Upcoming Vifa drivers

[DcibeL]

I'm actually quite surprised to see no posts about this yet. From Zaphaud's blog, a bunch of photos of absolutely beautiful new Vifa drivers:

IMAGE: Vifa Woofer Front
IMAGE: Vifa Woofer Rear
IMAGE: Vifa Woofer Side
IMAGE: Vifa textile dome small
IMAGE: Vifa 3" woofer
IMAGE: Vifa 4" woofer
IMAGE: Vifa 5" woofer
IMAGE: Vifa 6" woofer
IMAGE: Vifa 10" woofer
IMAGE: Vifa 12" woofer

The rear and side images look to be of the 4" driver. They show a lot of features not seen in most drivers currently available:

-Frame slopes away from the driver (look at the side view image)
-surround has added lumps near the screw holes, perhaps to dampen the effects of the screws themselves
-looks to be foam on top of the motor, in between the motor and spider
-neodymium magnet, large diameter voice coil
-voice coil visibility leads me to believe of large excursion capabilities
-spider is split into 4 sections
-voice coil leads woven into spider
-mean looking frame

Your comments?

[planet10]

Looks like some illuminator influence.

The 3" has a concave surround, i wonder why the rest go back to a convex? I was hopeful when i saw the 3"

dave

[DcibeL]

yes some illumitator influence around the motor, frame similar to ScanSpeak revelators, and cone looks very similar to the Seas reed cone ER18RNX.

The 3" likely has capabilities to operate well at higher frequencies than the rest of the drivers, so the surround type was chosen accordingly. Who knows the decisions of Vifa, but I am assuming that the decision of type of surround came to some compromise between driver performance and cost of production.

[tinitus]

Interesting arrangement with the rubber(?) on chassis outside the surround
The late mr Duelund experimentet with such smoothing transistion between chassis and surround
Looks smooth

Nice to see a 12" too...looks like "slised" spider http://www.zaphaudio.com/temp/Vifa_12_woofer.jpg

[Moondog55]

Would the gold flecks in the cone material be Kevlar??
No 8 inch driver? that will be missed by a lot of people but it is good to see a 12inch back in the line-up

[DcibeL]

Yes I was a bit disappointed to not see an 8" driver. I very much enjoy my 8" Peerless HDS woofers.

Market demands I suppose.

[Andy G]

Don't SB Acoustics also skip the 8" driver ? as you say, maybe a "demand" issue.

[DcibeL]

Originally posted by Andy G
Don't SB Acoustics also skip the 8" driver ? as you say, maybe a "demand" issue.

SB Acoustics has an 8"

The market for home theatre seems to be a fair bit larger than the market for HIFI audio for music reproduction. With that in mind, we look at 5.1 and 7.1 systems consisting of many small speakers and a subwoofer for bass.

Originally posted by planet10
Looks like some illuminator influence.

The 3" has a concave surround, i wonder why the rest go back to a convex? I was hopeful when i saw the 3"

dave

I've been thinking about this some more, and looking at the photos, and I think Vifa has taken a lot of consideration to the diffraction at the edge of the cone. Look at the photo of the 5" driver. Even though it has a convex surround, the frame around it curves upwards toward the surround, and almost lines up with the top of the surround, not the base of the surround like most drivers.
Something to consider anyway.

[David Gatti]

Yes good to see a new 12", although I would have preferred a large voicecoil/shallow-cone design.
Why don't Scanspeak and Seas produce a high end 12"?

[Andy G]

Originally posted by DcibeL

SB Acoustics has an 8"

Thanks. For some reason, WES Components don't list it in their catalog, so I assumed......