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Who makes the best drivers in the world?
- Thread starter Pearljam5000
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K+H used to employ this legendary 3" to good effect. However, the custom job the current big Neumanns are using is an even better performer.
I think it is different rather than necessarily better.
I have seen publicity material showing a less even breakup behaviour in the new dome than the ATC, but it didn't give the frequencies of either's breakup modes, ie it didn't show whether this is a problem not resolved by the crossover.
The ATC can operate at a lot lower frequency than other mid domes, including the one fitted to the latest Neumanns, and goes higher too. The ATC covers over 3 octaves in their monitors but the Neumann less than 2 octaves, maybe due to power handling, I don't know, and one could anyway reason that as long as the overall performance is good it does not matter.
Was the change actually due to better performance or price/availability of the ATC requiring the development of a new solution for themselves
Audionaut
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The ATC domes are very cool chassis, there's no doubt about that. They are still at the cutting edge today and the competition has still not managed to achieve the full package of positive characteristics.
Regarding performance of the SM75-150, I fully agree. But I am sure is has nothing to do with power handling as midrange domes in general offer big voicecoils, high sensitivity and formidable power handling.
The usable range usually is limited by their behavior closer to resonance frequency (with many models showing ugly distortion) and how they behave when reproducing wavelengths in the region of their own diameter. Those with softer, rounder and damped domes tend to show sudden increase in directivity index similar to a ring radiator.
On paper, the TB 75-1558SH looks promising, but have never tried any or listened to it.
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There is also the crazy expensive 84mm Scan Speak D8404
Fs 280 Hz
But does not look too bad either. That is not a frequency band in which you need crazy SPL.
My guess would be this might result from issues of the voicecoil tumbling or doing other strange, resonance-related movements. Compare with the Manger´s distortion plot, and you have an idea how bad this can get.
Anyone who needs 110db at 1khz won't be needing it for long.THD plot does not look too great. Look at wild swing just above 1 kHz
Are you sure this was measured @1m? It looks like a measurement executed by Vance Dickason and he prefers to normalize to 1m and reference level (like 90dB) first, subsequently executing the THD measurement at dramatically lowered distance (like 10cm), so the abscissa scale becomes worthless.
I've no idea, but that seems a weird way to measure distortion that's so linked to output level.
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I think Troels has used the D8404 in his A50 & 84 build. A50 looks to be 4way & 84 3way.
ATC speakers easily do 110dB, and some of them another 10dB more, all using same 3" dome. 1-2 kHz is a very critical frequency band, and any competent mid-range driver should not have any anomalies there. At 90dB of 1kHz distortion from ATC speaker is less than 0.1%. Not many other manufacturers can even match that.
Purifi can do that level, but their drivers have much lower efficiency compared to the ATC mid. Even the dedicated 6.5" Purifi midrange (PTT6.5M08-NFA-01A) have a voltage sensitivity of only about 90 dB/1 m and it's a 8 Ohm driver whereas the ATC dome can do about 93 dB/ 1 m at 2.83 V and it's a 16 Ohm driver. This means that the Purifi need 4x the power for the same SPL as the ATC SM75-150S. This also means that the intended frequency range of the ATC dome, it probably have lower power compression at the same SPL as the Purifi.
Based on these alone, it is clear that the ATC mid-dome is still top-class.
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dagfinn
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They have been running with electronic crossovers for decades, only when they became 12xx series they got DSP. E.g. 1038a vs 1238a... Look at measurements, not much difference.
Just read this buddy: https://dariusforoux.com/fear-of-better-options/
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Pearljam5000
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Fomo is real
But I have it less about audio because I found my sound.
But I like discussing audio so I was wondering what people think about who makes the best drivers.
But thanks for the link anyways.
That is not a fair comparison as the ATC is a bandwidth-limited dedicated midrange driver while the properties of the Purify are optimized for bass and lower midrange in a 2-way concept.
Neither sensitivity nor distortion are really breaking points for a ´classic´ midrange driver. These are rather important in the bass and 100-250Hz region. Above 500Hz, it is rather about even directivity, usable bandwidth, driver dimensions, integration into a baffle geometry and which x-over design is possible. That is where despite all qualities the limitations of any 3" midrange dome will come into play, and the ATC is no exception here. If you think about a reasonable strategy to integrate a 3" dome, you end up with 3- or 4-way concepts integrating several chunky drivers into a more or less broad baffle. The result will be a pretty old-fashioned looking loudspeaker anyways.
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