this helps.
so basically he admits he could have done much better job reviewing drivers but it isn't worth his time.
remarkable honesty.
jokes aside i appreciate that he doesn't inject too much subjective opinion into that blog.
and i agree completely that whether something is a good or bad driver ( to an extent ) depends on how you use it and for what purpose.
for example a 19mm silk dome would not work very well in prosound application and a state of the art compression driver wouldn't work very well without a horn.
that said most "audiophile" drivers are just designed to look fancy and be expensive and not designed to work in any application at all. or at best they are drivers that are designed to, in a $1,000 system, slightly outperform the $1 speaker inside of your TV. of course Vance does say that he doesn't review such drivers.
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I have mixed feelings about the Wavecor TW045WA01 and frankly couldn't tell whether he recommended it or (more likely) not:
Please enlighten me!
(It sounded like what it is, ceramic hard tweeter mixed with soft dome supertweeter.)
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Little correction - there are 2 uses for subwoofers: to enrich the music, and play all the low freq info in the track and the second - to make as much SPL at low freq as possible no matter what. I do use only for the first task and 90+% of all (read: cheap) of subwoofers sound flawed to me. One of them - too much of the parasitic high freq.
And I fully agree that 1-5kHz is very sensitive to ear. I am no exception to those countless scientific studies.
i think i found a good replacement for that peerless driver:
https://audioxpress.com/article/Test-Bench-SB-Acoustics-SB65WBAC25-4-2-5-full-range-driver
with exactly same measurement conditions it has 2% distortion rather than 20% - quite a difference
it's 2X the price ( $36 vs $17 ) but 2X price for 10X performance is a steal.
normally i would expect to pay 10X the price for 2X performance, not the other way.
https://audioxpress.com/article/Test-Bench-SB-Acoustics-SB65WBAC25-4-2-5-full-range-driver
with exactly same measurement conditions it has 2% distortion rather than 20% - quite a difference
it's 2X the price ( $36 vs $17 ) but 2X price for 10X performance is a steal.
normally i would expect to pay 10X the price for 2X performance, not the other way.
i have a TC Sounds LMS Ultra subwoofer and honestly it's a stupid device. distortion is too low and output too high. you don't need wall shaking bass to "enrich the music" and when you do want wall shaking bass distortion doesn't matter.
i tried explaining this to Kyle Keating ( who designed it ) but he just banned me from his forum.
all prosound subwoofers are designed with efficiency over linearity because they know people want loud bass, and will push drivers to the limit and too much Xmax will only cause the driver to break sooner from over-excursion, whereas distortion will only make the bass sound louder which is a good thing and it will also serve as a warning to DJ to turn it down a bit.
Kyle can't handle those truths.
and besides, if you don't push prosound subs they will be just as clean as audiophile subs.
win-win.
friends don't let friends buy TC Sounds LMS or any other linear motor subwoofer designs.
a good subwoofer should have SYMMETRICAL but not linear motor. example: JBL Differential Drive and 18 Sound Tetracoil. this type of driver produces maximum output at lowest distortion while not being prone to over-excursion like linear drivers such as LMS.
Kyle made a mistake banning me now everybody will know the truth that TC Sounds LMS is over-rated.
Ever hear tell of Thumper's Mother's advice?
As an observation: opinions are like jacksies. Everybody has one. That doesn't mean we all need to see or hear it.
As an observation: opinions are like jacksies. Everybody has one. That doesn't mean we all need to see or hear it.
You're saying low distortion and high efficiency are negative qualities? That's a new one. I don't recall anybody arguing for that before.
Who is this 'you' and for that matter, who are you (or I, or anybody else) to announce what other people's requirements are, without having the faintest idea what they might be?
Well, that's nonsense straight off. Try telling that to Tom Danley and see how far you get. 😉
You are aware that Xmax is merely a simplistic guideline to motor linearity? It doesn't define mechanical excursion limits. You may be confusing it with Xmech. As far as 'breakage' is concerned, that depends on the design. By your analogy, a Land Rover's suspension is more likely to break than that of a Lotus Seven because it has more travel. I know which I'd pick as being more likely to survive a trip over a mountain intact.
What 'distortion' are you referring to, and why are only DJs of relevance?
I haven't seen any 'truths' yet, so you must have been lecturing him on his own products (obviously you know more about them than he does) in a completely different way to your post above.
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Sorry for the late answer.
This is the test by Vance Dickason:
https://audioxpress.com/article/tes...5wa01-coaxial-cloth-dome-ceramic-cone-tweeter