Opinions on the pro's and con's on Ceramic Drivers.....


Hello fellow Audiogoner's..... and just wondering if you have any opinions on the sonic merits as well as the reliability of Ceramic drivers. I would like to know are they as fragile as what I have read ......are they possibly sonically superior to the other more '' traditional '' drivers in speakers ? Let's keep it civil and your thoughts are appreciated.  Thank you in advance.

garebear

as a driver material, ceramic has advantages in terms of stiffness and very high power to weight ratios. it can theoretically stay more linear. so it’s going to be the fastest and most agile material possible for a dynamic driver.

not all ceramic drivers are created equal. and the knock on the sound of ceramic drivers based on the tendency toward ’ringing’ has been overcome in many different ways, as has the fragility issue.

since 2001 i have owned 4 speaker systems with ceramic drivers, all accuton. and i far prefer the sound of ceramic drivers to other materials i have heard. there is a life and transparency to ceramic drivers my ears prefer. it sounds more like music, than reproduced sounds. impossible to completely isolate driver material from other speaker build factors, but that is how things sound to me. you would have to be a speaker designer switching driver types in and out, to really nail it down.

these days the best ceramic drivers are made with ceramic matrix material. in my Evolution Acoustics MM7 twin tower speaker i have a pair of 7" accuton mid range ceramic matrix drivers on each side, and 4 accuton 11" ceramic matrix woofers on each side. very efficient at 97db, 7 ohm. fantastic performance. had them for 10 years now so very reliable.

i’m a ceramic driver fan big time.