That has always been the allure!
Your horn loads the driver down to the cutoff frequency of the horn. How do you prevent excursion of the diaphragm at frequencies below that?
Single Driver Thoughts?
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Your horn loads the driver down to the cutoff frequency of the horn. How do you prevent excursion of the diaphragm at frequencies below that?
I looked up the details on their website. Here's what they explain:
"The drivers operate in a unique 1.5-way arrangement.
The speakers are equipped with a 4-position switch for adjusting the full range speaker. Position 0 of the switch allows listening without any correction, position 1,2,3 correct the bandwidth by 1,5 dB each respectively."
They use two different drivers. I guess one is running without a filter and the woofer has a simple low-pass filter. The adjustment mentioned above affects the volume level of the wide-band driver (with a set of resistors?) from what I understand.
But what did you think of the sound in the video posted above?
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The sound seems OK but its not complex material and doesn't sound like its got much volume to it. That's the trick to getting 'full range' drivers to show their best qualities.
The problem of getting the bass excursion off of the drivers is the same as it is for many less efficient speakers. If you put the crossover frequency too low, the cap needed to do the job is large and expensive and pretty well guaranteed to mess with the sound. So some designers build a small box around the backside of the driver so as to mechanically limit the excursion. That means that driver is in parallel with the bass driver which might be crossed over using a choke.
This doesn't work so well if your intended market is lower powered amps with no feedback. The problem is that the speaker is likely going to be 4 Ohms and that can knock out an octave of bass response in the output transformer just moving to the 4 Ohm tap.
So the woofer (or subwoofer) should be self-powered to avoid this latter situation, which likely would get you more bass extension than any SET could ever muster.
OTOH if you really were going to use a crossover, most larger drivers like a 15" have no problem going to 500 or 800Hz. That's why speakers using a 500 or 800Hz horn are often seen with 15" woofers. The capacitors needed in the crossover need not be so profound. Of course if you did this with a 'full range' driver you wouldn't need it to be much more than 5 or 6 inches in diameter.
The problem of getting the bass excursion off of the drivers is the same as it is for many less efficient speakers. If you put the crossover frequency too low, the cap needed to do the job is large and expensive and pretty well guaranteed to mess with the sound. So some designers build a small box around the backside of the driver so as to mechanically limit the excursion. That means that driver is in parallel with the bass driver which might be crossed over using a choke.
This doesn't work so well if your intended market is lower powered amps with no feedback. The problem is that the speaker is likely going to be 4 Ohms and that can knock out an octave of bass response in the output transformer just moving to the 4 Ohm tap.
So the woofer (or subwoofer) should be self-powered to avoid this latter situation, which likely would get you more bass extension than any SET could ever muster.
OTOH if you really were going to use a crossover, most larger drivers like a 15" have no problem going to 500 or 800Hz. That's why speakers using a 500 or 800Hz horn are often seen with 15" woofers. The capacitors needed in the crossover need not be so profound. Of course if you did this with a 'full range' driver you wouldn't need it to be much more than 5 or 6 inches in diameter.
I can't say the sound is my cup of tea. It lacks subtlety - I like a more relaxing, easy sound, less "in your face". I don't know what amp they are using, but I'm not sure it is doing the speakers a favor. Who knows... Listening to that track on Qobuz with my headphones, it is actually quite pleasant. Not so much through the video.
Bass excursion may be an issue, but there are others.
Bass excursion causes Doppler Effect distortion which is audible as congestion. That's why simpler material sounds so good on 'full range' drivers as long as its not played too loud. High frequency beaming is always an issue too.
I really don't know how any serious assessment can be made from internet videos. There are too many variables! For example I bet I could make any of them sound better just by using a set of Neumann large condenser microphones. I've yet to see anyone post a video claiming to use actually good microphones...
There are some videos made with pretty good quality microphones, but yes, it's hard to figure out what the real sound is like. You certainly lose a lot of resolution through a phone video.
I know about the Doppler effect. What I meant is that the overall tonal balance seems off, and I would be curious to see what frequency response measurements of this speaker look like.
I don't know how you can tell. That's exactly the sort of thing microphones can cause. When I see YT videos all I can tell is 'yes' there's sound there... but actually assessing anything from it is something I avoid.
I said "seems", out of caution. Phone microphones obviously affect the frequency response as well, but to a limited degree. People even do frequency response measurements with their phones, and they are not as precise, but they are pretty consistent with what you get using better microphones...
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