Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?

I prefer Coaxial Speakers. Point source makes a lot of sense to me. They are also less visually obtrusive. High WAF factor.

The real purpose of a coincident source driver is because of the waveguide affect of placing the tweeter in the center of the bass driver. A waveguide to a tweeter extends the frequency response lower allowing a 2 way to utilize a larger driver for more bass extension and volume while not asking it to operate outside its physical abilities thereby introducing distortion. Andrew Jones mentions this in his description of his speaker. Not really anything new though.

@boostedis How can that be the "real purpose" of a coaxial when you can more easily put a separate tweeter behind a wave guide - no complex coaxial required?

The real purpose of a coaxial seems to be the advantages (whatever those are) granted by the spatial co-location of the main tweeter and mid-woofer. In Tannoys featuring a single dual-concentric driver, this better estimates a coherent "single point source" driver, but with more extended FR compared to single-cone drivers or the complications of huge electrostat panels.

Have you compared Rockport speakers to your Tannoys and if so how did they compare?

@ronboco Unfortunately, I have not, yet - but they look amazing! I’ve always admired pics of their builds.

@russ69 Did you really start this thread with a "times moved on" argument against coaxials and then admitted to using Ohm Walsh’s, a design from the early 1970s? lol

There were many bad coaxials back in the day, where you see tweeters kludgily bolted on in front of a woofer. That's what we've moved on from. Not the excellent Tannoy design (which they got right back in the 1940s and have been refining since then), nor the other sophisticated coaxials we we see in high end audio today.

@johnah5   Funny that you should mention the Hsu coax speaker, the CCB-8. I modified mine with an upgraded, external crossover, better wiring, internal panel damping, and high passed at 80hz, then going to a Audiokinesis subwoofer swarm. Amps are VTV Purifi mono blocks, Benchmark LA4. Remarkable!  Serious definition, clarity, soundstage/imaging, dynamics. Here's a wealthy audiophile with a million dollar system that uses his Hsu CCB-8's to blow people away-

Wow small world.  If you don't mind can you tell me where you got the cross over?  I have NSMT 100's so thinking of just using these as they are and take them with me when I travel for a month at a time. I am stunned at how they sound with my SPL 1200 and SPL Director. 

thanks

jh

@johnah5 

We built our own using same values as the stock x-over, but way-upgraded parts quality- Goertz inductors, V-cap ODAMs and Miflex caps, Path audio resistors, we went nuts- would not fit inside the speaker so we mounted it in outboard box. Also lined the inside panels with "No-Rez". Driver is hard-wired to the x-over.  It's amazing, a real diamond in the rough!