Full range speaker as headphones

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I don't understand your point about cone breakup. If it was such a big deal wouldn't nobody use large speaker cones?
Why isn't cone breakup a problem normally?
I'm looking at 8'' betsy drivers and the FR looks very similar to an HD800 3'' headphone driver
freq_chart.jpg

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

Wouldn't cone breakup show itself in the 8'' FR?
 
Loudspeakers are for radiating big power, being very inefficient. A HP driver does not need to handle high power, 1W is more than too much. Then other parameters can be optimized, voice coil and diaphragm can be super lightweigth, suspension can be super soft, cone breakout could be pushed up beyond audible range, etc.
 
music soothes the savage beast
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I have had my share of dealing with betsy...nice midrange. I always hated the heights. The best thing you can do to betsy is chop its whizzer of and install tweeter.
Quite while ago I did 2-way with betsy and horn loaded tweeter...nice sounding pair, I gave it to a friend...there may be a thread about it and the measurement.
Recently I installed small Dayton dome (very small, 3/4") on the tube right in the center of the betsy. I got ruler flat response, I never posted it anywhere, why bother. Sound is way better that betsy alone.
I used betsy wow in the past, but had lots of issues with loose brass rings on the cone which holds the coil wire. Easy fix, but it took me long time to figure it out.
 
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music soothes the savage beast
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"Why isn't cone breakup a problem normally?"

May be not for you, but it made me sell the Lowthers and never come back...
Its the ringing, the time delay which breakup makes which irritates me.
Look at some true honest measurements of fullrange drivers...especially waterfall plots, decay spectrum. Disgusting.
 
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I am not discouraging you, just giving some pointers, use 18" as headphone, what do I care...
Haha, I'm just trying to be informed before I go buying large drivers for headphone use.
The cone breakup issue you spoke of is giving me cause for concern.

I don't know about you but I like the length of my neck as is.

Besides, I can't see a 15" driver close to your head, as being better than a 4"
Worst case scenario I can sit back in a chair to take the weight off.
The reason I'm thinking a larger driver might be better is because I am using it at a tiny fraction of its intended SPL giving it supposedly much better performance.
But like Adason said, cone breakup is an issue.
 
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music soothes the savage beast
Joined 2004
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"I'm looking at 8'' betsy drivers and the FR looks very similar to an HD800 3'' headphone driver"

yes, accidentally, but both obtained by completely different technique...headphone measurement are done to dummy head...pointing to inner ear with cochlea
do you think betsy would have the same fr response pointing to the ear?
 
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Same with a 3" or 4"
Yeah but wouldn't the performance increase scale with size?
Larger drivers are designed to sound good at bigger SPLs than smaller ones meaning the distortion reduction should be more significant when using bigger drivers as headphone drivers than smaller ones right?
A larger driver is going to need less excursion than a smaller one for the same SPL, meaning better linearity and slew rate no?

At the SPL we're talking, I wouldn't worry about it.
Oh really? That takes a load off.
 
Yeah but wouldn't the performance increase scale with size?
Immaterial in the case. This is nearfield to an extreme.
Larger drivers are designed to sound good at bigger SPLs
Immaterial in the case.
A larger driver is going to need less excursion than a smaller one for the same SPL
Immaterial in the case.
Oh really? That takes a load off.
Careful, there are two camps here. I happen to be in the one that believes that although cone break up should be as present in low SPL as high, my ears tell me otherwise. If my ears can't hear it, I don't worry about it.
 
A Qts of 0.7 or above is suitable for a free-air application such as yours.
This, at least, is easily fixed by inserting an appropriate resistor in series with one wire.

When the resistor is zero ohms (and the amplifier driving the headphones has the usual very low output impedance), the Q of the speaker in free-air is Qts. When the resistor is increased sufficiently, the Q increases to nearly Qms, which is typically between 3 and 10, far higher than you want. For in-between values of resistance, you should be able to dial in the Q of around 0.7 you're looking for (which produces a maximally flat Butterworth 2nd-order high pass filter response.)

Using a series resistor is rather wasteful of power in a typical loudspeaker scenario, but here, the power levels are so low that it's not a concern.

BTW - if you place your ear really close to a 15" speaker, the path length from the edges of the cone to your ear is much larger than the path length from the centre of the cone to your ear. As a result, you will experience deep notches in the frequency response, once the frequency is high enough for the speaker radius to become about 1/3 of the wavelength or more. Expect an erratic and ugly frequency response above a few kilohertz, even if the speaker itself was magically perfect.

This is why you can measure woofer frequency response with a microphone placed a centimetre from the cone, but you have to be aware that the measured response is only good at relatively low frequencies. This is a trick speaker designers sometimes use if they don't have access to an anechoic chamber.

Have you tried the near-field stereo speaker setup typically used by audio engineers when mixing-down recordings? Your head and the two speakers form an equilateral triangle, each side of which is between roughly 1 and 2 metres (3 - 6 ft) long. Speaker at ear height, and several feet away from the nearest wall if at all possible.

IMO, this type of near-field speaker setup gives you an experience with most of the immersive quality of headphones, but with much better stereo imaging than any headphones I've ever tried.

-Gnobuddy
 
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