Monsoon - Surprisingly Good!

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I have a box of Monsoon MM-700 drivers collecting dust in the garage.

Was thinking about sending them to eBay, so thought I'd measure them first.

Performance is surprisingly good!

CSD is very poor though; I wonder if there's some 'special' way to measure planar CSD? I know that you can't get a good phase measurement from a planar.
 
bad dispersion if kind of normal for such larg panels not that bad. its more the high end thats pretty limited in my opinion

Yes, the shape of the panel will dictate it's beamwidth. A flat panel will have a beamwidth of zero degrees. If you curve the panel you'll get a wider beamwidth, that's why Martin Logans are curved. The beamwidth is maintained down to the physical size of the panel. IE, a panel that's seven inches wide will maintain directivity control down to 2000Hz. The upper limit on the panel is largely dependent on mass, that's why ribbon tweeters can play to 40khz while dome tweeters crap out around 20khz.
 
One meter
Thanks. :)
I'm still a bit puzzled by the CSD... looks quite different from the BG Neo8, which decays quite rapidly.
Still, if you look at the time scale and compare to a cone midrange driver, I guess it is still reasonable.

I am surprised to see no hint of a cavity resonance which is pretty much a "feature" of all push-pull magenetic planars. Is the 5dB EQ you mention hiding it perhaps?
I’d be interested to see a near field and/or 1m measurement without the EQ in place if you have the time and interest.

BTW, I had not realized that Bruce Thigpen was involved in the Monsoon planar design.
That goes a long way to explaining the impressive distortion performance.
Too bad there were so many issues with neo magnet corrosion.
 

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Planar and ribbon drivers are known for their wide dispersion in the horizontal plane (transducer mounted vertically) but limited dispersion in the vertical plane. Longer drivers have more limited vertical plane dispersion versus frequency. Shorter drivers can offer more balanced vertical and horizontal coverage. Furthermore, all planars have vertical plane dispersion trends toward their aperture height as frequency increases.

For line array use (to optimize coverage for sitting to standing in-room listening) shorter planar drivers are often stacked vertically) to increase their vertical dispersion.
 
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bad dispersion if kind of normal for such larg panels not that bad. its more the high end thats pretty limited in my opinion

That's why I cross my Monsoons over at 2K. VMPS made some foam and platic gizmos (Constant Directivity Wave Guides) which addressed this problem. I'm in the process of making up a batch ( 12) for my speakers.
 

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