Any opinions on Neo-fone driver?

[Landroval]

Originally posted by dmason
..Mysterious lack of Xmax spec...

It's there in the text.

5.25"(130mm) to surround edge. Cast basket. Alloy cone. 50w power handling. Powerful neodymium magnet (self-shielding) with heat sink. 8 ohm impedance. 6.3mm Xmax.

[bcherry]

Appreciate the discussion and will be interested in your experiences. I was in the mountains of BC for a family emergency for 10 days so couldn't contribute to the discussion when the thread appeared.
FR graph: Yes 'painted'. I used 1/3 octave noise bands from a test test CD in a large room and plotted the graph by hand. I will do a better graph when I get Speaker Works fully functional but for now this gives a realistic idea. My Speaker Works setup is giving me free air flat response to 20K which is not true. The graph showing in-box response was done the same way, but measured in my small office 10x14', actually 13l volume, 6cm length port.
Xmax: +-6.3mm
5k 'dip': It's roughly where the cone changes mode from oscillation to resonance. Pinging the cone shows it to be very well damped and ringing controlled but slight loss of efficiency as it begins to resonate. We tried less damping but some edginess came in higher up.
Box volume: Smallest I've tried is 11L but the 13L with wide baffle gives more kick in the bass and better balance. Still experimenting with stuffing and honeycomb cabinet material.
Full-range question: I'm not calling it full-range as 20khz seems to be the imposed definition although most harmonics are done by 17k and what fr in the bass qualifies as full range? We made 8 versions over a period of a year and did push the bandwidth higher with some voicecoil/cone/magnet tricks but there were tradeoffs in midband smoothness, efficiency and impedance. Everything affects something else so what we have is the best balance we could get from this 5" driver. A priority for me is that it be tube friendly so the impedance curve and efficiency reflect that.
Cost: I wish it were cheaper but the magnet assembly and tooling is expensive as is the voice coil/cone/basket we choose. The price will only go up as production costs/materials increased dramatically in recent months.
Cheers
Brian

[waynzworld]

Hello Everybody I'm a newbie on this site ,But I got a couple of pair of the neo-fone drivers and while I was searching for a good cabinet for them,I decided to listen to a pair,so I put them in the ceiling ,I had a set of two way spk above the pool table,they came out ,a set of adaptors were made and the neo-fones refitted then the grilles put on.
I was amazed at the sound , so were other people some who had heard the old spk's and not known that I'd replaced them,they were looking for a new amp.
still playing with damping but very promising ,smooth midrange,bass is good,I want to try a couple of different tweeter's and peizo horns to see if I can hear any better high's.

[jstocker]

I have these neo fones in a folded pipe enclosure approx 72" tall and approx 10" deep and 7" wide. Ported at the top. They play off a Lecson AP1 amp into a room which is 12 foot wide and 24 foot long, 8'6" stud. I have Fostex super tweeters to brighten the top end.

They sound great. They literally fill the room with sound -- listeners new to them comment that they are standing in the middle of the music. Bass goes down to 30 hz (measured with a sound pressure gauge) and seems to me pretty balanced.

If they have a fault its that they are very laid back - wonderful for classical, vocals and jazz (you sound as though you're standing among Manhattan Transfer doing Tuxedo Junction) but lack bite for rock. Also horns seem to lack prominence.

Could this be the 5k change mentioned on this thread? If so, is there anything I can do about it? Extra or less stuffing maybe?


John Stocker