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Single full range drivers

markus

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Greetings,

Has any one measured speakers with single "full range" driver? Is there even a theoretical chance they would measure well?

Thanks

I'm using the SEAS FA22RCZ in a 2 seats home theater setup with good results. Of course it needs proper EQ and a sub but this is probably the closest you get to a single driver speaker.

Regarding "beaming", I consider this a feature IF you want to reduce reflections without resorting to room treatments.

Some measurements of full-range drivers:
https://mehlau.net/audio/full-range-radiation-patterns/
https://mehlau.net/audio/full-range-response-variance/
 

mhardy6647

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Actually they still do that and still sounds ... well... similar.
Most people don't regard them as good sounding. It is kind of room/position dependent and requires very powerful amps.
Yup and yup, respectively.

I have - quite literally - boxes of 'extended range' drivers here, and I have fiddled with them extensively over the past 25 years or so. They have some beguiling* qualities, but when it is all said and done, for me, they don't ever quite cut the mustard for serious listening.
The best use of an extended range driver (I'd posit that there are no full-range drivers per se -- given the three orders of magnitude of frequencies involved for 'hifi' reproduction), IMO, is as a wide-band augmented midrange driver.

Electrovoice, e.g., did this in the late 1950s with their "Compact Low Resonance" vented box loudspeakers (e.g., the EV Esquire 200 -- a personal fave in small, high-sensitivity 'monkey coffin' loudspeakers). The sound of the Esquire is quite literally centered on the use of an EV "Wolverine" LS-8 twincone 'extended range' driver as the midrange radiator for the system. The Esquire, again IMO, is the loudspeaker that Col. Klipsch's ear-gouging Heresy could have/should have been :cool:

1589891237715.png

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/60s/Audio-1960-May.pdf

EV Esquire au naturel by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Mmmmm, sorry, got a little carried away on this topic. I get like that sometimes.

:)

Bottom line for me -- don't muck with the midrange! B)
Even today, there are way too many loudspeakers with crossovers smack dab in the middle of the frequency band which evolution has endowed our species with the most exquisite sensitivity (to frequency, phase, directionality, and intelligibility).
 

Peas

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There will still be the intermodulation distortion and the ragged response at the top of the passband and the little bass or little treble extension (the short blanket syndrome).
Single-driver speakers have been nicknamed "girl-with-banjo" for a reason... Try reproducing orchestral music. I did.
You will also have the same amount of IMD with woofer-tweeter designs. So, 3 ways or FAST would be better but it is not the driver's "fault" how you use it. In a small speaker, there is limited choice and a "fullrange" speaker might be the only option to get at least any decent sound (better than no sound at all as there is no space for woofer, tweeter and midrange).

Bass extension is depending on the individual driver and EQ (go for active or DSP resp.). You can have 40 Hz out of a 4" Tang Band when it comes to desktop speakers:
http://www.uibel.net/bauvor/bv_box/tinuviel/messungen.html

The point is that, in this case, limited bass and SPL come from the speaker's size and not from using a fullrange driver. You simply wouldn't try to listen to an orchestra via any speaker of this size.

But you can use fullrange 8" drivers. There are famous horn designs with room-filling bass and dynamic is there.

Treble is very much up to the individual driver. Once the driver is generally capable of it, you can handle treble with EQ, which was @daftcombo's statement. One may lift treble response on-axis with wideranges to compensate for the reduced amount of treble power due to the beaming.

I am not saying that I am a fan of "fullrange" drivers being used for fullband application. I prefer combining them at least with a tweeter (which is one of my next DIY projects). To me, they are excellent midranges that can be crossed relatively high. But that's subjective. Objectively, it is up to the individual concept and if it suits the application. Speaker design is always about compromises and one has to choose the best-fitting solution while there is no perfect i.e. uncompromising solution. You can't have it all at the same time.
 
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mhardy6647

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OK, you guys got me started! ;)

3-4" drivers seem the sweet spot for linearity, directivity and extension on both ends.
You lose a bit of the top octave, but I'd rather someone build such a design than bad small 2-ways with ratty drivers for the same price (looking at Micca and Dayton here).

Well, I'd go up to 8" (with caveats) -- but, now that you mention it, one of the most remarkable little extended range drivers I ever experienced (past or present) was a little 4" 'shielded' driver made by Pioneer as an OEM (probably for TVs) and sold at clearance by the case by PartsExpress as their cat. no. 269-469. These were known as the '69 cent wonder' because that was the final clearance price. An astonishingly pleasant little driver to listen to, top to bottom. I wish I'd bought more than I did. I still have... a few... but I've given away many for folks to play with in different enclosures (e.g., TLs).

DSC_7031 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_7032 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

P1020270 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr


Single-driver speakers have been nicknamed "girl-with-banjo" for a reason... Try reproducing orchestral music. I did.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with little girls with banjos! :cool:

1589892110646.png




:p
 

tuga

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You will also have the same amount of IMD with woofer-tweeter designs.

I could be wrong but if the midwoofer is only operating to 2 or 3kHz won't it produce less IMD than the wide-band driver? In fact it will not produce any IMD above that range.
 

tuga

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In a small speaker, there is limited choice and a "fullrange" speaker might be the only option to get at least any decent sound (better than no sound at all as there is no space for woofer, tweeter and midrange).

A coaxial driver has the same baffleprint as a wide-band driver of identical diameter,
 

tuga

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The single-driver speakers I owned more than a decade ago were my most beautiful pair to date, matte graphite paper cone and camel-toned leather surrounds on a piano gloss cabinet... Last pair I had, lesson learned.

6p8cCe8.jpg



I found this FR plot online:

QgIu3tt.jpg
 
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Peas

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I could be wrong but if the midwoofer is only operating to 2 or 3kHz won't it produce less IMD than the wide-band driver? In fact it will not produce any IMD above that range.
Talking about audible IMD in practice, the problem occurs if you don't cross around 300 to 500 Hz.

A coaxial driver has the same baffleprint as a wide-band driver of identical diameter,

Yes, that is very true for bigger diameters. But I don't know small coaxes with a good treble and "bass" response at the same time. Either "bass" is limited (compared to a FR) or treble quality is very poor. I have one here and it's quite bad. I know others that need to be high-passed at 300+ Hz and are limited to FAST designs. It seems that building a small reference coax is quite tricky whereas there are many reference wideranges available.

Maybe it is because bass needs cone extension especially with small drivers. But as the cone of a woofer forms sort of a waveguide to the tweeter, this might really produce serious IMD also at the top end. But that is only speculation.
 

tomtoo

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Yup and yup, respectively.

I have - quite literally - boxes of 'extended range' drivers here, and I have fiddled with them extensively over the past 25 years or so. They have some beguiling* qualities, but when it is all said and done, for me, they don't ever quite cut the mustard for serious listening.
The best use of an extended range driver (I'd posit that there are no full-range drivers per se -- given the three orders of magnitude of frequencies involved for 'hifi' reproduction), IMO, is as a wide-band augmented midrange driver.

Electrovoice, e.g., did this in the late 1950s with their "Compact Low Resonance" vented box loudspeakers (e.g., the EV Esquire 200 -- a personal fave in small, high-sensitivity 'monkey coffin' loudspeakers). The sound of the Esquire is quite literally centered on the use of an EV "Wolverine" LS-8 twincone 'extended range' driver as the midrange radiator for the system. The Esquire, again IMO, is the loudspeaker that Col. Klipsch's ear-gouging Heresy could have/should have been :cool:

View attachment 64394
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/60s/Audio-1960-May.pdf

EV Esquire au naturel by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Mmmmm, sorry, got a little carried away on this topic. I get like that sometimes.

:)

Bottom line for me -- don't muck with the midrange! B)
Even today, there are way too many loudspeakers with crossovers smack dab in the middle of the frequency band which evolution has endowed our species with the most exquisite sensitivity (to frequency, phase, directionality, and intelligibility).


Good statement!
Some questions like this i had on my mind.
Than i looked this video.
Many people like this speakers for there midrange? How come?
Never listend them, but how come that many like this little things that do so many wrong?
 

tuga

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Many people like this speakers for there midrange? How come?
Never listend them, but how come that many like this little things that do so many wrong?

Very good questions.

Some would say that people only like this speaker because they didn't listen blind. Perhaps people who like this speaker don't really like this speaker. Perhaps this is just a big fat conspiracy to take the seriousness and the science out of audio. Perhaps people who say they like this speaker are only saying it to annoy others or to feel part of a club of people who like this speaker or say they like this speaker or perhaps they say they like this speaker only to have a say...
 
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andreasmaaan

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Personally I think a smaller "full-range" driver supplemented by a woofer can work ok for e.g. desktop setups (although ofc it's not going to be SOTA).

I recently measured a bunch of very small (c. 2") "full-range" drivers. The measurement setup was too rough to name the drivers and publish the results, but what I basically concluded was that you can do 200 or 300Hz up with a good 2" driver, as long as you don't need it to play much louder than about 90dB/1m, or can cross it over a little higher.

By way of example, below is the harmonic distortion at about 88dB/1m (measured at 15cm) of one of the better-performing ones.
Ignore the rise in HD above 2kHz, which is mostly due to my not having chamferred the rear of the baffle (I was measuring dozens of drivers quickly and didn't have time).

This driver is ok crossed at say 250Hz at low-ish listening levels IMO. I didn't save off-axis measurements, but I've attached the manufacturer measurements below. It's not much worse than an average 1 or 1.2" dome.

FWIW, subjectively, I heard no problems with this driver or other similar drivers when appropriately high-pass filtered.

I actually wonder why small "full-range" drivers like this aren't used more often in low-cost 2-ways, other than that I think consumers would turn their noses up at them. There are plenty of decent low-cost ones about, as they are the driver of choice for TVs, portable speakers, and 2.1 computer systems. This 2" driver for example costs about 10€ retail and gives way more flexibility in crossover design than a tweeter of similar cost, which is likely to need crossing at 2.5kHz or higher. Crossing that high is fine if you're able to use a number of components in the XO, but it's difficult to do well you're budget-limited to one or two parts per driver.

A 2" like this OTOH can be comfortably crossed well below 1000Hz, which tends to make dealing with baffle step easier, avoids directivity mismatch between drivers, allows for cost savings on the woofer, and minimises vertical lobing. The only real trade-off is that it's slightly beamy in the top couple of octaves.

ölaskdjfkölkaksjf.jpg


1589866066172.png
 
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tomtoo

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Very good questions.

Some would say that people only like this speaker because they didn't listen blind. Perhaps people who like this speaker don't really like this speaker. Perhaps this is just a big fat conspiracy to take the seriousness and the science out of audio. Perhaps people who say they like this speaker are only saying it to annoy others or to feel part of a club of people who like this speaker or say they like this speaker or perhaps they say they like this speaker only to have a say...

Thanks!
HeHe i love your answer!
 

tomtoo

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Ok back to the most serious person i can get about hifi.
It's just one question, i swear.

What is cheaper and still good?
 

richard12511

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Maybe we need the Bose 901's on the Klippel if we are going to waste our time on the Zu gear. Now if there wasn't a backlog sure do the measurement. We already know they make very poorly designed speakers that are a horrible value vs performance trade off.

I don't see why most ESL's wouldn't qualify as full range drivers though I don't think the OP had that in mind.

I must confess that my initial post was made somewhat in jest. However, I don't agree that negative reviews are a waste of time. People googling Druid VI reviews could stumble upon this site, and it's possible the review could end up saving someone 10 grand. Given the lack of negative reviews in the industry, you could even argue that honest negative reviews are perhaps even more valuable.
 

Ilkless

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Personally I think a smaller "full-range" driver supplemented by a woofer can work ok for e.g. desktop setups, although it's going to be far from SOTA.

A 2" like this OTOH can be comfortably crossed well below 1000Hz, which tends to make dealing with baffle step easier, avoids directivity mismatch between drivers, and minimises vertical lobing. The only real trade-off is that it's slightly beamy in the top couple of octaves.

A high-end (but not exotic), well-engineered wideband like the Scanspeaks would definitely make for a very fun nearfield speaker. The 4" Scanspeaks have excellent directivity, so you can avoid these issues while having less worries about SPL.

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/5F-10F.htm
https://hificompass.com/en/speakers/measurements/scan-speak/scanspeak-10f/8424g00

Someone even crossed the 8424 at 800Hz 6dB/octave to an 8" RS225 with very good results up to 16kHz.

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/273524-10f-8424-rs225-8-fast-waw-ref-monitor.html

Ok back to the most serious person i can get about hifi.
It's just one question, i swear.

What is cheaper and still good?

Vifa TC9/TG9. DIYAudio has many exotic enclosure designs to wring every inch of performance out of it.
 

617

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I mainly agree with @daftcombo. For example, if you use widerange drivers (I don't dare to call them fullrange ...) in desktop monitors, beaming and limited SPL aren't an issue. I don't see the point in dynamics then.

Having said this, it is obvious that a Klippel NFS is somehow useless as a nearfield monitor may be jugded mainly by its on-axis response. So that one goes to @thewas_.
Yeah I don't think we make this distinction about nearfield nearly enough. For a lot of these desk top speakers, nearfield is far more important than anything else.
 

617

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A high-end (but not exotic), well-engineered wideband like the Scanspeaks would definitely make for a very fun nearfield speaker. The 4" Scanspeaks have excellent directivity, so you can avoid these issues while having less worries about SPL.

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/5F-10F.htm
https://hificompass.com/en/speakers/measurements/scan-speak/scanspeak-10f/8424g00

Someone even crossed the 8424 at 800Hz 6dB/octave to an 8" RS225 with very good results up to 16kHz.

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/273524-10f-8424-rs225-8-fast-waw-ref-monitor.html



Vifa TC9/TG9. DIYAudio has many exotic enclosure designs to wring every inch of performance out of it.

This page has a great collection of midrange/fullrange driver measurements:
http://feleppa.com.au/speakermeasmid.html

Adding onto this, the small vifa drivers are excellent (and very cheap), but those scanspeak discovery 4" drivers (they make 3 different models iirc) are incredible.

1589900628070.png


Very well behaved driver.
 

andreasmaaan

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A high-end (but not exotic), well-engineered wideband like the Scanspeaks would definitely make for a very fun nearfield speaker. The 4" Scanspeaks have excellent directivity, so you can avoid these issues while having less worries about SPL.

http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/5F-10F.htm
https://hificompass.com/en/speakers/measurements/scan-speak/scanspeak-10f/8424g00

Someone even crossed the 8424 at 800Hz 6dB/octave to an 8" RS225 with very good results up to 16kHz.

Looks quite good, but has anyone compared this directly to Vifa/Tymphany's TC9FD18-08?

I didn't save the measurements I took of the TC9 a couple of years back, but my recollection is that it measured better than the 8424 (flatter response, wider directivity, lower low-midrange distortion).

EDIT: actually I have a bunch of them still back home, leftover from an old project. When I get there I can take/post some measurements.
 

617

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1589901441137.png

1589901451468.png


As a DIY speaker guy I'm biased against cheaper drivers, since I feel that if you're going to the trouble of making a nice cabinet you should spend some money on the drivers too...but these vifa tc9/tg9 are outstanding.
 
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