Thoughts on the B&C DCX354 Coaxial compression driver for hifi use?

[Vincent Darwinkel]

Hi,

I am tinkering with different designs for a 3 way hifi speaker I would like to build in the future. I was considering a B&C DCX354 to use with the FaitalPRO LTH142. I have the following questions:

• If you heard the B&C DCX354 what did you think of the sound?
• What are your thoughts of using a coaxial compression driver compared to two seperated compression drivers for the mids and highs?

I did found a test bench article from AudioExpress. The results show a very high distortion figure of 12% around 4.8 kHz and the frequency response is not really smooth. This makes me wonder if a single 1.4 inch compression driver with a smoother response will be a better option than the DCX354.

Reasons for my interest in this driver:

• One point of sound for the mids and highs
• Smaller build volume by only using one horn
• The mid and high of the coaxial compression drivers are likely tonal matched
• Not too expensive

 

[AllenB]

There are some promising coaxial compression drivers. Like anything, a compromise can be good or not depending on what's at stake and how it's done.

One point of sound for the mids and highs

Like the Synergy horn which uses a waveguide modified to accept extra physical sources, there is not one point of sound for both when you consider that blending can create higher order mode based virtual sources.

It depends what you mean by one point of sound. I take that to mean they will blend cleanly, while others might take it to mean it all sounds like it's coming from the same direction. Of course it could all appear to come from the same direction without necessarily being the same in time.

You also want to consider proper wavefront presentation as this is a factor that can come from combining separate sources and which will precipitate higher order modes.