Fullrange drivers. Price/Quality

Thought of starting a thread about getting a good sound in relation to the price.
Here you can perform any drivers. Cheap or expensive that you think works well in the box construction you have chosen.
Extra fun if you've created something that doesn't cost much.
Feel free to make a list of drivers that you think will be good in relation to the price.
Drivers on a budget.
 
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So many drivers, even more opinions. Not sure what direction this thread is going to take.

I will venture to start with a driver + box combination that really impressed me. I am sharing this because it is a budget project for anyone who would like to venture into full range territory, looking for a budget driver and relatively simple box to build - yet sounds amazing. It was available as a commercial product a few years back. Kudos to Bjorn for sharing this with us.
(6) KVART & BØLGE | Facebook

The driver – 3” Peerless P830987
Peerless by Tymphany 830987 3" Full-Range Woofer (parts-express.com)

The box – a nice slim floorstander TL
TABAQ TL for Tang Band | diyAudio
 
Mark Audio CHN-50. 4L boxes with 6mm plywood. Cuboctohedron shape: cube with triangles in the corners, making it a 14 sided figure with softer angles to reduce diffraction compared to 6 sided figures. Cutting the ply at carefully calculated angles was, shall we say, rewarding! The cones are very delicate and have already suffered a lot of minor damage from handling, so I'd recommend a grill of some sort.

Future enhancements: suspend the boxes on strings with a cute little stand to decouple them from whatever surface they're sitting on. The ~1kg boxes have some unavoidable dipole output because of physics.

Look into soft-saturated bass boost / limiting. The idea is: if bass hits Xmax, IMD severely limits overall speaker output levels, but if the bass is soft-saturated and limited somewhat below Xmax, the upper registers have more overhead to stay clean without modulation.
 
Only one answer for me: FaitalPro 3FE25, or for the slightly less budget conscious the 3FE22. Pop it in the custom alignment produced by Bjorn for his TABAQ design, as linked by @twocents above. If you like, use my folding found in that thread. Do without baffle step comp and pop them on the floor against a wall, in a FAST/WAW or if you don't need too much bass, a little EQ boost for the bottom end. With reclaimed wood for the boxes, I have built these for less than £30 a pair.

For a slightly more expensive but much more complete option, put a Tang Band W5-2143 in the correct TABAQ alignment. The resulting speakers are amazing...
 
I luckily found after long search decent fullrange loudspeakers for little money.
They were sold as a rest and are out of production.

15cm fullrange which goes up to 12khz.
An 8 cm fullrange with Faraday ring which goes up to 18khz in a ready plastic bass reflex box. Drivers for only for 2,5 Euro each. I still own some dozens of them.

What I do is covering their paper diaphragms with aluminium foil one or both sides.

Now I use current drive amplifiers which makes fullrange drivers sound much better in frequency response and distortion behaviour

I like Pioneer polypropylen fullrange drivers made for car Hifi, they are good value for money if used with current drive amplifiers as already the diaphragm has a high sonic quality

See link

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...n-to-current-drive.389985/page-5#post-7152244

Here I also discuss current drive amps like TDA2003. But Rasmussen offers a nice schematic with a better chip Amp.
 
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Here some fotos of cheap fullrange drivers covered with aluminium foil.

I also got some oval ones, also with faraday ring, the small drivers are from JVC and they made them for televisions named "RSP ...." .
 

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I agree on CHN-50 (i put in 2.5 litre reflex, 4 is likely too big), the Faital is good (i tried the neo version), but the box is trickier. My favorites in that size are FF85wk and Alpair 5.2/3 (CHN-50 surprisingly close to these), but they are harder to put into the quality/price thing (althou quality is high, and price is not outrageous — we spent more on caps for the passive XO for the A7.3/A12pw MTM.

Let me add CHN-110. An absolute steal.

dave
 
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My foray into full-range...sounds beyond my expectations. As one who used this driver way way back in 1984 for my car, it always impressed me, the Radio Shack 40-1284 five inch driver.
Since then, this driver had been experimented with extensively, trying to squeeze its performance at its best. What others had found was a 17 liter aperiodic enclosure...it worked great...but sucks up power with its low Db rating. Considering such low sensitivity, that three-inch driver noted here would be even worse & should be used only for a desktop application.
At less than $20 each NOS, truly a bargain.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick...
 

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Mark Audio CHN110 is the price/quality king for me. Almost as good as the alpair 10.3 (difference is subtile) but very cheap. And i think the Mark Audio Alpair 10.3 is also very cheap for what it delivers, certainly if you compare to other and their pricing. Idem with the Fane Sovereign 12-250TC for the big size fullrange drivers.
 
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That's a tough one as I have used them quite a way apart, so any comparison in that respect is meaningless. I used them in an ML-TQWP as well as in a 2 way OB and they sounded nice in both. Equally the CHP-90 Mica sounded lovely in the FH3, albeit as warned, restrained. I am sure they will shine in Scotmoose's bespoke design for them (BlueBuck). I just need to find the time to build them.
 
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