Review of LaVoce SAN184.50

Out of misery in searching for best driver for my unconventional project, I bought two of these (four if they appear to be good and suited) nice looking drivers.

The looks:
Very sleek, strong looking driver. Heavy duty basket appears to be indeed rather heavy duty, very close to what B&C speakers does with their SW and DS product line.
It looks like a copy in many design parts, and given the outbreak of these 4,5" CCAW strong motor of "eurodrivers" as I call em, it might be so, or some license deal kind of thing.
Apart from basket, the glueing of the dust cap looks somewhat thicker and stronger than what is done on the B&Cs, and tensile leads are made in its own way, which I would classify somewhat worse (pictures and more below). I am not in peace about "which terminals are best", but this time push terminals are used, and I am liking it. Magnet venting is done with fairly medium-thin grille in the center vent, this time similar to what 18SW115 has. The 8 small vents around the coil circumference are guarded by the grille too (inside)
Generally, very nice strong looking well designed driver.

_Front.jpg


Rear.jpg


Spider is well soaked in the sillicone, that seeps out a bit:

Spider.jpg


The mechanics:
Apart from the classic design of B&C, it has somewhat thickenedd dustcap glueing, at first feel I would think the cone is just a tiny teeny bit sturdier.
On the back side, of the gasket, some kind of foam tape is applied, and so it releases the nuissance of putting some on the speaker enclosure myself. Very nice touch.
That´s all basically good news. What´s not good news is the tensile leads. They are guided and bend in a way that does not look like very sturdy. Maybe I am mistaken, but If torture test were done on the B&C and this, I would not bet on LaVoce.

Leads.jpg


Though general feel is that the customer is getting 95-99% of the originals. Hopefully chinese did not learn the European quality management - must look quality, doesn´t matter what it really is. Yeah, heard that from MANY quality managers. But that´s besides the point.

TS parameters:
Pre burn-in:
One driver Re was 5,05Ohms, the second one 5,0Ohms. Interesting difference. One or two turns of the wire on the coil? Measuring the 5.0Ohm piece:

Re_measurement.jpg


DMM used is Uni-T UT171B with very good leads and ΔR calibration on the leads/itself. I trust it quite a bit.

SAN184.50.jpg


At this point to me it looks like 18DS115 on hopefully 18SW115 suspension. My 18SW115 clocked at 36,89Hz pre-burn-in. That would be the most awesome combo LaVoce could put together. What I or almost anyone would want from this driver, is to behave well into excursions of about 16mm. If that appears to be true, it makes this driver immense value choice over competition.

No conclusions yet, but the initial feel about this driver (except for worse leads) is very impressive.
After burn-in measurement on weekend.
 
Preliminary excursion behavior assesment:

At 14,5-15mm, it behaves very nice, cultivated and quiet for any PA standards. Just like 18SW115, the quietest I ever had (together with FaitalPro). VERY nice!
At 16mm, more air and noises is audible, and first onset of distortion or mechanical noises from the motor is slightly audible at low frequencies (low SPL, quiet room, audible changes more from the side, not much from the front of the cone). It continues this way progressively till 18mm, when slight whistle from the air forced through the motor is emanating and doubling sound with distortion is now significant. This continues progressively into 20mm of excursion.

It goes past 20mm without much pushing as well, but by that point sounds coming from that speaker come out as "very stressed", deep in the red "gauge", not to be used there at all. Though, I stopped at that same feel and noises with LF18X451, at 18,75mm of excursion, when it sounded really terrible, if not worse, with loud whistling and all kinds of noises of danger coming out of it.

At ~16,25mm of excursion, the LF18X451 ate 153VA in the low frequency excursion test, the SAN184.50 eats 129VA, possibly due to the much stronger motor and longer coil staying in the field despite arguably stiffer suspension.

So, except for the leads that I will probably modify to have better bend profile and reinforcement in the most sharp part of the bend, this looks like winner to me. Similar as SAN214.50 reviewed on Data-Bass, which was low key considered better than 21DS115.

Well done, LaVoce!
This certainly is usable for my project.
 
This was the most interesting measurement session ever. Never witnessed such strong suspension behavior. It stiffens up upon load quite a bit, and loosens upon cooldown. The Fs went up good 6Hz and Zmax 12 Ohms down. There are good and bad things about that. But that´s to be determined in large signal measurement and real world application.

Here is post-burn-in results after almost 2h burn-in and cooldown.
(note to anyone looking into results: Re is slightly higher both due to the not 100% cooldown and also due to the first measurement taken on cold speaker from outside that did not heat up enough while sitting on the bed).

Post_Burnin.jpg


This thing clearly does not want to be fatiqued. The FS will not go under 30Hz in any case, I stretched that beast to 17mm for two hours real good.
Q values closer to 18DS115 now.
 
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Looks like a decent driver.

On the subject of tinsel leads, I remember seeing two unique solutions, both of them by Infinity. One solution used a plastic standoff from the cone, to which the tinsel leads were attached. This not only elevated the tinsel leads above the spider, it also made it very easy to replace them without having to touch the cone. The other got rid of the "standard" tinsel leads entirely and replaced them with a flexible strip, similar to what you see sometimes used to connect two circuit boards. A small bit of foam separated the flexible strip from the cone.
 
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I kind of seen that pre-purchase, so I knew what I'm buying. B&C now often uses in-spider woven leads. There are good solutions indeed, but one cannot choose speakers by the leads unfortunately.
I absolutely needed something that will work with 16mm of excursion. 18DS115 with its compliance halving at ~12.5 was not it.

When I measured post burn-in result, I was like "what do you mean by Fs well above 40Hz?!"

Anyone seen that behavior before? This is rather new to me.

@hurrication
I do have a LG10 Banner Engineering precise laser distance measurement tool which I use, but this time it would be a lie. This time I just set a soft mark before the speaker, measured with calipers, and then turn it up till the dustcap touches it. Would be fun to do it ellectrically with a metal pads and diode.
 
JL Audio has a patented method of flying lead management that has proven to be reliable, as it's what they use on the w7.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060133640A1/
This is the Infinity solution - used on the 122.7W driver (I used two of them in a previous car audio install):

1738420822191.png


Basically a plastic sleeve around the cone/former junction, with the leads soldered to a standoff. No chance of the leads touching either the cone or the spider, and if one breaks, it's pretty easy to solder a new one in its place (they never actually broke while I was using these drivers).

Infinity introduced some other new things with this driver. The edge of the cone was folded over to strengthen it and it has a neo magnet motor (pretty new in the market at the time the 122.7W was released) and selectable impedance (1 or 4 ohms). Later Infinity drivers changed that to selectable impedance of 2 or 4 ohms. I still have them in storage (replaced them with Alpine Type R subs in my car audio install many years ago), awaiting the day I can get off my lazy **** and use them in the passively-assisted sealed enclosures that I've been planning for the longest while (-3dB @30 Hz from 1 cu.ft. boxes? Yes please...).

My only (and main) peeve with them is that they didn't make the motor strong enough.
 
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This time I just set a soft mark before the speaker, measured with calipers, and then turn it up till the dustcap touches it. Would be fun to do it ellectrically with a metal pads and diode.

I've used a similar procedure to measure effective Xmax. Basically, use a sliding rule to measure excursion (the same "dustcap touching" method) at different voltages (driven @fs to keep temps down), and plotted excursion against voltage (I think - it was some time ago when I was really doing a lot of experimenting). Should be a straight line plot if the driver's being driven within its Xmax range, and it will start to deviate from the straight line as Xmax is exceeded.
 
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I don´t know, in a way yes, indeed. But Fs going 6Hz up, that´s quite steep reaction.
And that´s after first idea of cooldown. So right in the abuse time, the Fs could be even 10Hz up. I will monitor it better next time.
I will play with it in oncoming weeks. Lot of measurements...
 
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Basically a plastic sleeve around the cone/former junction, with the leads soldered to a standoff. No chance of the leads touching either the cone or the spider, and if one breaks, it's pretty easy to solder a new one in its place (they never actually broke while I was using these drivers).
As long as there is a standoff on only one side it will introduce some unwanted effects also.
This is a step in the wrong direction in most cases.
The cone and suspension will not be perfectly linear as there is weight hanging off to one side of the voice coil.

Might be good from a durability standpoint for Car audio and PA.


Notice how the TAD TL-1102 and 1601C was introduced with a triangle shaped weight on the cone, to dynamically balance the weight of the lead connections going to one side.

It looks like a copy in many design parts

Fairly standard run of the mill frames from China where both companies sources they're parts in general, as with most companies these days.
Lavoce is built there and designed in Italy. B&C partly so at least.
 
@Arez

Well, when IPAL and SW woofers series at B&C was introduced, noone was rocking that basket. It was proprietary B&C design to my knowledge. So other companies started to source that design after B&C probably paid all the HW and development. So it is little more than just "typical China happenstance". But I don´t have much need to get into the politics of that at all.
 
Well, when IPAL and SW woofers series at B&C was introduced, noone was rocking that basket. It was proprietary B&C design to my knowledge. So other companies started to source that design after B&C probably paid all the HW and development. So it is little more than just "typical China happenstance". But I don´t have much need to get into the politics of that at all
Ehh, the 'standard' 12 spoke B&C baskets have been around for a very long time.
what sits on the 15SW, 18SW etc.

Speaker baskets are almost exclusively produced there, and there is nothing groundbreaking about any of the designs.
One makes a 3d model, sends it off for the casting mould production and after it's easy to copy.
What costs is the mould with the extra 'skeletonizing' for lighter weight, which is important in PA.

As for the Lavoce the basket looks pretty normal.

Who do you think have 92% of the worlds NDfeb and magnet alloy market?
China as they own the majority of the mines in Africa for extraction of materials.

Does not change quality of a product, the sum of the parts is what matters.

Like the much famed AE drivers, generally using the run of the mill 12spoke baskets that can be found everywhere.
 
Basically a plastic sleeve around the cone/former junction, with the leads soldered to a standoff. No chance of the leads touching either the cone or the spider, and if one breaks, it's pretty easy to solder a new one in its place (they never actually broke while I was using these drivers).

The latest car audio drivers have the tinsel leads sewn into the spider.

1738787824511.png
 
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@Arez
Ehh, the 'standard' 12 spoke B&C baskets have been around for a very long time.
what sits on the 15SW, 18SW etc.
Yes? As long as B&C speakers developed it about 20 years ago? Not that I am asking, it is just rhetorical, but where were these baskets before OG B&C speakers deployed them? So yeah, copying. That´s what I said.

Parts alone often do not make the sum. Though with LaVoce they seem to be doing good. When you look into HiWell, PRV and others rocking this design, they do not do that good. There is some vid on YT (not that it could not happen to someone) with Arguably B&C Speakers driver (to me rather obvious copy) sparking good toward its nasty death. When two do the same, it is not always the same.
 
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It sucks. RCF and TLHP didn't confirm delivery into May, so I canceled the order. Hopefully in 14 days or so, there will be a warmer day that will allow me to measure these 18"s with large signal to determine if they're sufficient. If yes then I'm afraid that I will not get the RCFs. If not, then I might get back to them. The compactness of the 18s is tempting though.