Any success with Chinese branded drivers on eBay and Ali?

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Just wondering if somebody could relate if they had any success with some of the Chinese branded full range drivers available on eBay and Aliexpress? It's not an easy topic to search for. Looking for info on what drivers worked out and the user managed to get TS parameters from vendor or other source. TIA.
 
I'm not telling you what you should build, but it would've helped if you had shared what kind of driver and which size you were thinking about... otherwise you'll get recommendations from 1" to 12" drivers... and we'll just be waisting our time.

I've had experience with a few of those drivers and measured a lot of them with DATS, but suit yourself.

Good luck.
 
Personal experience is out of date on my side (I bought many rebranded speakers in the RadioShack silver age), but my experience was a mixed bag. Sometimes you find a gem that "performs like speakers 5X the price!!," but most of the time I was a little underwhelmed. Usually the specs were a little disappointing (box requirement ridiculous, spikes at weird frequencies)... they just weren't sounding any better than basic bookshelf speakers from Circuit City or Best Buy and that's kind of the point of 'rolling your own.'


I've read the comments on cheaper speakers online currently and the experiences seem to be similar. I've seen enough complaints involving voice coils scraping, materials, and sound quality to scare me off from guinea pigging in that arena anymore.



If you're serious about going Chinese, Tang band might be worth a look. They appear to have specs for most of their stuff and prices the span entry level to small-country-in-Europe. Just watch the sensitivity numbers with them - you might need multiple drivers if you're trying to get loud. They specialize in smaller drivers and box requirements and that seems to come at the expense of efficiency.
 
Ok,

Tang Band is Taiwanese, btw... ;)
Although they moved their production to China lately.

The only good brand made in Taiwan now is Usher. They came up with amazing drivers (none of them full range though) but sat on their laurels for way too many years.

Right now, the best drivers coming from Asia are from Indonesia. SBAcoustics is making waves with many of their drivers. Really up on par or may I even say a little above what ScanSpeak can come up with lately.

Back to cheap Chinese drivers.

I have a big box full of unused drivers at home.
Out of the lot, I'd put these ahead. They have good specs, and for full range sound, work best in a MLTL enclosure. They do 45Hz to 15kHz.

If you are looking for casual listening, say a pair of kitchen speakers, these will do the job. Quite cheap to find. They will need a good notch or an amp with bass and treble controls (perfect with a TPA3116 with tone controls).

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If you want something better, the best 4" driver I have ever listened to coming from China is this one. It is pretty good by itself, and quite the performer if you add a small notch at 7kHz. I've seen it being compared to MarkAudio drivers.

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Hope this helps.
 

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What is your experience with the F15?

It seems to be quite similar to the Fane 15-300 TC ?
For a 15" surprisingly bass light but not much, this was in open baffle, top end rolls off and a tweeter helped but as I can only hear to 12Khz it's only what I was told. Having said that what it does is very natural sound, beautiful. Violin, piano and guitar sound incredibly real. As I only have a small room I cannot use them otherwise I could live with them long term.
 
Ok,

Tang Band is Taiwanese, btw... ;)
Although they moved their production to China lately.

The only good brand made in Taiwan now is Usher. They came up with amazing drivers (none of them full range though) but sat on their laurels for way too many years.

Right now, the best drivers coming from Asia are from Indonesia. SBAcoustics is making waves with many of their drivers. Really up on par or may I even say a little above what ScanSpeak can come up with lately.

Back to cheap Chinese drivers.

I have a big box full of unused drivers at home.
Out of the lot, I'd put these ahead. They have good specs, and for full range sound, work best in a MLTL enclosure. They do 45Hz to 15kHz.

If you are looking for casual listening, say a pair of kitchen speakers, these will do the job. Quite cheap to find. They will need a good notch or an amp with bass and treble controls (perfect with a TPA3116 with tone controls).





If you want something better, the best 4" driver I have ever listened to coming from China is this one. It is pretty good by itself, and quite the performer if you add a small notch at 7kHz. I've seen it being compared to MarkAudio drivers.




Hope this helps.



Hi Perceval, you said you had the DATS of this copper whizzer one, could you upload it here please?
 
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