Hi All,
A couple of years since my last post due to real life (tm) not leaving any time for speakers but I had to post about my very positive experience with the Tangband W8-1772... 👍
For several years my daily drivers have been a "never quite finished" 2 way system with my old now somewhat battered Coral Flat 8 Mk II and an Aurum Cantus G2 ribbon tweeter:
Yes, the crossover is still sitting on the top of the cabinet (much to the chagrin of my other half) and you can probably notice the aluminium dust cap has been pushed in and buckled as well a few years ago thanks to my at the time 2 year old son... The dust cap damage pretty much ruined the treble response as a full range driver but didn't have much effect with the ribbon tweeter already in place as a 2 way design. They have been in use like this for at least 5 years and sounded pretty good.
Then a month ago there was an accident that involved the speakers getting blasted at full volume on a 50 watt amplifier for over 15 seconds before it was shut down. Wasn't me, I wasn't there at the time but I did hear it happen in real time over the phone which was quite distressing. Needless to say damage was done. 😢 Both ribbon tweeters suffered minor damage - the ribbon foils were overheated and have stretched slightly so they're no longer under proper tension - the foils lean back slightly in the gap and they don't sound quite right (mainly a loss of sensitivity) however a new set of foils will restore them to full health again.
However one of the Coral drivers was irreparably damaged. I didn't realise it before the accident but one of them had suffered some damage to the cone a couple of years earlier when it was hit - through the grill cloth - with a small football... this creased the whizzer cone slightly which I noticed at the time, but I didn't realise it had also creased the main cone at the point where it's glued to the voice coil former. When it was overdriven last month the mechanical force of the voice coil pushing so hard crumpled the cone on one side where the voice coil bonds to the cone - as a result the voice coil no longer remains straight and can "rock" at an angle causing the voice coil to rub on the magnetic gap, and the cone feels quite floppy and has obvious creasing and damage to the paper near the voice coil.
In short the cone is ruined and short of a full re-coning this driver is a goner. 😢 Surprisingly the one from the other channel survived seemingly fully intact and has been working fine since in mono, so I think a combination of prior damage to the cone coupled with the overdrive is what killed the first one.
Three years ago I bought a pair of Tangband W8-1772 for a new project - my heretical (for this sub forum) project was to use them as a high sensitivity, high dynamic range, wide band midrange driver for a large three way system. A system that I have had on paper for years but never seem to be able to properly get started on due to real life (tm) interfering. I have all the drivers (W8-1772, another pair of Aurum Cantus G2 and 12" Visaton woofers) and have done a lot of the design work but I'm stalled at the cabinet building stage at the moment due to lack of time and space to do woodwork...
After a month of listening to mono I finally broke down and decided to install the W8-1772's I've had in storage for 3 years in the cabinets as a "stop gap" to get us back to stereo sound again... 🤣 The crossovers were highly customised to match the response of the Coral's so there was no point trying to use those so I decided to use them as, well, a full range driver... 😉
The cabinets are 43 litres bass reflex (rear ports) tuned to 41Hz and would suit the W8-1808 quite well, but the W8-1772 is far too low Q to work well in these cabinets. However you can artificially increase the Qes and Qts at the expense of loosing a little sensitivity by simply adding a resistor in series, so I started modelling the cabinet alignment and driver in the box simulator in Vituixcad and determined that 3.3 ohms of series resistance was about right to bring the Qts up to a similar value as the W8-1808 and give an agreeable bass alignment that was quite similar to what I was getting with the Coral drivers. Sensitivity loss is around 2dB, which also brings it down to the same sensitivity as the W8-1808.
So in went the drivers and the 3.3 ohm resistors.
The tweeter is still in the panel to fill the hole that would otherwise be left but it and the crossover on the top are no longer connected. I think the driver goes with the colour of the veneer quite well.
I then set the digital equalizer to give baffle step compensation - initially a 6dB shelf with a half way rollover of 330Hz, although I later bumped that up to 7dB as I have the speakers quite a long way from the corners and I do like my bass... I also added a 1dB 1 octave wide PEQ notch centred at 600Hz - also part of the baffle step compensation as the middle placement of the driver in the vertical axis causes a 1dB or so peak at 600Hz.
The speakers were in their normal position toed in to slightly behind the listener and the drivers are a little below ear level. (The disconnected tweeters are around listener ear level)
Listening impressions in the next post...
A couple of years since my last post due to real life (tm) not leaving any time for speakers but I had to post about my very positive experience with the Tangband W8-1772... 👍
For several years my daily drivers have been a "never quite finished" 2 way system with my old now somewhat battered Coral Flat 8 Mk II and an Aurum Cantus G2 ribbon tweeter:
Yes, the crossover is still sitting on the top of the cabinet (much to the chagrin of my other half) and you can probably notice the aluminium dust cap has been pushed in and buckled as well a few years ago thanks to my at the time 2 year old son... The dust cap damage pretty much ruined the treble response as a full range driver but didn't have much effect with the ribbon tweeter already in place as a 2 way design. They have been in use like this for at least 5 years and sounded pretty good.
Then a month ago there was an accident that involved the speakers getting blasted at full volume on a 50 watt amplifier for over 15 seconds before it was shut down. Wasn't me, I wasn't there at the time but I did hear it happen in real time over the phone which was quite distressing. Needless to say damage was done. 😢 Both ribbon tweeters suffered minor damage - the ribbon foils were overheated and have stretched slightly so they're no longer under proper tension - the foils lean back slightly in the gap and they don't sound quite right (mainly a loss of sensitivity) however a new set of foils will restore them to full health again.
However one of the Coral drivers was irreparably damaged. I didn't realise it before the accident but one of them had suffered some damage to the cone a couple of years earlier when it was hit - through the grill cloth - with a small football... this creased the whizzer cone slightly which I noticed at the time, but I didn't realise it had also creased the main cone at the point where it's glued to the voice coil former. When it was overdriven last month the mechanical force of the voice coil pushing so hard crumpled the cone on one side where the voice coil bonds to the cone - as a result the voice coil no longer remains straight and can "rock" at an angle causing the voice coil to rub on the magnetic gap, and the cone feels quite floppy and has obvious creasing and damage to the paper near the voice coil.
In short the cone is ruined and short of a full re-coning this driver is a goner. 😢 Surprisingly the one from the other channel survived seemingly fully intact and has been working fine since in mono, so I think a combination of prior damage to the cone coupled with the overdrive is what killed the first one.
Three years ago I bought a pair of Tangband W8-1772 for a new project - my heretical (for this sub forum) project was to use them as a high sensitivity, high dynamic range, wide band midrange driver for a large three way system. A system that I have had on paper for years but never seem to be able to properly get started on due to real life (tm) interfering. I have all the drivers (W8-1772, another pair of Aurum Cantus G2 and 12" Visaton woofers) and have done a lot of the design work but I'm stalled at the cabinet building stage at the moment due to lack of time and space to do woodwork...
After a month of listening to mono I finally broke down and decided to install the W8-1772's I've had in storage for 3 years in the cabinets as a "stop gap" to get us back to stereo sound again... 🤣 The crossovers were highly customised to match the response of the Coral's so there was no point trying to use those so I decided to use them as, well, a full range driver... 😉
The cabinets are 43 litres bass reflex (rear ports) tuned to 41Hz and would suit the W8-1808 quite well, but the W8-1772 is far too low Q to work well in these cabinets. However you can artificially increase the Qes and Qts at the expense of loosing a little sensitivity by simply adding a resistor in series, so I started modelling the cabinet alignment and driver in the box simulator in Vituixcad and determined that 3.3 ohms of series resistance was about right to bring the Qts up to a similar value as the W8-1808 and give an agreeable bass alignment that was quite similar to what I was getting with the Coral drivers. Sensitivity loss is around 2dB, which also brings it down to the same sensitivity as the W8-1808.
So in went the drivers and the 3.3 ohm resistors.
The tweeter is still in the panel to fill the hole that would otherwise be left but it and the crossover on the top are no longer connected. I think the driver goes with the colour of the veneer quite well.
I then set the digital equalizer to give baffle step compensation - initially a 6dB shelf with a half way rollover of 330Hz, although I later bumped that up to 7dB as I have the speakers quite a long way from the corners and I do like my bass... I also added a 1dB 1 octave wide PEQ notch centred at 600Hz - also part of the baffle step compensation as the middle placement of the driver in the vertical axis causes a 1dB or so peak at 600Hz.
The speakers were in their normal position toed in to slightly behind the listener and the drivers are a little below ear level. (The disconnected tweeters are around listener ear level)
Listening impressions in the next post...
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I sat down and started going through all my favourite music and listened, and listened, and I was totally blown away. 😳 From looking at the measurements online, looking at the design of the driver and reading other's reports I thought they would sound good, but I didn't quite expect them to sound this good, and I didn't want to build them up too much and then be disapointed. In the end I was listening for about 3 hours straight.
Although I did briefly listen to them unbaffled when I bought them 3 years ago I have never installed them in a cabinet to test them properly, and part of the reason why I installed them now is I thought it was time I listened to them properly before proceeding with the main project they were intended for...
I was expecting the tonal balance to be out of whack and need a bit of work to get right with further EQ but I have never heard a speaker that sounds so right, right out of the gate with only BSC. (And the resistor, to tune the Qes/Qts to suit the cabinet)
I was really struggling to find anything to criticise about them to be honest. Apart by bumping up the BSC from 6dB to 7dB I didn't make any further changes.
The bass performance is very similar to the Coral's but better, a bit punchier, a bit more dynamic, and with significantly less 2nd harmonic distortion when pushed. There was also a complete absence of audible intermod distortion between heavy bass and midrange - which was occasionally noticeable on the Coral's on specific songs. The midrange was smooth and clear even when it was playing bass near its excursion limits. It has the same 3mm Xmax as the Coral's but is an underhung design instead of overhung.
The midrange is incredibly smooth, better than the Coral's, for sure and they were already pretty good. Although measurements online show a bump around 3.5Khz there is NO audible harshness that I can hear in the presence region (which I am very sensitive to) or at ANY frequency and NO audible uncontrolled cone breakup either. Quite remarkable. I kept listening for "nasties" but I just couldn't find any on anything I played, even songs I previously considered "problematic".
A good test for uncontrolled cone breakup in the upper midrange and lower treble is heavily distorted electric guitar in something like power rock - but they remain smooth, composed and clean even with loud electric guitar in the mix, something which can't be said for a lot of full range drivers. Another test is vibrato on female voices - any cone resonances and breakup can sound harsh on that, but all voice vibrato that I listened to was clean and smooth.
The treble is also something special for such a large driver - I've read online that they are a bit too "hot" on axis, I can't say I found that, probably because I have a full compliment of baffle step correction - if you're exactly on axis the treble is perhaps slightly too much, (but not intrusive) but as soon as you go slightly off axis it balances out nicely and it remains good over a surprisingly wide range of positions. I found the sweet spot surprisingly large, and even if you go a long way off axis - like standing up, the treble certainly drops in level, but you still hear some crispness rather than it just going very dull and flat - something you don't on many full range drivers. The treble dispersion is considerably superior to the Coral's, even before they had their dust caps dented.
Is the high treble as good as the ribbon tweeters ? No. Is the dispersion at high frequencies as good as the ribbon tweeters ? No. But damn, its still pretty good, and there is no harshness in the treble either.
The imaging is fantastic as well, as you'd expect from a good full range driver. I really can't get over how good these sound with so little effort on my part to optimise them. If I had to be critical I would say that they probably do have slightly too much emphasis in the 3Khz presence region - that will be the 3.5Khz bump I've seen in some measurements, however it does not sound harsh, overbearing or fatiguing. After 3 hours of listening I was not fatigued.
It would be easy enough to fix with a slight PEQ dip at 3.5Khz to give a more neutral presentation, but I'm splitting hairs really. Next weekend I'll take some proper measurements and try a little tweaking of the response.
So yeah, I'm very impressed, and I guess, relieved that a driver I bought 3 years ago not only lived up to my hopes but exceeded them. I've been bitten before by drivers that are well regarded but simply don't live up to their reputation. (I'm looking at you Fostex FE207E and FE206E, biggest waste of money I ever spent)
There are so many good design elements in these drivers - hats off to the engineers that designed them.
The frame/basket is well made and the round, flat but thick frame is SO much easier to mount on a baffle than the oddly shaped stamped steel brackets on the Corals, and means you can mount them firmly without the frame twisting or distorting.
The neodymium magnets and underhung voice coil design give much lower distortion than the ceramic magnet and overhung design in the Coral's. They have shorting rings to keep inductance low and minimise inductance modulation - which gives better treble and less intermod distortion between bass and treble.
Like the Coral's they have curvilinear whizzer cones, which are superior to conical whizzers in terms of stiffness and damping.
Unlike the Coral's they have curvilinear main cones as well - which will have a large impact on how smooth they are.
For treble they use an extended voice coil former as a ring radiator loaded by the shape of the whizzer cone and phase plug - which gives much better treble response and dispersion than the aluminium dust cap on the Coral's.
They have a 35mm voice coil vs 25mm for improved power handling. (30w vs 15 watt)
Just a great driver design. 👍
Although I did briefly listen to them unbaffled when I bought them 3 years ago I have never installed them in a cabinet to test them properly, and part of the reason why I installed them now is I thought it was time I listened to them properly before proceeding with the main project they were intended for...
I was expecting the tonal balance to be out of whack and need a bit of work to get right with further EQ but I have never heard a speaker that sounds so right, right out of the gate with only BSC. (And the resistor, to tune the Qes/Qts to suit the cabinet)
I was really struggling to find anything to criticise about them to be honest. Apart by bumping up the BSC from 6dB to 7dB I didn't make any further changes.
The bass performance is very similar to the Coral's but better, a bit punchier, a bit more dynamic, and with significantly less 2nd harmonic distortion when pushed. There was also a complete absence of audible intermod distortion between heavy bass and midrange - which was occasionally noticeable on the Coral's on specific songs. The midrange was smooth and clear even when it was playing bass near its excursion limits. It has the same 3mm Xmax as the Coral's but is an underhung design instead of overhung.
The midrange is incredibly smooth, better than the Coral's, for sure and they were already pretty good. Although measurements online show a bump around 3.5Khz there is NO audible harshness that I can hear in the presence region (which I am very sensitive to) or at ANY frequency and NO audible uncontrolled cone breakup either. Quite remarkable. I kept listening for "nasties" but I just couldn't find any on anything I played, even songs I previously considered "problematic".
A good test for uncontrolled cone breakup in the upper midrange and lower treble is heavily distorted electric guitar in something like power rock - but they remain smooth, composed and clean even with loud electric guitar in the mix, something which can't be said for a lot of full range drivers. Another test is vibrato on female voices - any cone resonances and breakup can sound harsh on that, but all voice vibrato that I listened to was clean and smooth.
The treble is also something special for such a large driver - I've read online that they are a bit too "hot" on axis, I can't say I found that, probably because I have a full compliment of baffle step correction - if you're exactly on axis the treble is perhaps slightly too much, (but not intrusive) but as soon as you go slightly off axis it balances out nicely and it remains good over a surprisingly wide range of positions. I found the sweet spot surprisingly large, and even if you go a long way off axis - like standing up, the treble certainly drops in level, but you still hear some crispness rather than it just going very dull and flat - something you don't on many full range drivers. The treble dispersion is considerably superior to the Coral's, even before they had their dust caps dented.
Is the high treble as good as the ribbon tweeters ? No. Is the dispersion at high frequencies as good as the ribbon tweeters ? No. But damn, its still pretty good, and there is no harshness in the treble either.
The imaging is fantastic as well, as you'd expect from a good full range driver. I really can't get over how good these sound with so little effort on my part to optimise them. If I had to be critical I would say that they probably do have slightly too much emphasis in the 3Khz presence region - that will be the 3.5Khz bump I've seen in some measurements, however it does not sound harsh, overbearing or fatiguing. After 3 hours of listening I was not fatigued.
It would be easy enough to fix with a slight PEQ dip at 3.5Khz to give a more neutral presentation, but I'm splitting hairs really. Next weekend I'll take some proper measurements and try a little tweaking of the response.
So yeah, I'm very impressed, and I guess, relieved that a driver I bought 3 years ago not only lived up to my hopes but exceeded them. I've been bitten before by drivers that are well regarded but simply don't live up to their reputation. (I'm looking at you Fostex FE207E and FE206E, biggest waste of money I ever spent)
There are so many good design elements in these drivers - hats off to the engineers that designed them.
The frame/basket is well made and the round, flat but thick frame is SO much easier to mount on a baffle than the oddly shaped stamped steel brackets on the Corals, and means you can mount them firmly without the frame twisting or distorting.
The neodymium magnets and underhung voice coil design give much lower distortion than the ceramic magnet and overhung design in the Coral's. They have shorting rings to keep inductance low and minimise inductance modulation - which gives better treble and less intermod distortion between bass and treble.
Like the Coral's they have curvilinear whizzer cones, which are superior to conical whizzers in terms of stiffness and damping.
Unlike the Coral's they have curvilinear main cones as well - which will have a large impact on how smooth they are.
For treble they use an extended voice coil former as a ring radiator loaded by the shape of the whizzer cone and phase plug - which gives much better treble response and dispersion than the aluminium dust cap on the Coral's.
They have a 35mm voice coil vs 25mm for improved power handling. (30w vs 15 watt)
Just a great driver design. 👍
its a decent driver - here's one in an un-optimized Karlson type (should have been less height -different port/port location)
I have to say Karlson cabinets have no appeal to me - the thought of all that unnecessary diffraction off the front opening that partially obscures the driver gives me the Heeby Jeebies!
In my opinion one of the things that can make a full range driver image so well and sound cleaner than you might think from a raw infinite baffle frequency response measurement is the fact that the directivity they have at high frequencies pretty much avoids baffle edge diffraction issues above around 2Khz or so for this size driver, even if you have a plain shoebox shaped cabinet as I have.
Cabinet edge diffraction in the upper midrange and treble is a key contributor to harshness, unstable imaging, and narrow sweet spot in a more traditional speaker for example with something like a dome tweeter - sure the tweeter measures flatter on an infinite baffle than the full range driver but radiates like crazy along the baffle surface up to very high frequencies and suffers horrendous amounts of diffraction at the edges of the cabinet that cause the final response to be harsh and uneven as the entire edge of the cabinet is radiating high frequencies as well.
Meanwhile the full range driver radiates very little along the baffle at high frequencies, as a result baffle edge diffraction at high frequencies is nearly a non-issue and the final result can sound smoother and certainly image better than the speaker suffering from a lot of high frequency diffraction.
Try hanging a scarf down the left and right corners of a shoebox shaped cabinet to absorb the surface wave before it gets to the corners with wide dispersion drivers and see how much change it makes to the response removing most of that diffraction (a lot!) and try the same test with the full range driver. (hardly any change)
In my opinion one of the things that can make a full range driver image so well and sound cleaner than you might think from a raw infinite baffle frequency response measurement is the fact that the directivity they have at high frequencies pretty much avoids baffle edge diffraction issues above around 2Khz or so for this size driver, even if you have a plain shoebox shaped cabinet as I have.
Cabinet edge diffraction in the upper midrange and treble is a key contributor to harshness, unstable imaging, and narrow sweet spot in a more traditional speaker for example with something like a dome tweeter - sure the tweeter measures flatter on an infinite baffle than the full range driver but radiates like crazy along the baffle surface up to very high frequencies and suffers horrendous amounts of diffraction at the edges of the cabinet that cause the final response to be harsh and uneven as the entire edge of the cabinet is radiating high frequencies as well.
Meanwhile the full range driver radiates very little along the baffle at high frequencies, as a result baffle edge diffraction at high frequencies is nearly a non-issue and the final result can sound smoother and certainly image better than the speaker suffering from a lot of high frequency diffraction.
Try hanging a scarf down the left and right corners of a shoebox shaped cabinet to absorb the surface wave before it gets to the corners with wide dispersion drivers and see how much change it makes to the response removing most of that diffraction (a lot!) and try the same test with the full range driver. (hardly any change)
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