Full Range comparison

I would look at the Mark Audio paper composite full range drivers (such as the Alpair 12P, which I think is their best driver).  They are excellent, sound very natural and have a very flat response.  The gold/grey metal Mark Audio are nice too, but tend to have a bright edge to the sound due to the breakup distortion of the metal cones.

I do not have direct experience with the Seas full range drivers, but they all tend to have upper frequency spikes and increases in sound that need to be addressed with crossover notch filters and such.  Also, full range drivers that have the wizzer cone in the middle tend to have horn-type signature (can be slightly shouty and have a slight echo in the high frequencies).  With a properly applied notch filter, these may be really nice.  Seas makes excellent drivers and have strong magnetic motors, but I would probably not choose them because of the wizzer cone.

The Seas Exotic will play lower in the bass due to their lower free air resonance, but will have spiky and wacky response above 2KHz, like many other woofers do.  The Seas Exotic will also take more power and have a larger maximum excursion.

The Mark Audio are very flat and can be implemented without any special crossover notch filters or anything (just connect wire directly between speaker and binding posts.  It's extremely hard to design and make a full range driver that does everything right.  It depends on what area is important to you.

can you provide a link to one of the Japanese FR on ebay?  I'm just curious.

If you're interested, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30H7t6ENTtI

It's the first in a series of videos where Mark Fenlon (MarkAudio) talks about the design of his full range drivers.  There are 6 parts (6 videos) total in this lecture.

I wouldn’t take his opinion of Wharfedale as an indicator of what his products are like. In the full range arena, he does an excellent job. And he also just states opinions on what he "knows". He may not have access to or know the labs from vendors such as Focal, B&W, Wilson, etc.

There are a multitude of youtube videos with Mark Audio speakers. However, there’s only one with the 12P and it uses a very mild recording from a turntable. Not really the best to showcase this speaker.

I used the 12P and made a center channel speaker. Being a full range paper cone, it was slightly soft in the very high frequencies. Using Cardas rhodium binding posts and Furutech rhodium disconnect clips helped tremendously with the high frequency extension (also removing those connection extenders on the MarkAudio speaker). The result is a very excellent, accurate and revealing speaker. I also recommend using a solid-core type of speaker cable for internal, such as Audioquest Rocket 44/88.

I did go on to engineer and build a replacement set of speakers because the Mark Audio was slightly soft in the highs (this was before I switched to rhodium binding/clips -- I originally had gold-plated connectors and binding posts). I used a variation of the Seas Thor speaker. Used 7" Seas Excel magnesium cone woofers and the Seas soft dome tweeter. It did do very well in the high frequencies, but the magnesium drivers have a bright breakup at around 5khz that needs to be handled with a notch filter.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge Seas fan. They make excellent drivers. However, I have heard a lot of full range drivers and wizzer cones. While some may like them and they do full range well, the wizzer cones all come with compromises and problems. Additionally, a woofer designed to play well down low will always have problems in the upper frequencies (such as above 2khz). Look at any Scanspeak woofer and you will see a really bad response above 1-2khz. However, they are awsome between 50 and 900 hz.

In the end, I would rather listen to the Mark Audio 12P instead of a higher priced over engineered driver such as the Seas. I think the Mark Audio is just going to sound more natural and "real" than the breakup and wizzer cones of the Seas.

Japenese Full Range offered on ebay., which are less than 1/2 the price of the Exotics, and are cool looking.

Less than 1/2 price of the Exotics should be in the $400 range, not $7k. 

The Feastrex remind me of the Voxativ drivers with their huge magnet assemblies.  Also very expensive.

@audioabyss - I checked out the Schmidt Lambrix website.  I would agree that those speakers would be excellent sounding, since I know what the 12P sounds like, but I think they are charging way too much.  $4500 for a pair of speakers with $160 drivers and a 8" woofer where the drivers aren't even flush mounted?!?!?  I mean, come on!  I flush mounted my 12P when I built my center channel using double-thickness plywood (1.25" for the front baffle).  Yeah, don't get on me for using plywood.  It was high grade plywood and I don't like using MDF because of the pain of veneering.