Above the OP price but some liked (Nelson Pass) the LCAO you can find at Jim's Audio HK ! Seems near in quality than the Tang Band w8-1772 ! But both are twice the budget !
Usable from 150/200 cycles (I don't like this word, looks like a whashing machine...) or even less (TQWT?) to 7000 Hz where the XO becomes less sensible according some ! Some others even uses it to 20 Khz where it should lack a little of "air"... no miracles, just trade offs .
Why not a frugal horn with a Fostex 6" or 8" ? In the price range of the OP
Edit, Edith, Judith : Now there is also a good almost FR solution in the budget : xrq971 member made in this forum many test with 2" to 3" quasi FR drivers which sounds good from 500 Hz towards top end but which must be helped below by a bass driver, but the 4 drivers feet the budget 100 bucks per speaker (but with a simple filter) : it gives subjectiv good results with very affordable and very good driver like the Vifas TC9, etc... I would go this way in the shoes of the OP !
Usable from 150/200 cycles (I don't like this word, looks like a whashing machine...) or even less (TQWT?) to 7000 Hz where the XO becomes less sensible according some ! Some others even uses it to 20 Khz where it should lack a little of "air"... no miracles, just trade offs .
Why not a frugal horn with a Fostex 6" or 8" ? In the price range of the OP
Edit, Edith, Judith : Now there is also a good almost FR solution in the budget : xrq971 member made in this forum many test with 2" to 3" quasi FR drivers which sounds good from 500 Hz towards top end but which must be helped below by a bass driver, but the 4 drivers feet the budget 100 bucks per speaker (but with a simple filter) : it gives subjectiv good results with very affordable and very good driver like the Vifas TC9, etc... I would go this way in the shoes of the OP !
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No. 1, and if I really had to choose another......No. 2 cuz a don't want it flapping about unduly..
Ah yes back in the days of real man size speakers. When the Jensen Imperial was considered large but not excessive @ 700 litres each or 20+ something cubic ft.
Made my old Canterbury SE’s that everybody oggled @ the size seem puny mini me's by comparison. Martin King is right big is best. Keen to give the Eminence 12 inch fullrange a go myself as some funboxes to freak the neighborhood out. Let's party like it's 1959!
Made my old Canterbury SE’s that everybody oggled @ the size seem puny mini me's by comparison. Martin King is right big is best. Keen to give the Eminence 12 inch fullrange a go myself as some funboxes to freak the neighborhood out. Let's party like it's 1959!
All the above have some valid points. I for one agree that most "FR's" are fighting a loosing battle against the laws of physics @ the far ends of their response curves and are best off assisted there.
That being said there have been some designs that balance the compromises so skillfully that they make even this $100 per speaker budget a fine listen AKA Terry Cain, Dallas II & others.
The downside is that the quality of ply wood cabinets to achieve that are going to cost 3-4 times the driver price & take some advanced building skills. No free lunch
That being said there have been some designs that balance the compromises so skillfully that they make even this $100 per speaker budget a fine listen AKA Terry Cain, Dallas II & others.
The downside is that the quality of ply wood cabinets to achieve that are going to cost 3-4 times the driver price & take some advanced building skills. No free lunch
My personal opinion is that the most important thing in any setup is the source, the second most important is a very clean amp (tube is my preference), then come the drivers.
Sorry, gotta disagree.
At one end, we have sources and amps that retrieve musical details very well. They'll follow the intended waveform pretty much exactly.
Then we pass this near-perfectly amplified signal through a coil of wire that's immersed in a magnetic field, and is attached to some cardboard that pushes air around. That just has to be the weak link.
The fact that what we get even resembles music still astounds me.
On the "best driver" topic, I'm having a lot of fun with my Fostex FE126E drivers that Dave treated. They're in a pair of very small boxes with a pair of passive radiators on the back, and EQ is needed to get the bass in-line. They're not the best drivers in the world, but what I'm getting is pretty close to full-range from a single driver. Shame it'll only do it quietly.
Chris
Was just over @ mates who builds speakers for a living. There were some new models that I hadn't listened to before. One D' Apolito with 2, 6in SB Acoustics & a Scanspeak Revelator 7000 tweeter .One 70 litre TL with a 10 inch Eminence full ranger with a Fountek ribbon assisting up top. A 20 litre TL 8 in 2 way with also a ribbon up top. They all couldn't have sounded any more different
The Joker in the pack was a Behringer 4 in 2way with the steel mesh grilles removed and the plastic cabinet filled with polyfill (none was present stock @ $100 Au retail the pair) oh and new binding posts. Anyway my least favourite was the first one mentioned. It just didn't do it for me but the tweeter sure sounded nice indeed. Liking it more the 20 litre 2 way and my favourite was the Eminence 10 with ribbon. It just seemed to inject life into what I was listening to more than the others. Don't get me wrong they were all very good by any standard. Now you would think if speakers were improving at a steady evolution that they would as they approach the event horizon of technical perfection sound similar. They do not. And in fact sound vastly dfferent. I remember Hi Fi World tested a B&W 801 A JBL horn beast A tannoy 12 in dual conetric Prestige model and the latest Quad electrostatic. The test was conspicuous by the vast difference in sonic signature between what still are highly regarded flagship speakers.
Aside from electro & magneostats we are dealing with 90 year old technology that amazes me that it works at all let alone the rare occasions it trancends the sum total of its constituents and takes you in your mind to live performance through a recorded medium.
Speakers are and will remain the weak link until someone finds a more efficient and accurate way of transfoming electrical energy into acoustic.
The Joker in the pack was a Behringer 4 in 2way with the steel mesh grilles removed and the plastic cabinet filled with polyfill (none was present stock @ $100 Au retail the pair) oh and new binding posts. Anyway my least favourite was the first one mentioned. It just didn't do it for me but the tweeter sure sounded nice indeed. Liking it more the 20 litre 2 way and my favourite was the Eminence 10 with ribbon. It just seemed to inject life into what I was listening to more than the others. Don't get me wrong they were all very good by any standard. Now you would think if speakers were improving at a steady evolution that they would as they approach the event horizon of technical perfection sound similar. They do not. And in fact sound vastly dfferent. I remember Hi Fi World tested a B&W 801 A JBL horn beast A tannoy 12 in dual conetric Prestige model and the latest Quad electrostatic. The test was conspicuous by the vast difference in sonic signature between what still are highly regarded flagship speakers.
Aside from electro & magneostats we are dealing with 90 year old technology that amazes me that it works at all let alone the rare occasions it trancends the sum total of its constituents and takes you in your mind to live performance through a recorded medium.
Speakers are and will remain the weak link until someone finds a more efficient and accurate way of transfoming electrical energy into acoustic.
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If you mean quality of source recording then OK.
The amp has a relatively easy job compared to even the best drivers so definitely disagree here. I would say avoid tubes unless you are a nut! Solid states beats them in every way except hype! In any case not a great issue all round compared to the drivers and speaker design.
With you on the first bit kevin but I must be a serious nut because I love my tube amps. To me they have subjective qualities that transistors can't match & visa versa. I also own some big ballsy sand amps and a class D on sub duties. My Tannoy Canterbury SE's spat out every sand amp behind it with vain disgust. Including Accuphase, Bryston, Marantz DC coupled. Finally found a happy marriage with a custom built c core op transformer EL34
100 wrms monoblock valve amps. SWEET AS, YUM YUM!
100 wrms monoblock valve amps. SWEET AS, YUM YUM!
Regarding PS220-8's. I used them in a pair of 0.46x scaled Karlson's. They sim'd beautifully for extension down to 100Hz and were used as tops in a system with subs below 100Hz. The sound was just best described as "phasey" and not coherent like most full range drivers I have used. I think it's the whizzer cone breakup just ruins the full range coherence I was accustomed to. I ended up returning them. I switched to some B&C 8in pro coaxial drivers with CD tweeters and that worked out much better, albeit not a single drivernfull range anymore.
Recently I have used a Tang Band W5-2143. It measures very close to factory spec for frequency response - meaning it had superb reach into the higher registers and is quite flat in response. My only complaint with this driver are exaggerated Qts TS parameters. Measures closer to 0.47 rather than 0.38. So take note of that if intending to design the cabinet before receiving and measuring TS parameters yourself. If you can live with that it's a fine sounding driver.
Recently I have used a Tang Band W5-2143. It measures very close to factory spec for frequency response - meaning it had superb reach into the higher registers and is quite flat in response. My only complaint with this driver are exaggerated Qts TS parameters. Measures closer to 0.47 rather than 0.38. So take note of that if intending to design the cabinet before receiving and measuring TS parameters yourself. If you can live with that it's a fine sounding driver.
I don't care how clean and perfect your drivers are.... they could be made by God himself, and your sound will suck if your amp or source sucks... period. Your perfect drivers will perfectly reproduce the deficiencies in your amp and source... that is just objective reality.
Yes or course in theory, but in practice the waveform produced by the am is so close to the original that differences in drivers mask any issues here as the best driver is orders or magnitude worse than the best amp in this respect and always will be, unless there is some major new breakthrough; its by far the weakest link in the audio chain. Application of a bit of practical knowledge and practical common sense is the key here.
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