but not entirely visceral.
And you say that it takes a minimum of a 12 inch full range driver to achieve a proper presentation of bass sounds, as in precision bass with flat wounds, jazz bass with round wounds, plucked and bowed double bass and cello?
Because if what you say is truly so, then I may well end up this winter building a front loaded horn maybe 7ft long, with an elliptical mouth 7ft wide. It would have to be elliptical to get it through a 36inch wide door - duly learnt about that one!
I have asked about using MarkAudio drivers, but the consensus is they are better suited for back loaded, not front loaded horns. Could someone confirm and clarify this for me.
tapestryofsound
I now remember which Japanese speaker maker I was referring to as favorite of Nelson Pass, Lowther. Lowther Fullrange DIY speaker kits. The world's best sound at prices anyone can afford.
In Frugel-Horn Lite A5.2 does something like 70 Hz (F10) anechoic. In room it could appear to be lower… but yes not FR, missing the bottom 1.5-2 octaves. Compare to the FR FE208e∑ which is missing the top 2 octaves (and some of the bottom of the spectrum, even when in a hige horn such as Vulcan).
Even the best FRs (and most multiways) are not truly FR 20-20k. The best are near 9.5 octaves.
So the term FR (in any context) is a misnomer, but it has a more generalized meaning.
dave
When I was a your pup I decided to build own mobile disco.
So I built a Maplin 200 watt amp and bought 4 Fane 12-50WRMS speakers.
I put all the speakers in one cabinet.
Then when I tried to put it in the car and it wouldn't fit !
So I sawed it down the middle and put sides on the two halves.
Not only fit in the car but much more manageable.
This is a situation where the horn dominates, i expect the Eikona in FHXL will go as low if loaded in FHXL.
With drivers similar to the current gen A10s that were used in the design of the FHXL one should expect extention into the mid-30s.
No i haven’t. I have only seen the factory response graphs which have HF response that looks like a triangle wave, and an inference based on Ted taking the Jordan name back from them
My experience with Jordan came 1st with the Jordan-Watts module, which had some real strengths but best described as colourful. Then JX150 which i rather liked, but soft at the top end, 3 sets of JX92s all which had HF issues which made them hard to listen too, and now Eikona which are very good, but we have yet to establish a heirarcy among the drivers/boxes we have on hand to compare it with.
The Eikona is very good, overall a bit more precise than the Alpair 10PeN, but not near as capable when it comes to 3D imagining. Something that could well change when i EnABL them. The big test will come when we can compare to Alpair 10.3eN (in Pensils, another ML-TL) coming up in about a month at the 15th annual VI diyFEST.
It should be noted that EikonaEN would be on the order of 2x the cost of the EnABLed A10, and we still have A10 MAOP, the new as yet unavalable AxMS drivers and the (as of now mythical) MAOP version of those.
And if we venture into the over $1k/pr drivers, who knows, few can afford to play with those.
How any of these rank in an ultimate shoot-out all depends on the compromises a listener can best live with.
dave
A5.2 is a nominal 3” (A5 does mean a 5cm cone size).
In FH-Lite the bass is quite amazing but its extension relies on human perception filling in the lowest note when it actually just hears the 1st harmonics of that low note. It does a really good job of that, but when one listens to a track that can actually reproduce those low notes, one does hear what is missing.
4” is a sweet spot. But the best 5” (ie A10s, Eikona) are getting awfully close in the mids and top where the smaller driver typically has the edge.Well into the area where losses in the front end can obscure the edge the smaller drivers have.
dave
(my emphasis)
Indeed a WAW can bring a lot cto the table with few downsides (if one ignores the cost factor).
dave
If you are using EQ to kill the lift at the bottom of the range, they should be fine.
dave
Design and some critical parts made in the UK. The rest + assembly in Denmark.
Similarily, one could asign much UK-ness to the Mark Audios, designed by a UKer (trained in driver design by Ted Jordan), with design help and parts from Japan & Taiwan, assembled in China by a specialized team.
dave
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