Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?

Pluses and minuses in all designs; pick the flavor that suits.

I was lucky to meet and spend an evening with John Dunlavy in the mid 90s when he was in Colorado Springs (thanks to a local dealer) and have heard all models from small to huge. They could be magic, but only ever for one listener at a time.

For good or bad, those configurations were the largest one-person speakers I ever heard. They were off-the-charts fabulous sounding when you were exactly in the sweet spot. Move an inch right or left and it was gone. Not kidding, gone.

I’ve been building/listening to Coax speakers for just over two years? 5 different drivers in 9 or 10 unique enclosures? (Tannoy, SB Acoustics, Seas and Dayton)

Currently listening to a pair of Seas C16N001/F in enclosures I built following Seas exact recommended build. They are a fantastic match to my Hiraga Super 30 watt amp.

I tend to switch out speakers/amps with a certain regularity. These have been in my listening room, hooked up for several months now, and I feel no need to swap then out. Love the sound of these! My Quads, Cornwalls, full range voigt pipes, coax voigt pipes and some other units I’ve built as well, are waiting in the other room to be revisited.

These particular speakers are quite special. I have built a lot of full range speakers, and I like a point source, but felt I wanted more “sparkle” than a full range driver could supply. Coax drivers fit that bill perfectly.

As I’m using the Acoustic Reality Series Crossover with these (and several of the others I’ve built) the time/phase alignment of the speakers is amazing. A ridiculous amount of detail, while at the same time staying true to the tone of the original driver.

Im hoping to buy a pair of the Great Plains Audio 604’s, and build something with them. But they are costly…

The Heretics look interesting, and as the FaitalPro drivers they use are fairly cost effective, might be something I look into also.

Unless you couldn’t tell, I’m a fan of these types of drivers :)

hello closenplay,

I promise I am not being modest. I really and truly do not understand. I asked these exact same questions of Andrew Jones when he was setting up the SourcePoint 10s in Steve Guttenberg's listening room, and his answers plus all your answers and I still don't know what is and WHERE ARE the 'acoustic centers' of the cone and either a dome or a horn-loaded-compression driver tweeter? To the best of my understanding it is a time-domain thing that is not a physical alignment of of the voice coils; but something that must be determined experimentally using some type of wide-band pulses.

As for point sources, I have never encountered one.

As for my Heretic AD614 experiences: they seem extremely coherent and musical.  

They are notable because they use a series-connected Linkwitz-Rielly crossover that is very low-power SET-friendly.  John Atkinson told me that in all his years he had only tested three speakers with series crossovers. 

As for my lifetime of coaxial experiments, I believe coaxial drivers project voices into the room with greater presence. 

That really is all I know.

herb

herb, if Andrew Jones couldn't explain it to you while setting up a pair of coaxial speakers, I doubt that anyone here can.

tomcy6  +1