Driver recommendations

[TheRunningIr0n]

Hey There! Another complete noob here. This will be my first time building speakers. I'm going to build a 2-way vented box design and I am wondering what are your favorite drivers? (6.5", 7", 8") I'm looking for drivers that have the wonderful headphonesque quality of hitting low notes just enough to give the proper illusion of the instrument without the extra bass that most speakers include. In my very limited experience, woofers with low-excursion have given me the closest results to what I'm looking for. My favorite being a pair of B&W DM601 bookshelfs I've owned for a while (It's too bad I haven't been able to find B&W drivers for sale separately).
I've been to a few websites that sell drivers and have looked at Seas, Scan-Speak and a bunch of others. Sadly, looking at frequency charts doesn't help me get a good idea of how the speaker will sound in a real-world environment. So in the midst of confusion I've fallen back on my familiarity to some of the lower lines of Focal drivers. My friend and I installed a full system of Polyglass drivers in his car. I remember them being very detailed with good punch. He told me, when on the hunt, he auditioned the Utopias and found them to be very detailed yet more reservered and controlled then the Polyglass and Polykevs. So right now I'm looking at using Focal Utopia 6.5"s.
All responses are greatly appreciated.

 

[noodle_snacks]

First question, what is your budget?
Second question, what application are these for (what sort of size are we looking at physically)

 

[sreten]

http://www.zaphaudio.com/audio-speaker17.html

/sreten.

 

[TheRunningIr0n]

First question, what is your budget?
Second question, what application are these for (what sort of size are we looking at physically)

I'd say around $160-70 per woofer. They will be large bookshelf speakers. I'm thinking of using the Fountek NeoCD2.0 ribbon tweeter for the high end. So any drivers that mate well with this I'm assuming will be tight and lean.

 

[sreten]

Hi,

Choose a good design with the sort of drivers you want.
If you can't find one, then likely the combination is not good.

5" ribbons have serious vertical beaming problems.

Checkout :

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/Diy_Loudspeaker_Projects.htm
http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/

Also read :

http://www.zaphaudio.com/lowxmax.html

and the other excellent articles on his site.

/sreten.

 

[TheRunningIr0n]

Thank you sreten, those are some very interesting websites. It gives me a lot more to think about.