I had a friend some years ago who reacted strongly to my AN10 in 41Hz tuned bass reflex cabinets. His home speakers were some mid-line 3-way Infinity with 12" woofer. His gesture hearing my AN10 was to toss the box out the window 😀
16K for a 10" fullrange in a TQWT is indeed way overpriced. But that is the hi end hifi market in general I'm affraid. And i could not think in any way that i would pay that for such a speaker, even if i was a billionaire...
It's us lot that are the weird crazy people.
Most people look at us and wonder why we bother spending time looking at driver specs and material properties, running simulations and analyzing our speakers with all kinds of weird graphs.
Most people look at us and wonder why we bother spending time looking at driver specs and material properties, running simulations and analyzing our speakers with all kinds of weird graphs.
I'm not sure what the topic was trying to explain/show/uncover but I did take a good look at the video and more importantly on the information available on the driver (called Cube F10 Neo) in order to have a second opinion (my own in this case) on the matter judging on what was available (I don't own a pair...).
About the people in the video - well... they are not the kind that have or have owned let's say 50 pairs of full range speakers to reflect the matter in the right way, at least that's my impression, there are also bold claims - "the most perfect speaker available today" at 1:55... if you are past the age of 17 you know that is not how the world works, the man saying those words seems to be slightly older than 17. Another thing - 92 db suppose to be high sensitivity? for a 10 inch full range unit? no, that's not a statistic reality... aaaanyway I don't have time to rewatch the video a third time just to find out how many things of this nature (children drawings vs grownup drawings) can be heard in the video.
So here is my take - I cannot guess what made a good impression on those people, the fact that they didn't knew about high fidelity full range speakers .. perhaps... or it's something special about this one... but the reality is that a transmission line of that size and shape is not something unusual for a speaker of this type, for example Davis MV-ONE is in the same area, not to mention all those DIY named enclosures (TABAQ for example) that are very similar for drivers with Qts above 0.3 to 0.6, because if it's lower you are going to see them in a horn, you must do that in order to have some decent bass output. This Cube driver has a Qts of 0.43. The magnetic structure is impressive - 1.4 kg of neo magnet - but there is a problem - why is the Qts so high - if the magnet is so strong? Well because they melted an anvil and made the cone out it - according to my calculation (not sure they are exact) it's 34 grams, which for an anvil is very very very light but this is the cone of a fullrange driver and for that... let me put it this way - a Fostex light paper cone would have been about half the weight (basic mathematics Mms/Sd)... in fact the statistics put it in the almost bass driver category when it comes to this ratio. I beg the question what happens to the details in all that mass... as it turns out the mechanics of the suspension does conserve the energy - look at the Qms - 17.8 - extremely high! I don't know what that does to the sound, but I do like what they did with the suspension (non spider thing); Voxativ seem to have the complete opposite - very low Qms... and those are high end too. Another positive thing is the extremely low inductance, due to some kind of Faraday ring, an attribute of well designed drivers (the underhung voicecoil is also from the same score). These parameters suggest that if properly designed the driver (cone) can and will have a flatish frequency response (large mass means you can control easier the resonances), including decent bass... but then there is the old problem of the offaxis response that cannot be "conquered" with a large cone...
Anyway... at least on paper it does not look out of this world special and that anvil moving mass does not look good; but I would like to have a chat with the designer of the driver and offcourse a listening session with material of my choise. Maybe they do sound very very good...
About the price - I don't care that much since I would not buy them - but on a different perspective, something I have heard about very expensive stuff - "it's not expensive if you can afford it"... to which I add "if you can't afford it forget about it".
About the people in the video - well... they are not the kind that have or have owned let's say 50 pairs of full range speakers to reflect the matter in the right way, at least that's my impression, there are also bold claims - "the most perfect speaker available today" at 1:55... if you are past the age of 17 you know that is not how the world works, the man saying those words seems to be slightly older than 17. Another thing - 92 db suppose to be high sensitivity? for a 10 inch full range unit? no, that's not a statistic reality... aaaanyway I don't have time to rewatch the video a third time just to find out how many things of this nature (children drawings vs grownup drawings) can be heard in the video.
So here is my take - I cannot guess what made a good impression on those people, the fact that they didn't knew about high fidelity full range speakers .. perhaps... or it's something special about this one... but the reality is that a transmission line of that size and shape is not something unusual for a speaker of this type, for example Davis MV-ONE is in the same area, not to mention all those DIY named enclosures (TABAQ for example) that are very similar for drivers with Qts above 0.3 to 0.6, because if it's lower you are going to see them in a horn, you must do that in order to have some decent bass output. This Cube driver has a Qts of 0.43. The magnetic structure is impressive - 1.4 kg of neo magnet - but there is a problem - why is the Qts so high - if the magnet is so strong? Well because they melted an anvil and made the cone out it - according to my calculation (not sure they are exact) it's 34 grams, which for an anvil is very very very light but this is the cone of a fullrange driver and for that... let me put it this way - a Fostex light paper cone would have been about half the weight (basic mathematics Mms/Sd)... in fact the statistics put it in the almost bass driver category when it comes to this ratio. I beg the question what happens to the details in all that mass... as it turns out the mechanics of the suspension does conserve the energy - look at the Qms - 17.8 - extremely high! I don't know what that does to the sound, but I do like what they did with the suspension (non spider thing); Voxativ seem to have the complete opposite - very low Qms... and those are high end too. Another positive thing is the extremely low inductance, due to some kind of Faraday ring, an attribute of well designed drivers (the underhung voicecoil is also from the same score). These parameters suggest that if properly designed the driver (cone) can and will have a flatish frequency response (large mass means you can control easier the resonances), including decent bass... but then there is the old problem of the offaxis response that cannot be "conquered" with a large cone...
Anyway... at least on paper it does not look out of this world special and that anvil moving mass does not look good; but I would like to have a chat with the designer of the driver and offcourse a listening session with material of my choise. Maybe they do sound very very good...
About the price - I don't care that much since I would not buy them - but on a different perspective, something I have heard about very expensive stuff - "it's not expensive if you can afford it"... to which I add "if you can't afford it forget about it".
The Cube drivers went up 3-4x when they went to distribution.
The recommended TQWTs on Cube’s site, look like they use classic design methodology and are not properly modeled so very likely suboptimal.
dave
The recommended TQWTs on Cube’s site, look like they use classic design methodology and are not properly modeled so very likely suboptimal.
dave
Cube F10 Neo driver USD $5600.00/pair
they make a smaller F8 Neo driver $4700.00
FWIW, Nelson Pass had been playing around with the $2800/pair F8 Magnus drivers.
The AVShowrooms reviewer and website founder Peter Breuninger is an audio reviewer who has written for The Absolute Sound and other HiFi mags. He also was one of the first writers to bring Triodes into the HiFi media. As the leader of The Philadelphia Audio Society, Peter organized SET and PP Triode Amplification symposiums in Philadelphia in the 1990s, bringing top engineers and designers from around the world along with their gear ranging from the affordable to the unobtainium for us audiophiles of all walks of life to audition in ballroom settings in Philadelphia. He has likely heard and has had in his home for review far more systems including ultra HighEnd systems than most of us. But he is a writer/reviewer, not a DIY person building a full range design of drivers that interest us. Also, let's face it, wideband single driver-based commercial products are a very niche market, so yes I'm sure many here have more experience with single wideband drivers.
they make a smaller F8 Neo driver $4700.00
FWIW, Nelson Pass had been playing around with the $2800/pair F8 Magnus drivers.
The AVShowrooms reviewer and website founder Peter Breuninger is an audio reviewer who has written for The Absolute Sound and other HiFi mags. He also was one of the first writers to bring Triodes into the HiFi media. As the leader of The Philadelphia Audio Society, Peter organized SET and PP Triode Amplification symposiums in Philadelphia in the 1990s, bringing top engineers and designers from around the world along with their gear ranging from the affordable to the unobtainium for us audiophiles of all walks of life to audition in ballroom settings in Philadelphia. He has likely heard and has had in his home for review far more systems including ultra HighEnd systems than most of us. But he is a writer/reviewer, not a DIY person building a full range design of drivers that interest us. Also, let's face it, wideband single driver-based commercial products are a very niche market, so yes I'm sure many here have more experience with single wideband drivers.
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AER based
YouTube
YouTube
YouTube
Voxativ
YouTube
Fostex
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3LM_-m2GM
Camerton Audio Binom 1 Loudspeakers (single wideband driver)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16T3jSV1o6w
Meyer Tonapparate YONNA (97 dB) is a wide range with the backloaded horn, opening to the floor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpgKdc26gVw
Rethm Bhava Speakers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp7gWLRjDk8
Lowther (Teresonic Audio)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gbd_tDn_aE
...sure, HiFi show but I think it's safe to say Peter has heard his share of FullRange single driver speaker systems.
YouTube
YouTube
YouTube
Voxativ
YouTube
Fostex
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3LM_-m2GM
Camerton Audio Binom 1 Loudspeakers (single wideband driver)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16T3jSV1o6w
Meyer Tonapparate YONNA (97 dB) is a wide range with the backloaded horn, opening to the floor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpgKdc26gVw
Rethm Bhava Speakers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp7gWLRjDk8
Lowther (Teresonic Audio)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gbd_tDn_aE
...sure, HiFi show but I think it's safe to say Peter has heard his share of FullRange single driver speaker systems.
Please read up on phenolic damper and understand how their design are implementation before making such sweeping statement.
I don't understand why so many people start to commenting the driver design and yet none never even tried designing or make a speaker driver from scratch.
TS measurments of F10 neo drivers in-room / Nenuphar cabinets
F10 neo Fullrange Drivers
F10 Neo DIY cabinet plan https://02637fff-b463-452b-ba09-792...d/dbb9c8_37860c1d840c492fb83707adcf9e20cd.pdf
... What do you mean? I can probably make my raw un-eq'd 15" Fane 15-300TC graphs look like that with 1/4th oct smoothing and 10db/div on a drawn out narrow slit type picture.
Only thing is, I think the 15" will be better to listen to because the "hot spot" up top is narrower. With this 10" you have a ca 15db(?) hot 0-15º dispersion, but on 30-60º it looks pretty smooth compared to the rest of the frequency spectrum.
Only thing is, I think the 15" will be better to listen to because the "hot spot" up top is narrower. With this 10" you have a ca 15db(?) hot 0-15º dispersion, but on 30-60º it looks pretty smooth compared to the rest of the frequency spectrum.
Looking at the construction I didn't think it would achieve +/-15dB from 100 to 10KHz. I didn't realise it was 1/4 Octave smoothed though.
For me the price point would demand +/-3dB over the same frequency range at the listening position.
For me the price point would demand +/-3dB over the same frequency range at the listening position.
Agreed. I would expect them to tame the "hot spot" somehow, without sacrificing off axis performance.
Though it should be mentioned that Lowther also is a bit hot in higher frequencies. If this is a driver competing in the same market I guess the price is "reasonable".
I'm happy listening to my cheap 15".
Feel free to post any links on the matter of phenolic dampners, I am interested in understanding and knowing more about this subject. As far as me pointing out the fact that it's an unusually high Qms - honestly I have never seen a value this big - and just to make things clear I own a speaker with phenolic suspension and the Qms of my unit is 10.65, high but not nearly 18; another observation - in december I replaced (for experimental purposes) the spider of a 3 incher with a paper suspension with the same 4 arms in a spiral shape (inspired by Cube) to see what happens - the Qms of this unit was 2.6... that's a normal value. So at least in my case the "never even tried to design..." observation is not true, not in the last year it isn't.
Please make a ferm comment on the Qms value - is it high or low or just normal - if you are involved in driver design you should know.
I rarely look at large(r) drivers (I consider 17 cm large)... maybe it's more common on larger ones, but I do remember reading in an acoustics book that typical values of Qms are 3-5.
Just took a quick look on Rutcho website and all 20 or so values I looked at are in the 1.?-6.5 range and even this - Sonido SFR-175 Alnico Fullrange Loudspeaker Measurements Data and Information Full Range - value of 14.7 in the manufacturer specs turned out to be a down to earth 5.3 when measured. Maybe the Cube unit is similar... high just in the specs.
Just took a quick look on Rutcho website and all 20 or so values I looked at are in the 1.?-6.5 range and even this - Sonido SFR-175 Alnico Fullrange Loudspeaker Measurements Data and Information Full Range - value of 14.7 in the manufacturer specs turned out to be a down to earth 5.3 when measured. Maybe the Cube unit is similar... high just in the specs.