Baffle simulations and prototype testing has demonstrated to me that a 5" cone driver should be crossed to a non-waveguide dome tweeter no higher than 3k anyway. Above 3k and it is extremely difficult to get a good directivity performance. Generally the best directivity index curve happens with a 2k - 2.5k crossover, whether the baffle is very narrow or very wide.
@hifijim @mayhem13 I'd have to agree with the crossover point issue. Most of the smaller SB cone drivers have quite a bit of uncontrolled stuff going on past 3k. I find this kind of a broad ranged issue with these drivers and to be honest, there are only an few of them which can be crossed with fairly simple, closer to text book value passive filters. SB does offer quite a lot of different cone materials and combinations thereof, which can get overwhelming if someone didn't know what specific cone compositions behave like or sound.
Most of the time, you can only distinguish the cone material sonically above the 1st radial breakup mode. It gets more unpredictable when combining different materials in various ways, along with the influence of the surround material and design.
In most cases, a cone with a well dampened, well behaved, wide band upper end breakup will be well suited for a more shallow LP rolloff slope. If there's a minor peak in the rolloff region, it can typically be easily tamed without leaving much of any noticeable coloration or fatiguing ring behind. That's usually the case when dealing with a well dampened, lossy cone that is terminated by a complementing, appropriately designed surround. Almost every time I come across a decent sounding cone mid, it will have some sort of cone treatment(s) and a similarly treated surround.
Some people will say that a driver with this type of cone will sound veiled, having a lack of detail but most of the time this statement comes from people who are used to higher amounts of even order harmonic distortion. Most of the time this is combined with peaking midrange FR around 2 - 5k or even higher. In most cases, just applying some EQ can dramatically change the perceived detail.
Most of the time, you can only distinguish the cone material sonically above the 1st radial breakup mode. It gets more unpredictable when combining different materials in various ways, along with the influence of the surround material and design.
In most cases, a cone with a well dampened, well behaved, wide band upper end breakup will be well suited for a more shallow LP rolloff slope. If there's a minor peak in the rolloff region, it can typically be easily tamed without leaving much of any noticeable coloration or fatiguing ring behind. That's usually the case when dealing with a well dampened, lossy cone that is terminated by a complementing, appropriately designed surround. Almost every time I come across a decent sounding cone mid, it will have some sort of cone treatment(s) and a similarly treated surround.
Some people will say that a driver with this type of cone will sound veiled, having a lack of detail but most of the time this statement comes from people who are used to higher amounts of even order harmonic distortion. Most of the time this is combined with peaking midrange FR around 2 - 5k or even higher. In most cases, just applying some EQ can dramatically change the perceived detail.
motor of the Satori with better magnet and less breakk up if any serious really : NE149W 🙂 !
There are good loudspeakers with cut off around 3K like the Kef 104.2 from the 80s (3,1 to 3.2 cut off irrc).
I like too the woven carbon from Audax, in the low end of the midrange they are winners, like the one from Seas btw. but in the higher midrange their aerogel is pretty good. Too bad they are not wild band drivers due to their spl curve and terrible non flat impedance often !
There are good loudspeakers with cut off around 3K like the Kef 104.2 from the 80s (3,1 to 3.2 cut off irrc).
I like too the woven carbon from Audax, in the low end of the midrange they are winners, like the one from Seas btw. but in the higher midrange their aerogel is pretty good. Too bad they are not wild band drivers due to their spl curve and terrible non flat impedance often !
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@diyiggy Agreed on the NE149W and larger models, but sadly NLA in small qtys. Its a fabulous driver and uses the Pentacone design like some Scanspeak, along with copper caps, an offset center pole for better BL symmetry and a 38mm titanium former VC. Their main drawback is however cone depth, which negatively affects off axis breakup behavior.
I have used the NE65W, NE123W, NE149W, NE180W and NE315W. They're all excellent, but my personal favorite is the NE149W. It has the best distortion profile in the lower mids and useful range above cutoff. The 5 dB, 6.5k peak is easy to deal with and becomes inaudible once flattened. I've used it fullrange with excellent results. The NE123W is almost as good but extends further up top.
The Satori MR13TX undoubtedly has a much stiffer cone. I'd say the motors on the NE149W and MR13TX are comparable with the NE149W having a slight edge.
I have used the NE65W, NE123W, NE149W, NE180W and NE315W. They're all excellent, but my personal favorite is the NE149W. It has the best distortion profile in the lower mids and useful range above cutoff. The 5 dB, 6.5k peak is easy to deal with and becomes inaudible once flattened. I've used it fullrange with excellent results. The NE123W is almost as good but extends further up top.
The Satori MR13TX undoubtedly has a much stiffer cone. I'd say the motors on the NE149W and MR13TX are comparable with the NE149W having a slight edge.
I've recently worked with the Satori MR13P-4 and came to the conclusion that it sounds more open in the female vocal range, capable of a relatively high crossover point. Compared to other 13 cm cone mids with lighter paper cones, the breakup is very well controlled past 5k, capable of a higher shallow LP. This isnt typical with most medium sized cone mids, even those employing more advanced cone materials.The main immediate strength of this driver is its excellent vocal clarity when used in a 3 way, crossed at 300 hz 2nd order running up to 4k 2nd order. A ribbon or planar tweeter mates very well considering the narrowing dispersion at that filter point. If you flatten the broad 8k upper mid peak on the Satori with an LCR, you can even run a 1st order LP @ 3.5k to a decent larger soft dome like the Morel CAT378. This combination is capable of very realistic dynamics and lower level detail. Considering the 5.5 gram moving mass (very light for this size of cone), its no surprise it can deliver a high level of detail with a wide bandwidth. Its becoming my favorite 13 cm cone mid, even compared to other more exotic materials. IMO, paper is still the cone material of choice for midrange reproduction.
The MR13TX is a good midbass driver in a 4 way, operating from 300 hz to roughly 1k, crossed to a decent 2" mid dome. In that range it would likely be unmatched by most other cone mids of this size.
The MR13TX is a good midbass driver in a 4 way, operating from 300 hz to roughly 1k, crossed to a decent 2" mid dome. In that range it would likely be unmatched by most other cone mids of this size.
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I understand the reservations about the resonance at 5kHz, but my experience is if you are going to cross 2-3kHz much of that issue, which appears on axis only, may be gone. I think the real answer of how important that is may be complex.
@eriksquires The peak doesn't disappear until further off axis, then turns into a severe dip further off axis. Couple that with a more shallow LP slope, it creates a big swing in phase summing with the HF.
Sure, you can use a sharp slope in DSP to get around that, but not everyone wants to use DSP and for the price of this driver, it competes with other easier to implement drivers.
I still believe it sounds nice crossed passively under 2.5k, but other drivers sound better higher up for the same money. Perhaps if someone tried some edge dampening scheme at the surround junction like other paper cone drivers use, it would mitigate the issue to the point it could be crossed higher.
Sure, you can use a sharp slope in DSP to get around that, but not everyone wants to use DSP and for the price of this driver, it competes with other easier to implement drivers.
I still believe it sounds nice crossed passively under 2.5k, but other drivers sound better higher up for the same money. Perhaps if someone tried some edge dampening scheme at the surround junction like other paper cone drivers use, it would mitigate the issue to the point it could be crossed higher.
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Isn't the issue with the domes that Fs is 400 or so, and there is a limit how low you can go?
My interest in a 3-way has generally been to try to do 300-3k (or thereabouts, but that sort of ratio of low to high) with one driver. LCR on the breakup and at least a 2nd order would surely be OK wouldn't it, and maybe 250-2500?
In any case given the directivity drop off and centre to centre, I had thought that taking a midrange too high would cause off-vertical axis issues. The Bliesma (and many domes) seem to have very wide surrounds.
This speaker is installed in store acoustics by some companies, it sounds detailed but not musically, so I have no desire to listen to it, so I would avoid this speaker. It is good only for electronic music and to impress guests.This is my opinion, if someone likes this speaker, then it is for you.
I can sort of understand why some people think of textreme diaphragm or cone drivers as not sounding musical. The lack of specific types and ratios of distortion can give that impression. This extends to other materials as well which remain pistonic over a wider bandwidth compared to materials which break up more subtly.
Have to say, im a lover of papercones and hate most aluminium and ceramic materials or even beryllium till textreme came along, they have certain sweetness to them and same have to be said about tweeters with textreme like Satori Tw29tx.
But yes they do sound a bit clean and dry compared to paper i just learned that taking care of the upper harshness/ ringing makes a huge deal.. you can even get to make the textreme sound very warm and same time clean. Textreme is a welcome material, same ”sound” as beryllium (which i do like) but without hardness so a bit more forgiving to poor sourounding equipment such as bad dacs, amps, xovers parts etc but still if you treat them the best they do dissapear completly. There is a certain calm and darkness and im talking back to forth soundstage i have not previously heard from any ”hard”
Cones… before i thought all hard cones just shouted in your face basically, not so with Satori.
But yes they do sound a bit clean and dry compared to paper i just learned that taking care of the upper harshness/ ringing makes a huge deal.. you can even get to make the textreme sound very warm and same time clean. Textreme is a welcome material, same ”sound” as beryllium (which i do like) but without hardness so a bit more forgiving to poor sourounding equipment such as bad dacs, amps, xovers parts etc but still if you treat them the best they do dissapear completly. There is a certain calm and darkness and im talking back to forth soundstage i have not previously heard from any ”hard”
Cones… before i thought all hard cones just shouted in your face basically, not so with Satori.
Wow, that's really good to hear. I think it's a technology to look out for. I plan on using the MR13TX-4 in a TL 2-way wide baffle. This motivates me even more. I think paired with a small ribbon at 3kHz would be quite good...perfectly time aligned on a waveguide of course.
I found the combination of MW16TX-4 and TW29TXN-B to be an excellent combination. I use the MW16TX from 200 Hz up, crossing to the TW29TXN at about 1.8k. Very smooth and natural sounding, and a realism that is sometimes startling.
Satori Textreme system
Satori Textreme system
To me it seems like some of you are missing the point with regards to textreme and misusing drivers in general.
No idea why you'd want to take this above 3kHz for directivity reasons and preferably, as others have mentioned, a bit lower, due to its size.
Textreme isn't supposed to be used like soft cones. It's a highly stiff material that shows similar characteristics to metal/ceramic and needs to be used accordingly.
It has one major benefit though in that it doesn't, if correctly implemented, display the same distortion amplification issues that metal usually does. This is a major added advantage in that it stops drivers having a hard cut off limit due to third order distortion peaks. The SEAS W16/W18s and Visaton Ti100 spring to mind with their distortion peaks coming in significantly below 2kHz. This severely limits their usefulness requiring very low crossovers and tweeters built like tanks. Trade in their cones for textreme, those distortion peaks go away, and you make them a lot easier to use. Suddenly that 1.5kHz crossover can become a 2.5kHz crossover.
Of course you can't ignore the cone breakup at 6kHz, or crossover near it, but you can crossover higher Vs a typical metal cone as to make them significantly more applicable. Although SB had somewhat solved this with their ribbed CAC/NAC cones already.
A question though. Is the Gedlee metric for the SB15MFC showing the correct graph? That looks more like what you expect for a tweeter.
No idea why you'd want to take this above 3kHz for directivity reasons and preferably, as others have mentioned, a bit lower, due to its size.
Textreme isn't supposed to be used like soft cones. It's a highly stiff material that shows similar characteristics to metal/ceramic and needs to be used accordingly.
It has one major benefit though in that it doesn't, if correctly implemented, display the same distortion amplification issues that metal usually does. This is a major added advantage in that it stops drivers having a hard cut off limit due to third order distortion peaks. The SEAS W16/W18s and Visaton Ti100 spring to mind with their distortion peaks coming in significantly below 2kHz. This severely limits their usefulness requiring very low crossovers and tweeters built like tanks. Trade in their cones for textreme, those distortion peaks go away, and you make them a lot easier to use. Suddenly that 1.5kHz crossover can become a 2.5kHz crossover.
Of course you can't ignore the cone breakup at 6kHz, or crossover near it, but you can crossover higher Vs a typical metal cone as to make them significantly more applicable. Although SB had somewhat solved this with their ribbed CAC/NAC cones already.
A question though. Is the Gedlee metric for the SB15MFC showing the correct graph? That looks more like what you expect for a tweeter.
And why the heck can mr13tx not be used higher? If now mr13 can be used to 3.5-4khz? The textreme is superior in soundquality in most ways. No it doesnt sound ”hard” nor sterile