sarathssca
Member
Also the cost of one full-range drivers like fostex fe127en or fe166en is around $58-85 (3.5k - 5.2k rupees) where as a entry level sony 5.1 home theater is around $180 (11k rupees). Why are full range drivers so costly?
best sounding Full Range driver|box
- Thread starter keith_correa
- Start date
Also the cost of one full-range drivers like fostex fe127en or fe166en is around $58-85 (3.5k - 5.2k rupees) where as a entry level sony 5.1 home theater is around $180 (11k rupees). Why are full range drivers so costly?
saheb11123
Active Member
Well I don't know too much, I have used full range driver for mini pc speakers which act that part pretty well, the reason maybe that full range drivers need less hassle to build, no xo involved only bsc(baffle step compensation) and a little eq from the software part and you are done..
Good full range drivers produce extraordinary sound clarity in the mid range zone and with less hassle of setup. Downside is the costing!!
Regards
Soumyajyoti
Good full range drivers produce extraordinary sound clarity in the mid range zone and with less hassle of setup. Downside is the costing!!
Regards
Soumyajyoti
Danieljohn
Active Member
Hi Sarath Sony makes LONG DUCT speakers which are TL's basically & JBL do offer horn based speakers in Mid-Hi product range also
hyeah:It's a question of economics - it's hard to make a quality full-range driver that has a flat response from below 100 Hz to over 10 kHz, leave alone 40 Hz to 20 kHz. It's way simpler to use sealed satellites from say 200 Hz to 12 kHz - any ordinary 3" or 4" paper-cone driver can manage this, and a separate powered subwoofer that only handles the range from say 40 Hz to 200 Hz. A moderately compact 6" or 8" subwoofer in a ported enclosure can handle this well with a modest wattage chipamp (say 10-20W) and a suitable Linkwitz transform active filter or similar, to pump up the bass from the subwoofer a bit - the flatness of the bass response from the subwoofer is not important, as long as peaky resonances are avoided.
Check out the F&D (Fenda) A-520 2.1 multimedia speaker set for an example of a low-cost implementation of this general idea. The sub- is 6.5" and the satellites are 4" full-ranges, and all are driven by modest wattage chipamps. It still sounds extremely good for its price of ~Rs.2k.
sarathssca
Member
So if we are looking for a good sounding speaker system then is it better (sound quality and cost wise) to go for Sub-satellite with active cross over ie line level crossover and then to amplifier for each band and then to respective speakers??
Or these costly full rangers with low powered class A or D amps are the better ??
There's no blanket recommendation for all budgets/requirements that can be made.
1) For the budget-sensitive consumer market, the best bang for the buck is a 2.1 sub-satellite setup. It can give reasonably good sound for almost all sources (PC sound card, CD/DVD player, walkman/discman, cable/satellite TV) at a very low budget.
2) For 2-channel audio, numerous alternatives are available, and it depends on room sizes, type of music, speakers, sources, etc. Active filters driving individual amps and drivers is certainly a possibility, at somewhat higher expense as well as tweaking/tuning for room acoustics.
3) Full-rangers driven by a high-quality 2-channel amp are an important alternative that is now increasingly being chosen by a lot of audiophiles worldwide. The advantage is that colouration and impedance variation from crossover networks is taken out of the picture. This works well with a careful choice of driver and cabinet design, but it is possible to get reasonable results even with budget drivers and sealed enclosures.
A variant of this was recommended by Nelson Pass and others: use a full-range combined with a small helper tweeter driven by a 1st-order 1-way crossover (i.e. just a capacitor in series with the tweeter, or sometimes an impedance pad/matching network). In my experience, this is one of the easiest ways to get a very high-quality audiophile setup at a competitive (but not cheap) budget - the expense will generally be dominated by the driver and cabinet construction cost. It is possible to use an open or semi-open baffle for the full-range.
The bigger the driver, the higher is the mass and thus, higher the inertia which would show up on the performance. Also, the bigger the area of the cone, the higher would be the cone breakup issues. Better materials and better manufacturing techniques are being developed but these issues would remain nevertheless.
To augment what linuxguru posted, one could choose the driver based on room size. In a smaller room, even a 4" full range driver would sound full with some help from the cabinet and the room. IMO, the best full ranger would be a driver with about 5" diameter.
Amongst the full rangers, I have personally listened to the Fostex and the Alpair driver based speakers. In my experience, the Alpairs had better high frequency response than the Fostex but the midrange of Fostex was better. One thing to consider though is the amplifier that would be chosen. In general, the Alpairs have considerably lower sensitivity than the Fostex drivers.
Yup, that's about right - 5"-6" is optimal. 8" and larger (e,g. Philips Hi-Q or Pioneer Bofu) are also feasible, but they probably benefit from a small helper tweeter, typically a 1" or lower diameter silk-dome.
sarith
Active Member
Got hold of Philips 8" speakers in Philips speaker box in mint condition. When coupled with Philips dome, I must say, I like the sound much.
Which alpair were these. The best for midrange is supposed to be the 7s, much better than the 10s and 12s. If fostex is better in midrange, well i gotta get me those too:lol: which fostex was this btw.
Not sure of the model numbers but Alpair speakers were of Badri and the Fostex was Audire IO2 at VenkatCR's place.
Where do you get the Philips dome tweeters? Are these Mylar, Silk or Metal dome?
@sarath Try F&D A520 As suggested by linuxguru. I have been using one which is modified by linuxguru. When coupled with a good preamp and preferably a tone control, This will give unbelievable sound quality for sub 2k price. Just give it a go. You will not regret it. I am also using a philips hi q as satellite for this F&D . Extremely musical setup. All of these can be Implemented at a fraction of cost
Regarding FR drivers- Their music reproduction is quiet different. I myself have experienced a shift in my musical preference from 2way To single FR . The imaging and soundstage can only be experienced. It cant be described. The music will literally not confined to the boxes. It simply floats everywhere.
Only caveat is the amps. Try this combo. Active sub+ Full Range left and right as satellites, driven by a transconductance amplifier.( Myref, Miniref) I am sure you will change your perception towards music listening.
IMHO, the philips/ Boston hi q drivers are underrated nowadys with a plethora of imported drivers. This is a clone of the famous philips 9710 Drivers. Philips has used copper in polepiece longback to achieve a flat freq response.
Regarding FR drivers- Their music reproduction is quiet different. I myself have experienced a shift in my musical preference from 2way To single FR . The imaging and soundstage can only be experienced. It cant be described. The music will literally not confined to the boxes. It simply floats everywhere.
Only caveat is the amps. Try this combo. Active sub+ Full Range left and right as satellites, driven by a transconductance amplifier.( Myref, Miniref) I am sure you will change your perception towards music listening.
IMHO, the philips/ Boston hi q drivers are underrated nowadys with a plethora of imported drivers. This is a clone of the famous philips 9710 Drivers. Philips has used copper in polepiece longback to achieve a flat freq response.
A pure transconductance amp takes a voltage input and produces a current output, proportional to the voltage. The MyRef and the MiniRef mentioned by Vijay are nested or composite transconductance amps - the output stage is a transconductance stage, but the global feedback loop is conventional voltage-series, deriving its feedback from the voltage developed across the speaker load.
The main advantage is that they're relatively immune to Intermodulation Distortion produced from the back-EMF from the voice coils interacting with the (typically non-linear) output-stage impedance of solid-stage amps. You can Google for "Mauro Penasa MyRef" for details in numerous forum postings at diyAudio.com.
The MiniRef is my own design, but borrows ideas from Brad Howland (current pump), Walt Jung (composite amp), Tim Da Paravinci and Mauro Penasa (transconductance output stage, nested within a voltage-series feedback loop). It differs in some key details from the MyRef, and is much simpler to implement and stabilize - details also available at the diyAudio chipamps forum.
sarith
Active Member
I'm not sure if it's fabric or silk. I was going thru my speaker collection of Bolton (3" and 5") and found the Philips dome tweeters inside empty Bolton mid woofer boxes. iirc, I put them there many years ago.
They are from the first batches of domes I bought I guess. I compared it with later bought domes including Philips and few other companies (mylar, silk, metal) and paper cone tweeters. The Philips sound lovely to my ears.
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I am looking at the schematic at the first page of the thread you posted. Could you please tell me what is the purpose of R8 (22k) and R10 (680R). I also see decoupling caps only for +ve rail but not for -ve rail, for both the opamp and 1875.
(That was the schematic version at that time, and designations and values have changed since then, but the broad outline of function is still the same.)
R8 (22k) is part of the Howland Current Pump (transconductance stage) resistor network - it is closely matched to R6 (22k).
R10 (680R) is part of the voltage divider of the global negative feedback loop for voltage-series feedback to the outer loop opamp. The value now is morely commonly in the region of 470R to 390R (giving a few dB higher gain).
C6, C11 bypass each rail (+12v/-12v) of the opamp supply to ground - only one pair is required because the opamp is a dual opamp in a DIP8 package.
C1, C2 bypass each rail of the chipamp supply to PGND - one pair is shared between two Pentawatt chipamps. In current versions of the MiniRef, there's space for larger capacitors here (10mm, sufficient for 470uF/35v or similar).
In addition, there are rail-to-rail bypasses for the opamp (C7) and chipamp (C4). In some versions of the board, there's one bypass for each chipamp, but it hasn't made any perceptible difference to sonics, compared to just a single bypass spaced approx. midway between the chipamps.
I am inclined towards the Alnico version with a bullet shaped phase plug. Will replace my Fostex with them if purchased.
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