There was once a Voice-Coil review of the 18SW100 by Vance Dickason. Unfortunately it looks as if this had been taken off-line. It showed picture-perfect Klippel measurements. It has a shorting ring and all sorts of ventilation. And it has a basket which is extremely open, much more than actually needed for a sub driver. All in all it looks like an engineering marvel.
Regards
Charles
Regards
Charles
i thought it would have been clear that i am mostly interested in prosound drivers. i only consider non-prosound drivers where no prosound alternative exsists, such as true ribbons or midrange domes. i also consider Radian Planar to be not a true prosound driver but a wannabe Prosound driver that is really a high end home driver. in my view non-prosound drivers are mostly toys - a lesson i learned long time ago - sorry to hear you're still learning it.
it doesn't have to be a choice between innovative / cool / interesting looking and robust / reliable
here are examples of drivers that are both:
JBL 2269H:
Eighteen Sound 18NTLW5000:
Beyma 18LEX1600Nd:
also i wish you would stop trying to misrepresent my posts. i am not bragging about anything - i think i was very clear i am designing several systems in parallel in order to see which configuration can deliver better performance and value - i never claimed i have those systems.
if you don't like my posts you can add me to ignore list. personally i will probably be adding you to mine.
JBL drivers are every bit as no-nonsense work horse drivers as B&C but they are far more innovative ... and JBL is a much older company than B&C
you expect a younger company to be more innovative than an older one ...
i guess there are 3 tiers of comapnies:
1 - ones that innovate: Porsche, JBL
2 - ones that make boring but well made products: Toyota, B&C
3 - ones that make trash: Fiat ... won't namely any speaker companies LOL
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Ooh, what a cop-out for one who seems to speak their mind...
No, I won't. Have a look why I don't:
vs.
Maybe if everybody had you on theirs ignore list or had stayed silent in another way ... then what would have made change your writing?
It's important to stay in dialogue, even if it is a conflicual from time to time. Especially nowadays and in an even larger scale.
Eighteen Sound and B&C are the same company, but both brands have a diffeent philosophy of designing, altough they are today largely designed by the same people. B&C bought Eighteen Sound because they are very complementary to their own products and will keep the brand alive the way it was they say (and do).
B&C is a workhorse for the pro audio industry, and by far the most popular OEM brand for that industry while 18Sound is more searching to fill niches in that world. You may not like the brand B&C, but it's certainly not crap, they are well studied and designed to a goal that fits the pro audio industrie. Bennett Preston (B&C) made a whole leap of video's to explain why they design their drivers the way they do and whatis the difference with 18Sound on his youtube channel.
I know their some of their compression drivers are considered the standard for line arrays as they are very fit for it, and have deliberate some ringing in the top register, because that works for their purpose (line arrays). They made neutral drivers without ringing (and still do), but their big clients (big speaker companies) did not want them, and asked for the old ringing drivers as they work better.
A lot of their woofers are also build with a certain purpose, that may not be yours, but they do work very well in that purpose and are often the best for it.
I prefer also mostly other drivers for hifi use, even pro audio drivers (Faital, Eighteen Sound, Beyma, ...). But i would not call B&C bad at all, they are very good in what they do and would also be my first choice for that purpose if i was into that kind of (line array) systems.
JBL introduced the differential drive concept used in the 2269 and various other drivers in 1995, 30 years ago.
When overhung woofer coils are used, the structure becomes far deeper than the example above.
The 18NTLW5000 uses a similar design, with the addition of coil layers ("Tetracoil"=4 layers) as became common around 25 years ago.
These far more complex and costly designs have marginal (minimal) advantages over other designs, but one major disadvantage, the magnet structure depth is doubled.
Even if a designer were willing to pay the huge production cost increase for a very minor (nearly inaudible) sound quality change, the added depth of these drivers takes them out of consideration for many designs.
Other, more recent JBL "innovations" include recycling designs from other companies that have expired patent protection.
Not that JBL is the only company doing the same thing, most loudspeaker innovation is just one step backward, one step sideways, and one step forward.
Art
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differential drive and inside/outside wound voice coils both allow more performance per pound of driver weight.
JBL 2269 is half the weight of B&C iPal
for any speaker that is hanging up in the air over the crowd i would want it as light as possible.
there are some ultra low profile drivers for niche applications like car audio - that doesn't make regular drivers inferior because they can't fit into a car door.
JBL innovation is legit and stealing other people's designs is just basic common sense LOL.
JBL 2269 is half the weight of B&C iPal
for any speaker that is hanging up in the air over the crowd i would want it as light as possible.
there are some ultra low profile drivers for niche applications like car audio - that doesn't make regular drivers inferior because they can't fit into a car door.
JBL innovation is legit and stealing other people's designs is just basic common sense LOL.
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You compared a slightly lighter driver with less than half the motor force of another and claimed more performance per pound.
The B&C 18IPal-2 weighs 33.84 pounds vs 25 pounds for the JBL 2269, 26% more weight.
The 2269 has less than half the motor strength of the 18IPal-2, 285.8 N2/Watt compared to only 139.
Live and learn..
Fwiw my opinion of B&C drivers is very high, and is based on my in-house measurements of their performance rather than on which features were (or were not) used to get there. For instance something you don't see in the datasheets is how well the off-axis curves track the on-axis curve, and the BEST results I've seen this area with a large (15") woofer has been from B&C woofers.
There is one feature I deliberately look for because it has a direct impact on motor linearity, and that is, demodulation rings. Quite a few B&C woofers have them.
There is one feature I deliberately look for because it has a direct impact on motor linearity, and that is, demodulation rings. Quite a few B&C woofers have them.
you can always increase motor force simply by winding more voice coil wire - that doesn't make for a better driver
the reason iPal has more motor force is because Powersoft iPal standard explicitly calls for those parameters
tell me - if your iPal is so wonderful - how many people can you name using it ?
what's the problem ? i thought it was amazing and a great value.
LIVE AND LEARN
that just means they use soft cones. and you're not supposed to look for off-axis response in a 15" woofer. you're just supposed to cross it over to a midrange at appropriate frequency.
Beyma has 2 of them in LEX woofers and Eighteen Sound has up to three in some drivers. I specifically compared inductance values for Eighteen Sound, Beyma and B&C woofers and for the same size woofer Eighteen Sound NTLW was lowest, followed by Beyma ( from the MC series, which is similar to LEX but not a subwoofer ) and B&C was the highest.
B&C inductance was just low enough to do the job, and not a bit lower.
@Dissident Sound wrote: "that just means they use soft cones."
I would associate a "soft cone" - one with well-damped breakup behavior - with the smoothness of the response curve. Some large B&C cones do show smooth frequency response, but the ones I've measured which evidently have stiff cones (ribbed construction and obvious break-up peaking) still have off-axis response which tracks the on-axis response exceptionally well.
@Dissident Sound: "and you're not supposed to look for off-axis response in a 15" woofer. you're just supposed to cross it over to a midrange at appropriate frequency."
I suspect that you and I subscribe to different loudspeaker design philosophies. Imo there are valid reasons for using a large cone well up into the midrange, and B&C makes several 15" woofers which are suitable for such.
(In my opinion a loudspeaker should get two things right: The direct sound, and the reflections. Yes the room gets a vote in the latter, but if the off-axis sound is correct when it leaves the speaker, all the room has to do is not screw it up, which is imo much more practical than trying to get the room to fix it.)
@Dissident Sound wrote: "... B&C inductance was just low enough to do the job, and not a bit lower."
I think I agree with you here.
The advantage of shorting rings is not only a reduction in inductance but (imo FAR more importantly) a reduction in the CHANGE in inductance over the excursion stoke of the voice coil. And in this area, a single shorting ring makes a very big difference versus not having any. That being said, I'm sure that additional shorting rings and/or a pole piece cap help to further reduce the change in inductance with excursion.
I would associate a "soft cone" - one with well-damped breakup behavior - with the smoothness of the response curve. Some large B&C cones do show smooth frequency response, but the ones I've measured which evidently have stiff cones (ribbed construction and obvious break-up peaking) still have off-axis response which tracks the on-axis response exceptionally well.
@Dissident Sound: "and you're not supposed to look for off-axis response in a 15" woofer. you're just supposed to cross it over to a midrange at appropriate frequency."
I suspect that you and I subscribe to different loudspeaker design philosophies. Imo there are valid reasons for using a large cone well up into the midrange, and B&C makes several 15" woofers which are suitable for such.
(In my opinion a loudspeaker should get two things right: The direct sound, and the reflections. Yes the room gets a vote in the latter, but if the off-axis sound is correct when it leaves the speaker, all the room has to do is not screw it up, which is imo much more practical than trying to get the room to fix it.)
@Dissident Sound wrote: "... B&C inductance was just low enough to do the job, and not a bit lower."
I think I agree with you here.
The advantage of shorting rings is not only a reduction in inductance but (imo FAR more importantly) a reduction in the CHANGE in inductance over the excursion stoke of the voice coil. And in this area, a single shorting ring makes a very big difference versus not having any. That being said, I'm sure that additional shorting rings and/or a pole piece cap help to further reduce the change in inductance with excursion.
really? How would you know? Americans are all over the map on this and I would guess most other places are too.
Wait, is this thread about a multi-way speaker?
It appears to be about slagging off a beloved manufacturer then mildly, aggressively shouting down anyone that likes that manufacturer, without any specific aim. Was there an aim to find a better alternative for the multi-way you're building? Or maybe just an airing of a personal opinion. What am I missing here?
It appears to be about slagging off a beloved manufacturer then mildly, aggressively shouting down anyone that likes that manufacturer, without any specific aim. Was there an aim to find a better alternative for the multi-way you're building? Or maybe just an airing of a personal opinion. What am I missing here?
