War of the 10" monster midbasses

Yeah, I looked into importing some Oberton drivers. Shipping was just too much.

Are the RCF's out of reach? LaVoce WAN103.01 might be interesting as well.

None of the RCF's really pique'd my interest, and the LaVoce looks interesting, but as was suggested to me by a very astute acquaintance of mine: be wary of drivers with a peaking response in the 2 or 3kHz range, as they usually stem from distortion, either 2nd or 3rd order harmonic @ 1kHz (one shows up as a peak near 2kHz, and the other would be a peak near 3kHz), which you will see when measuring harmonic distortion. And he was right, the B&C which has a peak near 3kHz had a 3rd order harmonic peak at 1kHz which you can see fro the distortion measurement. The LaVoce mfg spec sheet shows this same characteristic, so I may or may not be incorrectly assuming what I have found with the B&C driver.

I had not heard of Oberton drivers. Some of their 10's have nice specs, including double demodulation rings. If they had a distributor/dealer state-side I would probably buy a pair.
 
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Nice pictures and good measurements. But still a ridiculous mechanism for moving air accurately and fast. Some day people will laugh at us the way we laugh at open-back Philco radios from 80 years ago.

That little driver with the 9 gram ceramic dome assembly makes a lot more sense... at least until graphene air-movers get here*.

Look to the future.

B.
*about to show up in headphones
 
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So now that you have played with these for a while, which one has the lowest distortion and most natural vocals between 300 - 2000hz?

I have one more pair that I need to play with, to finish compiling my data. All of these are very good in the 300-2000 Hz range. I cannot comment on Natural vocals since that is not what I listen to. I listen to rock/metal/death metal. What I listen for is realistic guitar tone replication balanced with low THD. For whatever it's worth, I've already sold some of the Faital Pro drivers. I think I still have the 10FH530s for sale, yup, still got them, lol. Very nice drivers with some of the flattest FR out of the bunch. Right now it is a toss-up between the Ciare 10 NDH-3, Beyma 10G40, and the B&C 10PLB76. But that might all change once I receive the last set of 10's I plan to test. I have a feeling that last set will do very, very, very, very well! ;)
 
Hi OscarS,

I would like to thank you for the wonderful comparison you are making, really useful, interesting and informative. However, the new Beyma 10MC700Nd would have also aroused my curiosity as a 200-1500 Hz use, but since I did not find any third-party judgments, I wanted to ask where you were with your ratings. I would not be indiscreet, but I have a substantial expectation towards him.
Thank you and goodbye.

Mleod
 
May I ask why do your specs include: "minimum 3" voice coils, minimum 400W RMS/AES power handling"

I mean if you already have a driver that meets your need for the power handling figure, why do you need the certain inch size voice coils? I would imagine that larger voice coils have more harder time to replicate the guitar sound you were after. Also when looking at the power handling figure, you should compare it to the sensitivity to get the better picture what the output will be. So in some case, for example a 300w driver could be more louder than some of the 400.
 
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May I ask why do your specs include: "minimum 3" voice coils, minimum 400W RMS/AES power handling"

I mean if you already have a driver that meets your need for the power handling figure, why do you need the certain inch size voice coils? I would imagine that larger voice coils have more harder time to replicate the guitar sound you were after. Also when looking at the power handling figure, you should compare it to the sensitivity to get the better picture what the output will be. So in some case, for example a 300w driver could be more louder than some of the 400.

personal preference.