"Full-range" v. 2-way: a group challenge?

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Er, you won't find a wideband drive unit that is 'pistonic' (itself a slightly nebulous concept) much over ~3KHz. They, & midrange units, employ controlled oscillation of the cone substrate or any additions (e.g. secondary cones) to produce the higher registers. How well controlled is of course the point.
 
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I'm late to this thread it would seem but I'll add my $0.02 anyway. My current speakers are ML-TQWT and they use a Jordan jx92s driver.
I have bass down to 40HZ, a midrange to die for and a smooth natural sounding top end. The top end is just there without drawing attention to itself. Are there better speakers out there? I'm sure there are. Would everybody love my speakers? probably not, for starters they don't "sound hifi".
For all their simplicity they are still some of the most musical speakers I've heard regardless of price. Fullrangers can most certainly go toe to toe with more common multi-way designs but there are compromises that can't be ignored.
I will build new speakers, partly because I want more and partly because I love building stuff. It pains me that I'll have to leave them behind in my upcoming move, they really are wonderful speakers.
 
Are there better speakers out there?

From my experience yes. All 3 sets of JX92s i've had (all post-VIFA), had am edge on the top that i found made them hard to listen to. The Jordan-inspired original Alpair 10 had a similar but less intense edge. The newer Alpairs i'd put ahead of the JX92 (and at least in North America, cost less too)

dave
 
Funny you should mention that edge to the top. I'll admit they are usually recommended with a heavy toe in and that's how I do it myself as well. But even listening to them on axis I've never experienced them as harsh, nor has my friends or other people auditioning them. If anything the comments have usually been about missing that extra sparkle on top.
Maybe I just got lucky with the drivers or maybe it's the cabinets? Never had anything even resembling an edge on top.
From my experience yes.
Well, duh...
 
I'm late to this thread it would seem but I'll add my $0.02 anyway. My current speakers are ML-TQWT and they use a Jordan jx92s driver.
I have bass down to 40HZ, a midrange to die for and a smooth natural sounding top end. The top end is just there without drawing attention to itself. Are there better speakers out there? I'm sure there are. Would everybody love my speakers? probably not, for starters they don't "sound hifi".
For all their simplicity they are still some of the most musical speakers I've heard regardless of price. Fullrangers can most certainly go toe to toe with more common multi-way designs but there are compromises that can't be ignored.
I will build new speakers, partly because I want more and partly because I love building stuff. It pains me that I'll have to leave them behind in my upcoming move, they really are wonderful speakers.

Here's a build that I found that uses a tweeter with that Jordan

Sheldon’s World jx-92
 
Yeah, anywho I just wanted to share. It's possible to get nice sounding speakers with fullrange drivers. 🙂

P.S. To me most commercial speakers sound harsh in tweeter with a clear overaccentuation in the treble. There are no doubt differences in perception.
 
Yeah, anywho I just wanted to share. It's possible to get nice sounding speakers with fullrange drivers. 🙂

P.S. To me most commercial speakers sound harsh in tweeter with a clear overaccentuation in the treble. There are no doubt differences in perception.

I agree that most commercial speakers sound harsh in the treble. I think it's a mixture of tweeter attenuation, crossover quality and component quality. I think that's one of the reasons most of us are here; to get smooth, low distortion speakers without having to spend 5k and up
 
Nobody is late to this thread really, because it is supposed to be an ongoing experiment and hasn't even started yet. I think maybe I should start a fresh thread once it gets down to real speakers and measurements, though? I dunno.

Anyway, I've ordered the KANSPEA Fostex FF105WK "kit", and singles of the latest MA Alpair 7A and 6A, and we'll see what happens. "But how will you evaluate the imaging with singles", you say? Well, from my experience and opinions on polar response and in-room image perceptions, but don't worry about it. I'll move to a pair if/when that seems like a good idea, and if you were playing along, you could have two and report! 😉
 
I'm genuinely eager to hear it. The next hurdle for posting about the MA drivers is the extensive break in lore. I haven't decided if I'm just going to do what the manual says and start after that, or try to measure before-during-after. I usually just run some near-xmax signals in free air for 8 hours or so and call it done, but I don't want to get a hard time for doing it wrong here.
 
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