"Best" Woofer 50Hz - 300Hz & Hi eff, maybe 15" ??

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Back to Bear's original suggestion: the TAD 1201. I have 3 pairs of them NIB for $400 a pair plus shipping if someone wants to do what he is suggesting. Great drivers. (Midbass) I'm keeping one pair to use with an AE woofer whenever I can figure out what I want to do for a cabinet.

Since re-reading his post, I ran my 1201 in a 1.7cf box at a crossover point of 60hz, and it did very nicely. I crossed it over at 800 to a horn. I was not playing it really loud though. I do not have eq, so the TAD was losing some grunt down low, and I had to dial down my horns a bit to match.
 
For Mid Base, I Use a pair of McCauley 6224 drivers configured MTM with c/o settings of HPF: 60-80Hz and LPF:600-800Hz. This works well with any of the TAD compression drivers. You can change the basket to 12", 15" and 18" as well without replacing the motor, but do not like what this does to the polar response in c/o region with the HF driver nor the artifacts you get by operating the driver appreciably outside its piston range.

Regards,
WHG

McCauley.com : Products: Components > 6224: Overview
 

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Hi WHG,

The McCauleys 6224 are nice, but according to Boxplot it takes 6W to get a single up to 100dB. Obviously MTM should help there.

My vote is for the already mentioned JBL D130 (I wish I had never sold mine), may be a little weak in the peak power department.

Regards,
 
Texas vs. Delaware

Hi WHG,

The McCauleys 6224 are nice, but according to Boxplot it takes 6W to get a single up to 100dB. Obviously MTM should help there.

My vote is for the already mentioned JBL D130 (I wish I had never sold mine), may be a little weak in the peak power department.

Regards,

D130 is a 15", antique driver that is no longer manufactured by JBL. Its parameters are: [No]=6.7%, [Fs]=40 Hz, [Qts]= 0.25

vs.

D131, also antique, but smaller, has an [No]=8.4%, [FS]=50 Hz, [Qts]=0.18

By your choice, you are trading more beaming and breakup modes for the efficiency gained by a larger [Sd].

My recommendation remains, to trade in the opposite direction and to use smaller drivers that are currently manufactured. In this venue, the big displacement demands have already been met by the sub-woofers.

Some additional candidates follow:

JBL 2012H 10" Driver, [No]=3.1%, [Fs]=60 Hz, [Qts]=0.21, [Sens]=100 dB SPL
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/components/2012h.pdf

JBL 2020H 12" Driver, [No]=5.32%, [Fs]=60 Hz, [Qts]=0.24, [Sens]=103 dB SPL
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/components/2020h.pdf

Regards,

WHG
 
Hi, not didn't drop out - have some major family health issues that I have had to deal with, still doing so. So, the sound thing is somewhat on the back burner now...

The best sounding woofer I ever played with was a Vieta (spelling?) with a white cotton fiber cone. Wonderful sounding cone - not efficient though. The reason I think that it was so good to listen to was that the cone itself was very lossy. This means that there was NOT excessive higher harmonic output from the cone itself. Many of these lighter older cones have high efficiency, but also have extra harmonic content - even when rolled off, due to modes being excited mechanically (imo).

The JBLs tend to measure ok, a little low on sensitivity, but sound kinda dead. I tried a pair of TAD 1601s in Isobaric some years ago, they were very good in that config, as the box size came down. Wish perhaps I did not sell the drivers... that might be a top candidate now. Dunno. Hard to know.

May consider a line source too for that pesky 50/60 to 300Hz range. Dunno.

In my view it is all in the way that the driver sounds when you listen to it not the specs. Unless I go triamped it is big deal to get the sensitivity up to ~100dB.

Yin/yang on that, eh?

Oddly enough one of the best drivers in terms of reproducing an acoustic stand up jazz bass was heard at Marty King's place in a small room with his TQWTs and a Fostex driver. Upper bass to die for. But that solution won't fly for me in this app - and it is big and it is tall, and it doesn't have much SPL ability... but the sound was great in that range.

I am looking for a "holy grail" driver on this, fellas... guess I will eventually have to just try a whole lot of stuff, then go back and decide which one was actually the best retrospectively... ah well...

So many drivers, so little time, and not enough money!! :D

_-_- bear
 
Hello Bear,

You want the best speaker like 416A or 416-8A with better eff and lower FS and better accelaration factor FA with a possibility to ajust the parameter of the speaker to the room and the cabinet. Is possible but the price is very expensive.

I have this speaker in ONKEN 360 box. It's top !

EMSPEAKER B15EX with separate excitation. Web side : www.emspeaker.com
 
Hmmm... still rainin' still dreamin'...

Altec does not "do it" for me, EBA if that is what you are suggesting... if you are suggesting field coil to "adjust the parameter of the speaker" I suppose there is some merit to field coil, but the main thought I have is not that but the sound, and for that there is no single parameter that translates exactly...

_-_-bear
 
Beyma 15P80ND
Seconded! Really a killer driver wrt detail and punch, and it CAN go low, as low as you want (within it's Xmax).

And please, all, forget about voltage (and real valued Ohms) based sensivity ratings of drivers, this is complete BS (except you're strictly going the passive route). Why? It disfavours strong (low Qes, high BL²/Re) drivers for no valid reason! A driver NEVER can be too strong -- really about time to blow up that urban myth (exception : ported boxes, then you must make the port slightly resistive). This strength causes a high local feedback in the driver and this is what makes a driver articulate well. The apparent LF roll-off with constant voltage drive is simple EQ'd to target, that's it. With Class-D this also yields the very best true efficiency one could ever get from any amp+driver combo.
 

ra7

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KSTR,

Can you articulate how exactly you do the low-end EQ for low-Q drivers? Just the procedure. I have one that needs to be EQed. Also, could you expand on why ported boxes must have resistive ports for such drivers and how this can be done (simply add stuffing to the port?).

Thanks!
 
Ra7,

look here : http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full...making-baffle-less-speaker-5.html#post2651089
(notably, the first paper in the given links)

How I do EQ? Put a mic at the listening position and EQ that to the target magnitude response with the (((Acourate))) toolbox, a software that allows you to build correction kernels which can be fed in any convolution engine (DSP) of a software player (I use foobar and its convolver add-on). This is minimum phase normally, but I filter the kernel with another identical slope highpass reversed in time, this gives a linear phase response (dragging the energy centers of LF bursts (read:drums) at and below cut-off to where they belong, exactly under the HF/MF part of the pulse response).

Dampening the port Q was not necessary with my limited experience of two boxes built around "unsuited" drivers (one of them with Qes = 0.15), but it might be required when you want to build small together with a low tuning and thererfore need a small diameter port which would certainly be prone to chuffing, even with flares. Stuffing the port is an option but not very repeatable and might have linearity (large signal) problems. I'd think better try drag down the air flow by friction along huge port wall surface compared to exit area --> sort of an Onken style of porting, lossy slot ports.
I have never tried Variovents and Passive Radiators, though, which could also work better than undamped air ducts.
 
I am looking for a "holy grail" driver on this, fellas... guess I will eventually have to just try a whole lot of stuff, then go back and decide which one was actually the best retrospectively... ah well...

..and not enough money!! :D

_-_- bear


Yeah, the search is in vain then. (..of course it might be anyway - but the only way you'll find out is your own comparison with a massive variety, and that pretty much means spending a lot of money.) :eek:

BTW, which focal driver type did you like? Polyglass, PolyKevlar, or the newer spun-glass versions?
 
(..of course it might be anyway - but the only way you'll find out is your own comparison with a massive variety, and that pretty much means spending a lot of money.) :eek:


Going back and looking at your subjective descriptions - I'm thinking it's possibly worse than this.

i.e. what you want isn't immediately available (to be auditioned), or rather would require a custom driver.

When I think about low "ringing". Polyglass-like smoothness. Excellent clarity. I automatically think AudioTechology. They have modestly efficient drivers, but none I'd call "efficient". They are however *custom*. If they would just ease-off of the mms (and allow a resulting higher fs), I'm sure they could be quite efficient (comparatively-speaking):
Flexunits 12 B 77 25 10
Flexunits 15 E 102 25 10
 
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