HF1440 New Ring Compression Driver from Faital Pro.

Yep the horn has to have a larger throat in this case. Not that difficult to cnc mill the adapter and match the throat I think. The same guy makes the horn and adapters for me so he can check they match very good.

Yuichi has also made a design for throat adapter for td-4003 driver (1,5" pancake driver to a 2" horn) for the yuichi a-290 horn.
 
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At least the Yuichi a290 is meticulously designed for td-4001's internal flare rate and the inner geometry for 2" throat which feeds the horn. But if wished, the throat adapter for smaller pancake driver could be made directly to the horn instead of making a detachable unit.
 
Descriptions can be a bit confusing.

Many drivers exist with a removable conical exit section/throat adapter, i.e. 18Sound 20.., the old EV DH1A, RCF ND950 etc.
However, conical adapters are just one part of the driver. Such drivers, once the snout is removed, may look like pancake drivers, but there's more to it.
The design of phase plug channels, rear chamber, motor structure etc. are just as important and may affect compression ratio and the wavefront a.o.

I think JBL contributed to 'the confusion' with the introduction of the "Optimized Aperture Horns and Low Distortion Drivers".
The fact is, acknowledged even by JBL engineers, that the later (pancake) drivers - like the 2451, perform differently with with classic horns than the old WE 594A-derived 244. drivers.

That said, the HF1440 with an appropriate 1.4 to 2" adapter should work with an Arai horn, though ideally you'd redesign the horn to match the HF1440's exit.
Why? When using an adapter there are 2 conical (tube-like) sections in the horn path. First the transition of the HF1440's 1.4" exit tube to 2" by means of the adapter, followed by another more or less straight section in the first part of the Arai horn. This is (potentially) a source of interference.
 
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At least the Yuichi a290 is meticulously designed for td-4001's internal flare rate and the inner geometry for 2" throat which feeds the horn. But if wished, the throat adapter for smaller pancake driver could be made directly to the horn instead of making a detachable unit.
The problem is that a simple conical adapter is not a good match either to the driver or to the horn, as far as I can see. If there's a flat wavefront at the exit of HF1440 (we don't know but it seems plausible), you have to make some other flare than conical, but to continue with this same flare seamlessly also at the adapter-horn interface won't be that easy, IMHO. That would be my concern but obviously you can just ignore it completely and enjoy the sound :)
 
Going back to the original sentence - "Usually pancake drivers don't go well with classic horn types that have slow initial expansion, but this largely depends on the design of the phase plug."

I simply don't understand what is meant by "don't go well" here. What doesn't go well?

Is the HF1440 a pancake driver or not? :)


This statement is partly based on experiences within the JBL community.
The later large format 'pancake' JBL drivers (2451 etc.) were specifically designed for the Optimized Aperture Horns, i.e. fast opening waveguides.
You'll find the phase plugs of these drivers are different from the old 244. drivers.
Here's where confusion starts, because many modern drivers (with a dome shaped diaphragms) look like pancakes, the DE250 being an example. However most of these drivers still have a conical exit section with (often) a narrow exit angle and a conventional phase plug with circumferential straight slits.

I wouldn't consider the HF1440 a pancake driver. Due to its annular diaphragm and therefore deviating phase plug it's a different kind of driver altogether.
 
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This will be a good learning exp. for me regarding the Yuichi horn and other drivers in it than tad. I like my 1" throat OS horns (in hORNS/Autotech Mummy), cant really blame them, but theres something in the Yuichi horns. They are basically 5 expo multicell horns feeding the hyperbolic mouth (the "lips"). The sound doesn't localize to the throat of the horn, more like the whole mouth is making the sound and the source feels bigger and "natural". Like a line array or a woofer matrix, where you cant point the sound source like with a single direct radiator. Very even sounding also with tad, and fills the room quite good and the balance is not "broken" to any angle.

I have begun to thought also that if the Faitals are not the "final" word in the high registers (but very good middle band), I might go Yuichi mids + some other horn producing highs route if I don't want to go the tad route again in this speaker (just for the sake of variation/different).

I would know an almost perfect mids driver, the truextent beryllium in a nice motor. That dome is better in the mids imo even than TAD, but TAD wins hands down in a 2-way application with it's much more lifelike sound, tonality and transient ability. Truextent is muffled in comparison. But the plastic surround beryllium is very good in the mid band, like an electrostat speaker with breathtaking separation and ink black background. Maybe something like up to 5khz would be it's best band.

But back to Faitals, next week they arrive:). I wont have the throat adapters then, but I cannot wait to test somehow I'm sure of it:). Might give them hell (high spl burn-in against a pillow) for couple of hours to loose them a bit.:D
 
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Legis, your threads are very interesting audiophile journeys and I envy your know-how about tube amps as well as passive crossovers.
One of your copper foil Miflex caps is probably 5x more expensive than the loudspeaker management system I bought yesterday ;)
(admittedly, I bought it used for about 8% of the actual retail price).

Your explanation of the differences between Yuichi horns and waveguides makes sense and is shared by many people. For the same reasons quite a few people appreciate multicellular horns.

However, I do think mabat's ATH4 horns outperform many older waveguides, but in the end it's a matter of preferences and trade-offs.
 
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As I see it: One of the most important properties of a waveguide, i.e. the pattern control towards low frequencies, is limited by the smallest dimension of the device (and is completely independent of a driver used). This is the limitation I see for these waveguides. You would probably want to use the driver lower than to about 1 kHz of which these waveguides are really capable of without significant pattern control issues. For that you would need something larger.
 
Imo the HR..40A-series are Keele's masterpieces.
Contrary to the first HR-series, there's no constriction in the throat section, but a transition in the vertical plane from 33mm at the throat to 38mm, where the radial section begins.

You probably don't want to ruin your precious horns, otherwise you could just cut the throat at 35.8 mm. Still, even with an adapter - which introduces a minor constriction, I'm quite sure the HF1440 goes well with that horn.

Dieses wirst du erkennen, nehme ich an? ;)
 

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