There is an easy solution to your question.
Do what I did; stop talking and build some speakers.
I was curious about single drivers, and built a pair of Frugel-Horn 3's with Mark Audio CHR-3 speakers. Total cost, about $150 for the pair. Here is my opinions;
Sound Quality - very good, up to moderate listening levels. The bass is solid to about 50 hz. I actually preferred the sound without a subwoofer. With the sub, the bass was lower, but not as clean. High frequencies are great, no added tweeter needed. Midrange is spectacular, and the imaging is excellent! It took a very expensive set of multi-way speakers to image better than my modest full rangers.
If you want to play very loud music, or DBX movie soundtracks, the speakers I built are not the ones for you. This is not a fault of full range drivers as a whole, but the limitation of the volume attainable from a single 4" driver.
If you want to do critical listening, you may find that single drivers work for you. It depends on the type of music you listen to, the room they are in, the quality of your electronics, and the sound you want to hear.
I was surprised at the quality of sound I got from the speakers I built. They have been loaned out, and everybody has been impressed by them. Yes, $4000 multi way speakers sound better, but at moderate volumes, the difference wasn't that great, which is impressive considering that I used Mark-Audio's cheapest drivers.
Nobody can tell you if single drivers will work for you. Every type of speaker is a different set of compromises. It's not that expensive to find out.
My final (for now) results;
I have actually gone back to using my vintage Ohm 2 speakers in my system. That was not because of a fault in the full rangers, but in my room with the type of listening I do, mainly background and TV sound, the Ohm's worked better for me. Your opinion may be different.
It would be nice to have the space for 2 systems, one for critical listening, and one for general sound.
As I said in the beginning, I recommend that you should stop typing, stop reading my long-winded rant, and simply build yourself a set.
Do what I did; stop talking and build some speakers.
I was curious about single drivers, and built a pair of Frugel-Horn 3's with Mark Audio CHR-3 speakers. Total cost, about $150 for the pair. Here is my opinions;
Sound Quality - very good, up to moderate listening levels. The bass is solid to about 50 hz. I actually preferred the sound without a subwoofer. With the sub, the bass was lower, but not as clean. High frequencies are great, no added tweeter needed. Midrange is spectacular, and the imaging is excellent! It took a very expensive set of multi-way speakers to image better than my modest full rangers.
If you want to play very loud music, or DBX movie soundtracks, the speakers I built are not the ones for you. This is not a fault of full range drivers as a whole, but the limitation of the volume attainable from a single 4" driver.
If you want to do critical listening, you may find that single drivers work for you. It depends on the type of music you listen to, the room they are in, the quality of your electronics, and the sound you want to hear.
I was surprised at the quality of sound I got from the speakers I built. They have been loaned out, and everybody has been impressed by them. Yes, $4000 multi way speakers sound better, but at moderate volumes, the difference wasn't that great, which is impressive considering that I used Mark-Audio's cheapest drivers.
Nobody can tell you if single drivers will work for you. Every type of speaker is a different set of compromises. It's not that expensive to find out.
My final (for now) results;
I have actually gone back to using my vintage Ohm 2 speakers in my system. That was not because of a fault in the full rangers, but in my room with the type of listening I do, mainly background and TV sound, the Ohm's worked better for me. Your opinion may be different.
It would be nice to have the space for 2 systems, one for critical listening, and one for general sound.
As I said in the beginning, I recommend that you should stop typing, stop reading my long-winded rant, and simply build yourself a set.
4k for a multiway? You can easily build a top class multi way for 1k
For me, the buggestest diff comes from the weight, the size, the sheerpower from a multi way
Even at low level, you still feel the bass and the sound fills the room conpletely where a FR is more intimate, small delicate
For me, the buggestest diff comes from the weight, the size, the sheerpower from a multi way
Even at low level, you still feel the bass and the sound fills the room conpletely where a FR is more intimate, small delicate
"single drivers with bass support" IS a 2-way . . . you're just arguing for a lower crossover frequency than most use (and possibly a lower maximum SPL). There are a number of nominally 3-3.5 inch "full range" drivers that work very well from 300-500 Hz up and perform very well with co-located "bass support". And the older you get the less you care about "tweeters" . . . 😉
"Why 4 inch is out of the question
Why first order doesnt work "
->major difficulties, basic stuff
- good high end - small diameter -good dispersion
- good low end - large diameter - low distortion
4" fr is doable, but has beaming high end, goodish bass at moderate levels
First order (electric) often leads to distortion problems, even if a 3" is crossed at 500Hz or dome crossed at 2kHz
All in all - what do we want?
High spl capability, low distortion, wide treble dispersion, smooth power response -->multiway or econowave
Moderate spl, using a subwoofer, listening nearfield, solo listening -->Fr or conventional 2-way monitor
Why first order doesnt work "
->major difficulties, basic stuff
- good high end - small diameter -good dispersion
- good low end - large diameter - low distortion
4" fr is doable, but has beaming high end, goodish bass at moderate levels
First order (electric) often leads to distortion problems, even if a 3" is crossed at 500Hz or dome crossed at 2kHz
All in all - what do we want?
High spl capability, low distortion, wide treble dispersion, smooth power response -->multiway or econowave
Moderate spl, using a subwoofer, listening nearfield, solo listening -->Fr or conventional 2-way monitor
We have built a couple counter-examples. FF85wKeN + 4 Peerless 830870eN, 1st order XO at 240 Hz is very good, Alpair 7.3eN + 2 SDX7eN at 160 Hz is even better.
dave
Distortion behaviour is important feature of small fullranges, to determine xo point.
Here is a link to Zaph's measurements Zaph|Audio
This is Fountek FR88-EX (3"), one of the best
Here is a link to Zaph's measurements Zaph|Audio
This is Fountek FR88-EX (3"), one of the best
Unless outrageous measured speaker distortion is meaningless (see Geddes).
FR88ex is OK, i wouldn't call it one of the best.
dave
FR88ex is OK, i wouldn't call it one of the best.
dave
That was the proposal. I asked for driver recommendations based on the specific goals I've re-stated several times in this thread. Surely I don't need to do it again? Nobody should have any reason to be talking about bass in this thread, really, as the whole thing was about treble. I even proposed buying a specific thing to start the experiment in post #80.
I didn't ask.
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Dumptruck,
In post #31 you wrote:
"The idea is to try to find a single-driver speaker that...
- people seem to like for at least some sort of hifi purpose.
- at least some people expect can't be improved for its purpose, subjectively and/or objectively, with a tweeter and passive filter.
- I can afford to play with.
Then, the idea is to try to improve it with a tweeter and passive filter anyway, and see how easy/hard/impossible that proves to be for myself and anyone else playing along. "
It sounds like you are looking for a good mid-range device.
A purpose designed midrange does not require all the compromises made to make a "full range" driver work over a wide band, why are you looking at "full range" rather than mid- range?
Have you stated the frequency range and SPL you want the mid-range driver to cover?
Art
Because many people seem to think that the best small FR drivers have some advantages over an equivalently small 2-way. I want to investigate that by attempting to improve (already discussed the word "improve") such favorite FR drivers with a tweeter and passive filter. It makes perfect sense as an experiment. You correctly point out why it doesn't make sense as a concept for a good design from scratch. I also mentioned this, in post #1:
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- Hypothesis: there is no point to small FR drivers other than making for simple builds, because they could always be better with a tweeter, in which case you would use a different midwoofer, probably.
- Test: what this thread is about.
To me, "my little 2-way sounds better than your little 1-way" (or vice versa) is a lot less interesting than "check it out, it's the same speaker as a 2-way, you can try it too", and if you disagree on changes being an improvement, we could discuss why, try another iteration, etc. If you think a different FR driver would make things different, could move on to a different FR driver. Am I really the only one that thinks this is a perfectly logical and interesting experiment?
- Test: what this thread is about.
To me, "my little 2-way sounds better than your little 1-way" (or vice versa) is a lot less interesting than "check it out, it's the same speaker as a 2-way, you can try it too", and if you disagree on changes being an improvement, we could discuss why, try another iteration, etc. If you think a different FR driver would make things different, could move on to a different FR driver. Am I really the only one that thinks this is a perfectly logical and interesting experiment?
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It is an -excellent- experiment. There are a lot of nice widebanders which are improved by a tweeter or even just a filter (e.g., Fostex FE168E-Sigma has a ~7kHz peak on axis). So we know that there are definitely some drivers which do benefit.
The challenge is to propose one which is so good that it arguably can't benefit. And then let's see if that's true. The driver to beat (as I mentioned) would be the Mark Audio Alpair 7.3. It uses state-of-the-art techniques, it's often ranked among the best, it has a big following and it's reasonably priced.
The challenge is to propose one which is so good that it arguably can't benefit. And then let's see if that's true. The driver to beat (as I mentioned) would be the Mark Audio Alpair 7.3. It uses state-of-the-art techniques, it's often ranked among the best, it has a big following and it's reasonably priced.
Yes, like the Fostex FF125WK or CSS EL70
OTOH there are wide banders that are improved not by a tweeter but by a woofer, like the Fostex FE83 or the MA CHR-70.
dumptruck, how many wide range drivers have you listened to or done a side by side with a small two way? All my life I thought similar to you but with the newer drivers, I can get great listening pleasure from a single driver system done right. The bedroom system is the FH3 box and the MA 70's and I am not wanting at all. Great combination especially for the bedroom where it's not ever going to get that loud.
Yes, exactly. I don't suppose there's a prefab cabinet I might use for those? I am pretty slow on the cabinet building, and I don't have anything in the 8-12 liter size that seems to be recommended. That's why I suggested the cheap Fostex sets from Madisound with an additional driver option, but the 4" one looks like it's still too small for that Alpair (only around 3.3 liter).
None side by side, and only a handful alone (mostly Fostex).
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The 10-14 litre curved PE cabs would be suitable, not perfect but much better than the rectangular alternates.
dave
I'm currently building something that may apply here.
Use the Airborne FR151-22F and RT-4101 drivers.
I call it Fenghuang, and it uses the PE 0.23ft^3 knock-down cabs.
Sealed F3 is 64Hz.
The xover for the units as I have it modeled is 7.4kHz.
Let me know if you are interested,
Wolf
I guess I'm getting into this thread late, but is the discussion still ongoing or have you decided on drivers? Also, I haven't seen any mention of what tweeter you're thinking about?
I think this is an interesting proposition and it's something I'm currently dabbling with. Except just as a supertweeter right now. rolled off 2nd order and still experimenting with points. I just received a pair of Dayton Audio AMT Mini-8 Air Motion Transformer Tweeter for this purpose. It's got decent dispersion and really can't be crossed below about 5K, though for this, I'm crossing above 10K. Another nice feature is they're small so you can get C2C pretty tight. Right now they're actually on a pair of 2.5 ways with a pretty nice tweeter and surprisingly they bring something to the table in a good way.
I've built a few stand mounts using CHR-70, CHP-70 and FF85wk. The CHR and Fostex have really nice and extended treble, but I think they're a little lacking in off axis response. Small sweet spot and a bit of a veil as I move around the room. I haven't tried it yet, but I personally believe that maybe they could be improved with a well implemented tweeter (not a super tweeter, but a 2 way crossover) that didn't ruin their vivid and realistic presentation.
Anyways, I understand what you're proposing here and it sounds interesting. Can you tell me what drivers you're going to use. I may be interested in working along with you, but I don't want to spend the money if I'm not interested in the drivers. I'm pretty quick with the saw/router and I have the ability to measure FR etc., though I'm still learning that science.
I think i'd be a good learning experience and it could give others some ideas for a new project.
I think this is an interesting proposition and it's something I'm currently dabbling with. Except just as a supertweeter right now. rolled off 2nd order and still experimenting with points. I just received a pair of Dayton Audio AMT Mini-8 Air Motion Transformer Tweeter for this purpose. It's got decent dispersion and really can't be crossed below about 5K, though for this, I'm crossing above 10K. Another nice feature is they're small so you can get C2C pretty tight. Right now they're actually on a pair of 2.5 ways with a pretty nice tweeter and surprisingly they bring something to the table in a good way.
I've built a few stand mounts using CHR-70, CHP-70 and FF85wk. The CHR and Fostex have really nice and extended treble, but I think they're a little lacking in off axis response. Small sweet spot and a bit of a veil as I move around the room. I haven't tried it yet, but I personally believe that maybe they could be improved with a well implemented tweeter (not a super tweeter, but a 2 way crossover) that didn't ruin their vivid and realistic presentation.
Anyways, I understand what you're proposing here and it sounds interesting. Can you tell me what drivers you're going to use. I may be interested in working along with you, but I don't want to spend the money if I'm not interested in the drivers. I'm pretty quick with the saw/router and I have the ability to measure FR etc., though I'm still learning that science.
I think i'd be a good learning experience and it could give others some ideas for a new project.
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