Single driver speakers. Are they worth considering ?


I don't mean electrostatic. How close to a full range speaker can you come with single driver ?
inna

Showing 2 responses by atmasphere

Charles, right, thank you. I was trying to recall Tonian Labs name.
IIRC Tonian no longer carries the PHY product. He used to be the importer. Samuel Furon of Ocellia has taken over PHY. He has an office in Canada and does distribution from there.

Since the bass can be handled by a subwoofer, its really only important that a full range driver make it to something less than 70Hz or so. That is why I find the 6" PHY appealing, since it can do that (in the right cabinet) with fairly smooth highs. Duke LeJeurne designed a sealed box for this speaker which also employed a pair of rear-firing Fostex tweeters. The main driver had no crossover. I did some pink noise measurements and that design made it to 70Hz fairly well- no leaness, and the rear-firing tweeters helped it with not being beamy in the highs. PHY has a rear-loaded horn design for their 8" and 6" drivers; I'm hoping to hear one of those fairly soon.
No full range driver is really full range.


Some can do alright in the highs, like the Tangband 1772 and 1808.

Whizzer cones can be problematic due to breakups and a bit of discontinuity with the main cone. PHY gets around this by eliminating the whizzer cone on their 6" driver and having otherwise low mass. It has surprisingly smooth highs.


The big problem you run into is beaminess. The solution is either to crossover the driver into a tweeter, or add a rear firing tweeter (and not cross over the main driver) to correct the tonality and help with soundstage palpability.


If you have that sorted, then the other issue is bass. The trick here is to get the driver to go down to something well less than 80Hz. If you can do that, then a sub can be used that has no output (including distortion) above 80Hz. If this is done the sub will not attract attention to itself. I prefer the Swarm subwoofer system from Audiokinesis, as in addition to being a worthy sub (goes to 20Hz) but also solves standing wave issues in the room so bass is evenly distributed, especially at the listening chair.

The other limitation most 'full range' drivers have is power is they are also efficient (+95dB) - most don't handle a lot of power, the ZU being one of the exceptions. That little 6" PHY I mentioned would be toast by the time it sees 20watts, and its rated at 96dB. In most rooms 10 watts works with it, as long as a sub is also involved. If you plan to use an amp that has more power than the driver has, its a really good idea to place a fuse in series with the driver! Some of these drivers are quite pricey owing to the level of precision needed to make them work. Frying a voice coil can be really disappointing.


If you don't cross the bass out of the driver, you can expect Doppler Effect distortion and unnecessary heating of the voice coil.


Getting a full range driver to go to about 50-60 Hz is doable (more like 65Hz if you're thinking about that 6" PHY...). Adding rear firing tweeters while otherwise not crossing over the main driver is also doable. If you sort this out properly, you can get excellent results.