China are the biggest source for neo and they've been restricting exports to stockpile them causing prices to sky rocket.
Your probably right though in some ways, if demands is out stripping supply then people can charge far more than usual and will keep doing so until things balance out.
I think the only similarities between those two drivers is the idea behind the cone, ceramic with damping ears at the side. The neo driver has a massive under hung motor and lower distortion throughout the midrange as a result. The ferrite driver is a mid bass though and to me doesn't seem to offer anything more then the standard fare from scan or seas, and if accutons distortion measurements are to be believed, the scan and seas drivers are better than it.
If you look at the magnate of the C173 96E you will see that it's huge. Usually neo is used in little discs, or in several small radially spaced magnates to give the flux needed in the usually small and over hung top plates. The 96E though uses a very thick top plate, probably around 15mm thick and the magnate used and needed, to energise it is a huge ring of neo, the magnate probably has 15-20x the amount of neo used in a typical scan speak tweeter.
The 96 used to cost a little under $600 over at mad, then when the neo prices quintupled in the space of a couple of months, the driver went up to around $900. Now $600 for a driver is crazy money already, but at $900 they are completely ridiculous. For us DIYers there is always the option to order a version of the B&W FST driver, which cost around $300 each. Before the neo sky rocket some of the variants cost around $200, which is when I grabbed a pair and they sound amazing. I, like Shin, has always had my eyes on the 96 but could never justify the stupid cost, then when Zaph measured an FST and found it to have extremely low distortion, very high sensitivity and a well controlled upper break-up, I phoned up B&W a few weeks later and ordered me a pair. I don't think B&W have too much of a problem supplying drivers to the odd few crazy DIYers, afterall, a sale is a sale, but they might take issue with providing a small business with drivers. Although having said that, you don't know until you try!
Thanks for the info!
Please let us now more about your future experience with the C158:es. 🙂
I agree, both the textile 6600 and the BE are great tweeters. They do sound different from each other, but I couldn't say that one is sonically better than the other. They are also almost drop-in replacements to each other besides that the BE version needs to be carefully "voiced" regarding the tweeter level compared to the 6600.
I will release a new design based on these tweeters during this atumn and I can't wait see how it turns out. 😀
Regards
/Göran
Last edited:
According to Accuton the differences are audibly quite small and the ferrite version was released as an answer to neo prices, they tried hard to match the performance with that of the existing 96E. They share the same cone but yes, the motors differ. Its £240 versus £560. Now I've never really been one for frugal spending when it comes to drivers but I'd be hard pushed to justify that.
Instead I'd give the new cell concept driver a go at £370 a pop and that's about the max I'd spend on a single driver.
accuton® Carefully selected loudspeaker drivers.
Seems interesting enough to look at for a 3-way.
But they have yellow cones! No, just no.
Hi 5th element,
Did you buy them from UK or USA and what did you tell them in order to get them to sell it to you?
You can always PM me if you don't want to write it here. 😉
Regards
/Göran
I suppose it depends on what you go for. For me, if I am going to spend big on a driver it has to be second to none or up there with the very best, the ferrite Accuton is not when it comes to the absolute numbers. I mean it peaks up to 0.5% throughout the midrange which is -46dB down for both the third and second harmonic. I could live with a slight rise in 2nd, but no driver with a decent motor nowadays has a third harmonic peak up that high. All the recent good drivers with overhung motors from SEAS, Scanspeak, Wavecore, Vifa/Peerless, SB Acoustics, Aurum Cantus etc, have the third harmonic between 55-60dB down over the fundamental.
I saw that too and thought it was quite interesting with a very different design approach, more sort of like a huge concave dome midrange. It'll be interesting to see any third party numbers on it. Still it's very expensive compared to what you can get from the others listed above so it better do something special to justify the price.
The SEAS have quite a yellowy tinge to them too! I actually like the way the B&W cones look, the ones I ordered though were a much paler shade of yellow compared to the usual pictures you see in hi-fi mag reviews and the like. Apparently UV radiation turns the cones much darker so I'm pleased that mine are in a room that sees no direct sun light + uses LED lighting so definitely no UV being emitted in there.
Buying them from the USA is apparently very easy (if you live in the USA), you can do it via an order form where they do want to see your B&W speakers serial number, or you can phone them up, where they don't. It's easy to sort out over there because B&W, along with Classe and Rotel have their own unique support system that covers the repair/upkeep of all the products under those brands in Northern USA.
B&W Group North America Service & Support Homepage
Is the main website, but here
B&W Group North America Service & Support - B&W Parts Retail Price List
Is where they have all the parts listed for most of B&Ws loudspeakers, it also has prices listed so is quite convenient to see how much you will be expected to spend. The ones that I purchased are the ones that Zaph measured, the LF00264 for the 803D, these were at $190 or so when I purchased, then a couple of months later they jumped up to $307.
Being in the home country of B&W I expected us to have something similar, but alas no, I had to first request a quote and then phone up directly to pay. The woman who I spoke to was very friendly/helpful and I had no trouble placing an order without even so much of as question as to if I actually owned the pair speakers they were going to go into. I ended up paying around £185 each for them, which is still a lot, but a bargain compared to how much other boutique drivers cost.
If I hadn't been able to get a hold of the B&W drivers though, I probably would have gone for the 18Sound 6ND430, which also has very low distortion, high sensitivity and a well designed cone. This will also go down a lot lower then the B&W so perhaps would be another option for Shin to try out 😀
The B&W will handle a 4th order acoustic target down to 300Hz, but not much more.
Edit - I know that some people have investigated buying the drivers, but have run into difficulties or very high prices simply because the only route available to them in their country is a standard retailer, such as a hi-fi shop that sells B&W loudspeakers. In those circumstances I don't think you can get replacement parts that easily, but I am sure if you are silver tongued, you can probably talk your way around a sales rep, that is unless they absolutely have to send the serial number along with the parts request from B&W. Another option would be to find a friend that owns a pair and get them to buy a replacement part for you, sometimes people buy parts as a just in case, rather then waiting till they accidentally break something, crazy I know. Then there is always ebay! I found someone selling a pair for the current D2 series (which all use the same midrange driver) a couple of months ago AND if you are lucky...
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/swap-meet/211071-fs-new-pair-b-w-fst-midranges-802d.html
Might still have his pair for sale 🙂
Last edited:
I don't really see it as a problem. Those figures are real world and once filtered improve further. There's no denying the neo version is the superior unit bit for well over double the price I'd have to have a special application in mind for it.
Filtering wont improve the rise in mid band distortion between 300 and 2kHz though, although it will have some effect at the top of the woofers transition band as it hands over the tweeter, if crossed low and then only if the tweeter has superior performance in that frequency range.
IMO the ferrite Accuton has a very hard time justifying its price as it is already normally more expensive then the SEAS excel and Scan Illuminator offerings. The Neo version though, although even more expensive, does offer distortion that competes with the others, offers you the cone material and then goes one step further of offering you high sensitivity too. Now you might not need the extra sensitivity and have to pad the driver down with resistors, but that still equals less power being dissipated in the drivers voice coil, lowering any effects from power compression. Then again you're going active so any sensitivity mismatches are completely academic.
If the loudspeakers that you've been posting CAD images of and have been spending money on auditioning the best from Scan/SEAS/Audio tech for, isn't a special application, then I'd like to know what your definition of that would be! 😀
IMO the ferrite Accuton has a very hard time justifying its price as it is already normally more expensive then the SEAS excel and Scan Illuminator offerings. The Neo version though, although even more expensive, does offer distortion that competes with the others, offers you the cone material and then goes one step further of offering you high sensitivity too. Now you might not need the extra sensitivity and have to pad the driver down with resistors, but that still equals less power being dissipated in the drivers voice coil, lowering any effects from power compression. Then again you're going active so any sensitivity mismatches are completely academic.
If the loudspeakers that you've been posting CAD images of and have been spending money on auditioning the best from Scan/SEAS/Audio tech for, isn't a special application, then I'd like to know what your definition of that would be! 😀
I can buy an ebike motor chock full of neo magnets for one to two hundred bucks. They are charging what the market will bear.
I never said that they weren't over charging, just that there's far more neo in that Accuton driver then there is in a neo dome tweeter.
As I don't know anything about how much neo would be inside one of those motors I cannot comment, but lots of neo drivers increased significantly in price when the neo prices rose. Quite a few Tang Band and Eminence drivers literally doubled in price over night due to the increase and I'd bet that none of those use anywhere near as much neo as the Accuton do. Some manufactures even went so far as to start producing ferrite versions due to the way the neo prices affected the end retail price of their drivers, realising that very few people would buy them at the new prices as they weren't cost effective anymore. These manufacturers obviously weren't inflating their costs just because they could.
As I don't know anything about how much neo would be inside one of those motors I cannot comment, but lots of neo drivers increased significantly in price when the neo prices rose. Quite a few Tang Band and Eminence drivers literally doubled in price over night due to the increase and I'd bet that none of those use anywhere near as much neo as the Accuton do. Some manufactures even went so far as to start producing ferrite versions due to the way the neo prices affected the end retail price of their drivers, realising that very few people would buy them at the new prices as they weren't cost effective anymore. These manufacturers obviously weren't inflating their costs just because they could.
There's that much (part in red)
Thanks Shin, but I was referring to how much neo there would be inside the ebike motor 😀 I have to say though, I didn't expect the neo in the accuton motor to extend so close to the voice coil, there was more in there then I expected, then there's the magnate on the pole too. That is a lot of neo in that driver.
No worries mate.
The model is from Accutons website so its accurate. My only complaint is that the file is protected so you can't pinch the model. Instead you still have to build your own in the end. They're teasing me! Owt for an easy life.
The model is from Accutons website so its accurate. My only complaint is that the file is protected so you can't pinch the model. Instead you still have to build your own in the end. They're teasing me! Owt for an easy life.
And last of the lineup.
WOW! 😱 🙂
Look's like something Science Fidelity *wanted* to do in the 90's.
Absolutely stunning. 😎
- Status
- Not open for further replies.