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Full range loudspeakers i.e. Single driver...any love?

Thetiminator said:
Bloody hell Rick what did they cost you?
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I only have their entry level speakers (AC 1.6) , which I bought secondhand :) My theory is IF I can get the cabinets to work I can always progress a little further up the ladder if I sell my other speakers!
 
I had a pair of Hi-fi News Ace omnidirectional enclosures (a double TQWT design from ca. 1970), each with an upward-firing Supravox 215 RTF 64 Bicone driver. They sounded convincing with organ music, but were rather too coloured for orchestral music. They were also rather large for my smallish room, so were replaced. I didn't find them notably more coherent or "present" than other, more conventional, speakers I've had (KEF, Proac, Kudos etc.), which was disappointing after the effort that went into getting them built.

The "presence thing" seems worth pursuing, but to achieve it for large-scale music seems to demand big enclosures. I would still like to try an open baffle along the lines of the Wharfedale SFB but with a WAW (woofer-assisted wideband) driver setup ...or a Lowther TP1 corner horn in a mono system... if only I had a spare corner to put one in :rolleyes:
 
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tuga said:
Kef, Tannoy and a few others put the tweeter inside the mid-woofer making what is called a coaxial driver.
This topology has significant advantages over a single wide-band driver.
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I’m not sure if d'appolito designs count as a true point source design but they certainly give many of the advantages without having to mount the tweeter in the centre of a moving horn flare, I’ve spent many happily hours (years) sat in front of a pair (Ninkas).

I am kind of intrigued by the Mark Audio designs, the Celeste MB is piquing my interest. Many years ago, my ex Mrs has a JVC micro system with some tiny, wood cone single driver speakers... the system was pretty rubbish and kept breaking but I put the speakers on my work desk and whilst obviously limited, in near field use, they has spooky imaging and very good vocal intelligibility, and didn’t sound honky like some single driver horn loaded designs I’ve heard. I wouldn’t mind someone similar but a little more serious to try on my desk again, and these may be the ticket!
 
marshanp said:
The "presence thing" seems worth pursuing, but to achieve it for large-scale music seems to demand big enclosures. I would still like to try an open baffle along the lines of the Wharfedale SFB but with a WAW (woofer-assisted wideband) driver setup ...or a Lowther TP1 corner horn in a mono system... if only I had a spare corner to put one in
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The thing about wide-band speakers is that one is soon (or not so soon) realises that a single-driver needs assistance, for fear of owning a pair of speakers that dictates which types of music you can listen/reproduce to and more importantly those which you cannot.
And in that case, why not just get a speaker with a dedicated mid-range driver assisted by a woofer and a tweeter?
Different frequency band require drivers with distinct characteristics and capabilities; it's an unsurmountable fact of physics.

There are many aspects in which single-driver speakers fail to attain a satisfactory level of performance.
One can fall in love with the idea of a single driver, and a man in love is a blind man.
 
Physics dictates that there is a certain size you can get away with in a Single Driver to cover treble down to bass. Its in the 4"-6" range, you can get an 8" to do treble but it usually means either very light cones and or/whizzer cones.
The Mark Audio drivers are a good compromise between bass extension and mid-range/treble when I have heard them at Scalford.

Any speaker is a compromise, single driver based ones just priorities certain qualities.

IME/IMO, the advantage of these drivers is being able to cover the core of the frequency range (~150Hz-8kHz) with no physical crossover and adding bass/tweeter support. The use of DSP products really help with this, so much easier these days!

I've owned a fair few: Veravox 3 & 5S, Bandor 50, CSS FR125S, Fostex FF225K, Goodmans Axiom 201, Supravox 165-2000..

I would say the best that did the whole frequency range (including bass) were the FF225K in Jericho horns but they were MASSIVE and needed a decent valve amp to get the best out of them, years before I built my Decware Zen. They also needed a tweeter above ~8kHz. The best in terms of sound, were the Supravox 165-2000, just superb midrange and treble, I felt they did'nt need a tweeter but they did drop off above ~13kHz. Certainly worked well in Open Baffle when released of bass duties below ~150Hz, decent stab at it in a large Aperiodic enclosure placed in the corners.
The Goodmans Axiom 201s were probably the easiest to work with, stick them in Open Baffle, Closed box etc and they just sound wonderful, plenty of SPL too but they certainly need some help tweeter wise above 8-10kHz, to be expected for a 12" driver.

Supravox 165-2000 in Aperiodic Box next to Veravox 3 in FrugelHorn Lites.

Little and Large by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Supravox 165-200 used in a 3-way enclosed and 2-way Open Baffle




Goodmans Axiom 201s

Goodmans Axiom 201 by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Axiom 201s in Closed/Aperiodic box with Founktek Ribbon Tweeters:

System by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

FrugelHorn Lites again

Frugelhorn Lite by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Veravox 5S and Fostex FF225K - Both used in Open Baffle designs at this time

Fostex FF225K & Veravox 5S by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Much older FF225K used in Jericho Horns.

image0045u by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

Bandor 50mm in a small sealed Spherical enclosure (original IKEA Bowl design) and Veravox 5S in BiB enclosure (Diyaudio 'Bigger is Better' design).

Old Hifi by Robert Seymour, on Flickr

CSS FF125S - My first DIY speaker, small ~12L sealed box IIRC>

pict0734zm1 by Robert Seymour, on Flickr
 
I’ve found a wide band can work very well if used with a tweeter and bass helper. I use Bastanis open baffles, which use a 12” mechanically damped driver to cover 200hz to around 5k. Bass is run with an 18” driver with a little DSP to compensate for the lack of baffle, using a Behringer Inuke 3000w amp.

Tweeter is a compression driver, run from the wide band driver with a cap in series for a simple first order crossover.

Works very well to my ears, and has the added benefit of being somewhere around 100db efficient, so lots of power not required.

Currently use a 15w OTL for mid and top.
 
Too compromised, unsubtle and often harsh in the mids. Papery sound (Lowther PM6 or Fostex FE103 are what I listened to).
No real treble subtlety either.
Easy to drive and very fast sounding. Good imagery.
That’s my small experience of single drivers.
 
marshanp said:
...or a Lowther TP1 corner horn in a mono system... if only I had a spare corner to put one in :rolleyes:
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I heard a couple of these in stereo many moons ago. Ignore the detractors that spout received wisdom. Single drivers done well can sound phenomenal.

It's the same 'wtf' experience as hearing your first properly set-up Decca cartridge.
 
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The only full range single drivers I can live with are GLL’s Imagio ICT designs.

Twin-cones or “whizzers” are the work of Satan, IMHO, and are only fit to be used in car drive units that fire at your ankles!
 
Moppit said:
I'm guessing this may be the drivers being very revealing of the source?
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No, they're very revealing of their shortcomings.

Truly revealing, high resolution drivers, transduce the signal with very little distortion at normal listening levels when used in their optimal operating range.
 
My Zu Druids are essentially single crossoverless driver with a horn loaded super tweeter. They have numerous shortcomings that you soon forget, apart from a lack of treble refinement that is a bit irksome. I enjoy their transparency, dynamics and immediacy.
 
I run a Fostex in an open backed box as the centre speaker in my TV system because the fronts are Quad ESL57s and no conventional speaker I've tried for the centre had the vocal clarity of the quads and so sounded muffled. The Fostex does vocals nicely and gets round the mumbly (?) vocals on some films. It doesn't have to produce much bass, and doesn't and the treble isn't terribly refined, but as a centre speaker this isn't critical. I've been tempted to try some better single drivers in a open baffle with DSP, but have run out of rooms to install decent systems in.
 
tuga said:
No, they're very revealing of their shortcomings.

Truly revealing, high resolution drivers, transduce the signal with very little distortion at normal listening levels when used in their optimal operating range.
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tuga said:
In such a topology the wide-band is, essentially, a mid-range driver.
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Semantics. The 12” driver is covering 200hz to getting towards 10k. A bit more than the mid range!

It gives the advantages of a single driver speaker without the compromises to my ears.
 
Beobloke said:
The only full range single drivers I can live with are GLL’s Imagio ICT designs.

Twin-cones or “whizzers” are the work of Satan, IMHO, and are only fit to be used in car drive units that fire at your ankles!
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I seem to remember you using single driver speakers at Scalford a few years back.

Bandor/Pentachord/Jordan-Watts or something of that ilk?
 
Olsen said:
I would ignore the mega priced above, they are taking the piss like some cable comics.

There's a market for audiophools, they listen with their wallet.
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So? You've listened to -say Ocellias, or Voxativ - then? ( Teresonic DO seem a bit much!)

Kudos to Rob whose experience is gold!




Twin cones? Cube Audio have TRIPLE cones!
 
Ali T said:
Semantics. The 12” driver is covering 200hz to getting towards 10k. A bit more than the mid range!

It gives the advantages of a single driver speaker without the compromises to my ears.
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You are talking about a 3-way speaker with a 12" mid-woofer which happens to have a wider than usual operating range; it has the potential to surpass the performance of a single-diver speaker but not that of a conventional 3-way.

But my point is that it is no longer a single-driver/1-way speaker.
 
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