Haven't posted in a while. Here is my dilemma:
Still, after all of these years, I can't find a single driver that covers 600 to 14k better than an old aluminum Peavey 22A. The titanium version doesn't sound nearly as good (or measure as smooth either) I too find this hard to believe. I do need to keep this a 2 way. One must spend 400 to 1k per driver to find such a driver. Other than above tge 14.5 k I have no issues. I have been able DCX2496 myself all the crossover/eq that I need. Still like to do better high end reasonably. Have I missed a driver lately?
Thanks
Still, after all of these years, I can't find a single driver that covers 600 to 14k better than an old aluminum Peavey 22A. The titanium version doesn't sound nearly as good (or measure as smooth either) I too find this hard to believe. I do need to keep this a 2 way. One must spend 400 to 1k per driver to find such a driver. Other than above tge 14.5 k I have no issues. I have been able DCX2496 myself all the crossover/eq that I need. Still like to do better high end reasonably. Have I missed a driver lately?
Thanks
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Titanium was adopted over aluminum for longevity (less metal fatigue resulting in broken surrounds) more than for smoothness. Titanium HF limits can be higher than aluminum, but with more response peaks.
An example, the aluminum JBL 2420 vs the titanium 2425:
The smoothing in the graphs hide detail, but the trend is visible.
All my aluminum 2420 diaphragm surrounds failed in PA use, after replacing with 2425 diaphragms, that problem went away. Frequency response difference was nothing compared to worrying when the failure was going to happen 😳 .
Most HF driver advancements have been in voice coil power handling, which is mostly irrelevant around 600Hz where displacement limits the output. Increasing the diaphragm to phase plug distance increases displacement, but imposes an acoustical bandpass which reduces HF output.
There may be some HF drivers using a polyester surround diaphragm with smoother response than your old Peavey 22A, but it may be hard to find a 2" diaphragm one inch exit driver with as good low end that has smoother, more extended HF extension.
At any rate, without comparing driver response on the same horn under the same conditions, it would be hard to verify how much improvement is possible between another driver and yours. After comparing a lot of modern drivers to old drivers, my educated guess is it would not amount to much difference.
Art
An example, the aluminum JBL 2420 vs the titanium 2425:
The smoothing in the graphs hide detail, but the trend is visible.
All my aluminum 2420 diaphragm surrounds failed in PA use, after replacing with 2425 diaphragms, that problem went away. Frequency response difference was nothing compared to worrying when the failure was going to happen 😳 .
Most HF driver advancements have been in voice coil power handling, which is mostly irrelevant around 600Hz where displacement limits the output. Increasing the diaphragm to phase plug distance increases displacement, but imposes an acoustical bandpass which reduces HF output.
There may be some HF drivers using a polyester surround diaphragm with smoother response than your old Peavey 22A, but it may be hard to find a 2" diaphragm one inch exit driver with as good low end that has smoother, more extended HF extension.
At any rate, without comparing driver response on the same horn under the same conditions, it would be hard to verify how much improvement is possible between another driver and yours. After comparing a lot of modern drivers to old drivers, my educated guess is it would not amount to much difference.
Art
Well hell! If I cant do better I cant do better. BTW glad to see you still here Weltersys! Since I have been using these aluminum 22a's strictly for hifi use for about 10 years and have tweaked the hell out of my dcx2496 (which I note is now almost a holy grail unit! dcx2496 price has doubled almost.) I suppose my best bet would be to just carefully kludge in a supertweeter with a simple cap and physical alignment. Thanks as always.
It occurs to me I best shut up about this. "These are not the drivers you are searching for" let them pass (-:
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Since we live near enough Meridian we underestimated Hartley Peavy.
Underestimating him always was a mistake. I just didn't realize I was making it. We all had great Peavey PA gear in the 70s and thought it was noisey cheap stuff. It was noisy a bit and it was cheap a lot, but man some of that early gear was well engineered and made. Example: Here in the corner of my dusty store room is an example of the quality of engineering by Peavey in the 60s. This was my coffee table. The last time I hooked a speaker to this, it worked! (-: Hoe do you like round 3" bakelite "sliders" (-"
Underestimating him always was a mistake. I just didn't realize I was making it. We all had great Peavey PA gear in the 70s and thought it was noisey cheap stuff. It was noisy a bit and it was cheap a lot, but man some of that early gear was well engineered and made. Example: Here in the corner of my dusty store room is an example of the quality of engineering by Peavey in the 60s. This was my coffee table. The last time I hooked a speaker to this, it worked! (-: Hoe do you like round 3" bakelite "sliders" (-"
Attachments
When I was mixing rock bands CS-800s were my go-tos, especially for bottom end. Sound check, get the kick drum to just barely light the compression lights on the bass bin amps, build the rest of the drums around the kick, then the rest of the mix around the drummer. Worked every time.
That is a PA-6 must be his first 6 channel. It had screw in legs like furniture! I am going to get it out and clean it up. I bet the filter caps still work.
PA-6a has a reverb tank! Thus the A (I think) They tried to buy it from me but I wasn't selling nothing to thar son-in-law that ruined the company. Find that "hidden boss" show or whatever they called it if you want to get pissed off about America. Grrrrr...
Yep, if you did that you had adequate headroom and just a little hiss that didn't matter. Know how I made my first studio mixing board? A peavey board with the channels busted out and hard wired to each track, but here is the kicker and no one could figure out how I got the noise down....I had a switch...when I recorded or mixed down it was running on batteries, no hum at all (-: That session, in the 70s, my first, before all the Mix Magazine stuff etc was posted on YouTube. May still be (-:
I feel a little younger just reading through this thread. Lol
The Peavey gear I grew up around was pretty awful in terms of build quality but you could drop it down a flight of stairs and it would still work. I did like their replaceable woofer baskets which sadly never caught on to with the other companies. It allowed you to inspect the VC and clean the VC gap, then re-use the driver.
I also love the 22A driver. I wish someone made something comparable for a reasonable amount of money. The Celestion CDX1-1430 is a great Alu driver, but doesn't play down low enough. It does make an amazing HF in a 3 way.
The Peavey gear I grew up around was pretty awful in terms of build quality but you could drop it down a flight of stairs and it would still work. I did like their replaceable woofer baskets which sadly never caught on to with the other companies. It allowed you to inspect the VC and clean the VC gap, then re-use the driver.
I also love the 22A driver. I wish someone made something comparable for a reasonable amount of money. The Celestion CDX1-1430 is a great Alu driver, but doesn't play down low enough. It does make an amazing HF in a 3 way.
I scored a couple of 22A last year on Ebay. I bought them for the used horns. I was saving up for some new RX22 to reuse the horns, but maybe I would be happy with the aluminum originals. I cannot hear above 14 khz, and I will not be using even 30 w treble in my home. 75 w/ch M2600 is loud enough on SP2(2004) to force me to wear earplugs if volume is turned up .
I still have two of these monted on large biradial horns. They were part of a small disco system and when not in use for disco they were used for music listening together with my DIY corner horns some decades ago. Because my hearing was a bit better back then I felt the need for an additional small tweeter. Those were some Audax ring radiators that were crossed over passively. Crossover between bass horn and mif/high was always active. Also at home of course.
Regards
Charles
Regards
Charles
I don't think any of the titanium sound right. You can eq the 22a high end up smoothly with no worries at all for hifi use. You will run yourself out of any reasonable listening room without stressing that driver at all what is it like 108db? You can do as you like.
I and peavey used it down to 500 hz with 12 sb xover on big mfx1 horns in the 70s in pa use! Yes once in a while we popped a driver but not often. Home hifi? You will never pop one.
It happens just about everywhere. I heard that the kids of B&K nearly sunk the company in the mid to late 80s. Luckily it was sold off and saved.
I tried that with my Klipsch LaScalas. I got a pair of Fostex T90As and 0.68mf Clarity Caps. I fiddled around with resistors and ended up with 0.68 ohms but I wasn't completely happy. I was able to get them time aligned easily enough but the soundstage was weird and I couldn't get rid of the comb filter effects.
I ended up swapping the leads so that they're out of phase and I turned them around as ambiance tweeters. I ended up with them pointing mostly out and kinda up and now the imaging is even a bit better than without them and the cymbals have that last bit of sparkle that was missing.
Pete
In the 1970s the 22 driver voice coil used round (from memory it looked like 1mm/18AWG) wire, it could handle 500Hz, but response was completely gone by 10Khz.
When Peavey started using the flat wound voice coil "22A", tightened up the gap and reduced diaphragm to phase plug distance, the top end improved, but they raised the crossover to 600Hz.
The 22A "flat desirable response" still needed around +10dB at 15kHz to sound "crisp" 😉
I mixed on a PA9 back in 1974, the PA-6 brought back memories of when I could easily hear differences in driver HF response...
Art
