You can do an 18" woofer (the right one of course) and dome tweeter (again, the right one(s) in a state of the art two way if you have a mind to. I and others have done it. Great results. Know saying this will get a lot of folks underware in a wad! No, I am not kidding.
As is usually the situation, it come down to employing the right drivers, the right way with the correct cross over.
One has to remember, as the BIG woofer starts to beam, the dome tweeter, properly implemented does not. There can easily be a two octave overlap. The lower end of the dome tweeter responce (dispersion) helps to offset the lack of the 18" woofers (starting to beem) out put. Keep them in phase in their collective band pass and all works out very well. You get the grunt and dynamics of that big 18 with the resolution and imaging of the dome tweet.
In a two way, it is all about in phase transitions. So, a ten inch woofer based two way is a piece of cake. Seem to remeber this basic design has sold more over the past century than most of the rest combined!!
As is usually the situation, it come down to employing the right drivers, the right way with the correct cross over.
One has to remember, as the BIG woofer starts to beam, the dome tweeter, properly implemented does not. There can easily be a two octave overlap. The lower end of the dome tweeter responce (dispersion) helps to offset the lack of the 18" woofers (starting to beem) out put. Keep them in phase in their collective band pass and all works out very well. You get the grunt and dynamics of that big 18 with the resolution and imaging of the dome tweet.
In a two way, it is all about in phase transitions. So, a ten inch woofer based two way is a piece of cake. Seem to remeber this basic design has sold more over the past century than most of the rest combined!!
I agree about the sound of the upper registers of the tc9, although it does have the same motor and similar midrange distortion profile as the tg9, which is the main reason I posted the measurements. I do own the 10/f, which is a different class, as far as sound quality.
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Definitive statements about 18" drivers with 1" tweeters? Please show measurements! Pretty please?
This was a trend once, and I went through it. There was logic to it.
Tweeters were being crossed high because domes are small, but some of us were hearing the woofers beam up high (getting thin despite flat on-axis measurements), and could tell the tweeter needed to be carried lower.
In addition to this, a lower order filter increased overlap and improved the situation. It also started the linear phase trend, but in retrospect that may have been a red herring.
Remlab... your are assuming (makes sense) a 1" tweet. There are a couple of 1.5" tweets available that can play flat down to 1,200 or so Hz. It is all about phase intergration. I no longer have measurements. But you have motivatived me to replicate the past. Doing a lot of other things at the moment, but, when I can, will provide a measurement or two.
It simply wasn't clear by listening alone why the lower order filters sounded better (and many didn't do multi-axis measurements back then). It's very easy to make assumptions, and spread those assumptions to other audiophiles... and very difficult to make them go away, 30 years later
Thanks for the quick lesson.
I would think that the success of such a configuration would also depend on listen distance....I can only imagine that, for example, the beaming that occurs due to excessive ctc spacing, would be alleviated by sitting further away to allow the beam width to spread...but until I get fluent with something like Akabak and have simulated enough to see the effects of beaming (due to diameter) on the crossover region....its cloudy....if it just kinda exaggerates what excessive ctc does then I can sorta picture it.
10 inch is way too big for a 2-way unless using a big expensive horn like Gedlee or some big exotic planer like BG. Even a 7 inch is hard to get low distortion in a 2-way. If you want a traditional 10 inch floor standing speaker, go 3 way. 10-3-1 is a nice combination and can support lower order crossovers.
You can't just look at response graphs and think you should use a speaker to that range. Distortion, breakup, X-max , beaming, lots of parameters. Unfortunately, speakers follow the laws of physics, not advertising or wishful thinking.
You want a 10 inch? I am then assuming no sub and you expect this to be truly full range with 30 Hz bass? If you run a sub, there is no reason to run such a large woofer.
You can't just look at response graphs and think you should use a speaker to that range. Distortion, breakup, X-max , beaming, lots of parameters. Unfortunately, speakers follow the laws of physics, not advertising or wishful thinking.
You want a 10 inch? I am then assuming no sub and you expect this to be truly full range with 30 Hz bass? If you run a sub, there is no reason to run such a large woofer.
Have you considered two 8 inch per side instead of one 10 inch? I did a 10 inch 2-way years (really decades ago). I used a Pioneer 10 inch poly' cone with foam surround and a Peerless soft dome tweeter. This was called "wide angle" or something, it had a shallow waveguide and could cross fairly low (discontinued now). I got good results here. Audax still makes a tweeter that is really a mid-tweeter, about 1.3 inches and can cross fairly low. Take a look at that; also, the suggestions for a small full range would give good results.
Audax TW034X0 1.3" Textile Dome Tweeter
Audax TW034X0 1.3" Textile Dome Tweeter
John Busch is correct. You CAN even get an 18" driver to mate with a dome tweeter. But would you want to? To do so would require fairly special drivers which one would not easily find via data sheets. Rather one would need to try out a lot of different drivers to find a pair that could mate well. And even then you'll have a lot of work ahead of you to engineer a crossover that would maintain the correct phase relationship of the two drivers across a fairly wide frequency range around the crossover (admittedly this would be much easier with active crossover, particularly if you're not afraid of programming biquads). But even then you might find yourself dissatisfied with the outcome as they might have very poor power handling....
So, IMHO, for most of us it's easier to make your life simple.
1) Start off with a goal of what frequency range is actually necessary (understanding that in most cases multiple subs in distributed about the room work much better than a single speaker made to work down to very low frequencies).
2) Figure out how loud it has to get for you in your room
3) Decide what you want the directivity to look like.
#3 should really determine what size mid-bass to use. You might find that the correct answer is that you need a 15" mid-bass! (If you want 90° directivity at 1kHz you'll need a 15" driver). Finding the correct mid-bass will probably influence #2 and #1 a lot. Find a good compromise. The right mid-bass will tell you where you want to cross over which will guide you in deciding what tweeter to choose (or maybe a midrange).
Alternatively just decide that you want really wide dispersion in your room and make a 4 way system ;-)
So, IMHO, for most of us it's easier to make your life simple.
1) Start off with a goal of what frequency range is actually necessary (understanding that in most cases multiple subs in distributed about the room work much better than a single speaker made to work down to very low frequencies).
2) Figure out how loud it has to get for you in your room
3) Decide what you want the directivity to look like.
#3 should really determine what size mid-bass to use. You might find that the correct answer is that you need a 15" mid-bass! (If you want 90° directivity at 1kHz you'll need a 15" driver). Finding the correct mid-bass will probably influence #2 and #1 a lot. Find a good compromise. The right mid-bass will tell you where you want to cross over which will guide you in deciding what tweeter to choose (or maybe a midrange).
Alternatively just decide that you want really wide dispersion in your room and make a 4 way system ;-)
This Monacor tweeter claims to be able to cross at 1500hz with an 18db filter.
Monacor :: Monacor 10.5680 Hi-fi dome tweeter, 150 WMAX, 80 WRMS, 8 Ω
Don't know if that's any help but otherwise a CD + horn or small full range is the way as previously stated.
Monacor :: Monacor 10.5680 Hi-fi dome tweeter, 150 WMAX, 80 WRMS, 8 Ω
Don't know if that's any help but otherwise a CD + horn or small full range is the way as previously stated.
Without getting into compression drivers, open baffles, horns... just sticking to conventional direct radiators in a box...
From my perspective, it seems that there are only a few tweeters capable of going down to 1.5 k, and having the high SPL, low distortion capability that a 10 inch woofer would need. They tend to be rather expensive. ScanSpeak has a couple, as does Morel.
I think that for less than the cost of an expensive tweeter, one could put together a mid and tweeter combination and build a good 3 way.
Let's assume you have a particular 10 inch woofer, sensitivity of 89 dB@2.83 V.
Example (1) SB Acoustics SB12NRX25-08 (4 inch) + SB26STAC-C000-4 tweeter, crossed at 500 and 3k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $92
Example (2) Scanspeak 15W/8434G00 (5 inch) + SEAS Prestige 27TDFC (H1189) tweeter, crossed at 300 and 2k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $115
Example (3) Dayton RS100-8 (4 inch) + Dayton RST28A tweeter, crossed at 500 and 3k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $65
These are just 3 examples for talking purposes. There are hundreds of combinations which would work well, and many different price points.
With a 3 way, one can select a good 10 inch woofer based on its deep bass and upper bass characteristics, and not be so concerned about how it performs up above 1k... whereas with a 2 way, a person is going to be limited to just a few qualified woofers, which are also probably expensive.
From my perspective, it seems that there are only a few tweeters capable of going down to 1.5 k, and having the high SPL, low distortion capability that a 10 inch woofer would need. They tend to be rather expensive. ScanSpeak has a couple, as does Morel.
I think that for less than the cost of an expensive tweeter, one could put together a mid and tweeter combination and build a good 3 way.
Let's assume you have a particular 10 inch woofer, sensitivity of 89 dB@2.83 V.
Example (1) SB Acoustics SB12NRX25-08 (4 inch) + SB26STAC-C000-4 tweeter, crossed at 500 and 3k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $92
Example (2) Scanspeak 15W/8434G00 (5 inch) + SEAS Prestige 27TDFC (H1189) tweeter, crossed at 300 and 2k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $115
Example (3) Dayton RS100-8 (4 inch) + Dayton RST28A tweeter, crossed at 500 and 3k. Cost for mid + tweeter = $65
These are just 3 examples for talking purposes. There are hundreds of combinations which would work well, and many different price points.
With a 3 way, one can select a good 10 inch woofer based on its deep bass and upper bass characteristics, and not be so concerned about how it performs up above 1k... whereas with a 2 way, a person is going to be limited to just a few qualified woofers, which are also probably expensive.
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