fpitas
Master Contributor
Many full range afficianados end up with some hf notch filtering etc.
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Why are single drivers disliked to such an extent by most in this forum?
- Thread starter SivKiv
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I already have my 8340 as references - Im not gonna do a notch filter in the summers DIY , but real music gonna be my reference ( my wife is a flutist )
fpitas
Master Contributor
Well, good luck. My ears find massive treble peaks like that to be painful. YMMV...
I agree but are we not just swapping one set of compromises for another? I would take a two way any day if it were that or the single driver since the foibles of the single driver bother me more. I accept there are people who would go the other way on that call though.
dasdoing
Major Contributor
what happened to the edifier g2000 you once ordered for meassurement?
not that much can be expected from these
mhardy6647
Grand Contributor
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I don't dislike 'em at all.
These are probably my all-around favorites (which is not to say all around best).
Radio Shack 40-1354 5-1/4" twincone driver (modified by the addition of phase plugs to improve the treble a bit) in mass loaded folded, tapered quarter-wave tubes (pipes) designed by Bob Brines. No contouring, no filters.
(back before my hifi loft was full of junk from the other house)
These are probably my all-around favorites (which is not to say all around best).
Radio Shack 40-1354 5-1/4" twincone driver (modified by the addition of phase plugs to improve the treble a bit) in mass loaded folded, tapered quarter-wave tubes (pipes) designed by Bob Brines. No contouring, no filters.
(back before my hifi loft was full of junk from the other house)
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fpitas
Master Contributor
Heretic!
fpitas
Master Contributor
I've seen several serious DIY efforts that used full range drivers as midranges. In that service, they did get a crossover.
mhardy6647
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As I have likely mentioned before, that "augmented fullrange" approach can be a good one
Electrovoice made some consumer loudspeakers so designed. I am (and, again, as I've mentioned here before) quite enamored of the pair of EV Esquires that I have. These are what the Klipsch Heresys could have been if Col. Klipsch didn't have unfortunate bad taste when it comes to MR horn designs (and/or drivers and/or XO designs). 
PS I did add a little meat to my earlier post, too, FWIW.
SoundLab makes large electrostatic loudspeakers that are uniformly driven across their entire membrane which can do 20 Hz to 20 kHz. While this is not what most people have in mind when they say "single full-range driver", arguably it IS a "single full-range driver". What looks like individual "cells" in the photo below is the frame; the diaphragm is one large sheet of very very thin Mylar (the gradation in the vertical heights of the "cells" arises from an innovative bass-extension technique):
I have been a SoundLab dealer for over 20 years, and they date back to about 1978 as I recall. Ime they really do the full spectrum with exceptional radiation pattern uniformity. It was my analysis of their radiation pattern twenty-four years ago that led me to buy my first pair unseen and unheard.
SoundLabs DO have a crossover but not for the usual reason. Their reason is, to keep the impedance curve manageable. The impedance curve of an electrostatic loudspeaker is generally capacitive (rather than inductive); in other words, the impedance decreases with increasing frequency. SoundLabs have a low-frequency transformer and a high frequency transformer, with a crossover in the 400 Hz ballpark as I recall, and the resulting two-hump impedance curve keeps the impedance within a range that real-world amplifiers can drive.
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I love the speaker wire routing.
It all looks very real and practical. Those tube amps look formidable.
I love the speaker wire routing.
I don't recall where that photo is from. Probably from an audio show. I would have pulled 'em further out into the room, toed 'em in a bit more, and NOT used absorptive panels behind them.
But yeah the speaker wire routing neatly avoids the issue of "cable lifters" altogether!
The tube amps are Atma-Sphere output transformerless (OTL) amps, which happen to be very happy with the capacitive load the SoundLabs present. The amplifier input cables are balanced, I THINK Atma-Sphere was the first to use fully balanced connections in home audio, so the pre-amplifier and source can be positioned relatively far away without any issues. They are along the left-hand wall, outside of our field of view.
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I would love to know the tube amp manufacturer it looks like a powerful layout.
The DIY builders seem to love these. I'm tempted, what am I missing?
www.lii-audio.com
One Pair | Recommended 15" Full Range Speaker Driver | Fast High and Scaled Sound | F-15 - Lii Song (Lii Audio), unique speaker, amplfier, quality and cost-saving parts for HiFi DIY
Technical Data: 1. PMSE-Free 1.35 Ohms 2. Fs 49.6 Hz 3. Re 6.56 Ohms(dc) 4. Qes 63.78 Ohms 5. Qms 7.45 6. Qes 0.78 7. Qts 0.71 8. L1 0.11 mH 9. L2 0.47 mH 10.R2 3.57 Ohms 11.RMSE-load 0.85 Ohms 13.Vas(sd) 178.5 liters 14.Mms 13.70 grams 15.Cms 1473 uM/Newton 16.Bl 5.92 Tesla-M 17.Splref(sd)...
www.lii-audio.com
The 100 dB scale on the frequency repose?The DIY builders seem to love these. I'm tempted, what am I missing?
One Pair | Recommended 15" Full Range Speaker Driver | Fast High and Scaled Sound | F-15 - Lii Song (Lii Audio), unique speaker, amplfier, quality and cost-saving parts for HiFi DIY
Technical Data: 1. PMSE-Free 1.35 Ohms 2. Fs 49.6 Hz 3. Re 6.56 Ohms(dc) 4. Qes 63.78 Ohms 5. Qms 7.45 6. Qes 0.78 7. Qts 0.71 8. L1 0.11 mH 9. L2 0.47 mH 10.R2 3.57 Ohms 11.RMSE-load 0.85 Ohms 13.Vas(sd) 178.5 liters 14.Mms 13.70 grams 15.Cms 1473 uM/Newton 16.Bl 5.92 Tesla-M 17.Splref(sd)...
I edited my post while you were posting. Those are Atma-Sphere MA-1's (I'm a dealer).
Link to the current version.
I had a feeling
I first saw Atma-Sphere in Vegas at the CES in the 90s I believe. They where immediately powerful in that walking into a wall of warmth in the hallway means anything. They where huge and had rowS of tubes.
The problem with a single driver is physics. You need a large piston for good bass response but a small one for good high frequency response. It’s not possible to have a ten octave range and have acceptable values throughout the range.
Prana Ferox
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Producing bass with sufficient volume (i.e. SPL) is a function of driver surface area (itself a function of driver diameter) mulriplied by distance travelled. Sd times xMax. You can assist this with various pressure tricks (call them Helmholtz resonators, transmission lines, ports etc) but in the end you are bound by physics.
The larger the driver the more it will beam at high frequencies. Again, there are tricks you can apply here but you can't escape physics. You can't just shrink the driver and make it travel further, because it will become harder and harder to control the surface of the driver as well as the suspension in a linear manner. Making the parts stiffer for better low frequency control makes them harder to drive at high frequency and leads to unpleasant breakup at lower and lower frequencies. Making the motor stronger to drive the speaker further at low frequencies tends to add inductance, making the motor itself act as a low-pass filter. There are other ways in which electromechanical optimization for one end of the frequency band negatively impacts the other.
This is why full-range speakers usually have fairly small drivers and give up on attempting high volume output; you can compromise a lot on bass output and certain listeners with certain music and signal chains will not mind. You can also give up a pretty decent chunk of the upper octaves and it won't (again, given music content and signal chain) matter much. That doesn't make it a high fidelity setup.
I've seen larger single drivers used in open-baffle setups but those are a whole different matter and again not necessarily what a lot of people would consider high-fidelity.
E: dangit sarumbear
The larger the driver the more it will beam at high frequencies. Again, there are tricks you can apply here but you can't escape physics. You can't just shrink the driver and make it travel further, because it will become harder and harder to control the surface of the driver as well as the suspension in a linear manner. Making the parts stiffer for better low frequency control makes them harder to drive at high frequency and leads to unpleasant breakup at lower and lower frequencies. Making the motor stronger to drive the speaker further at low frequencies tends to add inductance, making the motor itself act as a low-pass filter. There are other ways in which electromechanical optimization for one end of the frequency band negatively impacts the other.
This is why full-range speakers usually have fairly small drivers and give up on attempting high volume output; you can compromise a lot on bass output and certain listeners with certain music and signal chains will not mind. You can also give up a pretty decent chunk of the upper octaves and it won't (again, given music content and signal chain) matter much. That doesn't make it a high fidelity setup.
I've seen larger single drivers used in open-baffle setups but those are a whole different matter and again not necessarily what a lot of people would consider high-fidelity.
E: dangit sarumbear
