Midbass driver wanted

[Luke]

Hello

I need a little help.
I'm looking for the best 8 inches woofer for mid-bass applications.
Bandwidth will be between about 80 to 700Hz.
Lowest harmonic and non-linear distortion should not be an option!
Sensitivity around 87dB or more.
Price for each driver...up to $150 is OK.
Someone has an idea?

Luke

[Amphiprion]

The Usher 8955A would be on the top of my list in that price range. Working with its FR might be difficult, but distortion should be excellent. $120

[NorthernGuy]

Hi,

RCF L8S800. I'm not sure about the prices in the U.S. This is an excellent Mid-Bass driver.

PHL E20-2460. Might be a little bit over Budget. Nothing to say more about PHL...

18Sound 8MB400. Didn't hear that driver, but read some recommendations in other forums.

My personal favourite is the RCF, but all 3 should do the job very well.

Best Regards

[Luke]

Hey Guys

Thanks for infos! Help appreciated.
Of course these will have to be considered, depending on the price, naturally.
Also. I made a search in this forum and found this:

https://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11700&page=2&pp=35

This is a thread from JonMarsh. Please check posts #44 & #45.
And two interesting 8" candidates are the SEAS and for the price, the Peerless 830883.
What do you think about these as low distortion units?
Considering the limited 80-700Hz bandwidth usage.

Luke

[chrismercurio]

Audio Technology CQuenze

http://www.madisound.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=8446

Even on sale they are out of budget...but perhaps worth the stretch.

There are also:

Peerless Exclusive 8"

http://www.madisound.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=143&products_id=1605

and I have a pair of Visaton AL200's sitting around doing nothing. I would sell those for much less than $150 each.

http://www.visaton.com/en/high_end/tiefton/al200_8.html

Chris

[ThomasW]

Spoke with Jon recently about this and he prefers the 8" Peerless HDS Nomex 830869 over the Exclusive

[Luke]

Spoke with Jon recently about this and he prefers the 8" Peerless HDS Nomex 830869 over the Exclusive

Thanks Thomas

Very interesting.
You mean that Jon prefers this one over the 830884?
According to him, for which reasons?
As I'm looking at drivers specs on Impedance curve, I can note that this driver does not have a copper ring in its gap that the 830884 has.
And please tell me if I'm wrong but distortion figures could suffer slightly from absence of this ring for the 830869.
At the end , how would be this influence on this specific bandwidth of 80-700Hz?
By the way is there any specific group of performance curves available that he would have done with this unit?


Luke

[Jonasz]

Spoke with Jon recently about this and he prefers the 8" Peerless HDS Nomex 830869 over the Exclusive

Speaking of Jon, has his boss considered giving him any more freetime in the future? He needs to spend more time on important stuff again me thinks... :B

[Hank]

Yes, let's get that boy unchained from his desk! Maybe a wild west jail break?

[augerpro]

Thanks Thomas

Very interesting.
You mean that Jon prefers this one over the 830884?
According to him, for which reasons?
As I'm looking at drivers specs on Impedance curve, I can note that this driver does not have a copper ring in its gap that the 830884 has.
And please tell me if I'm wrong but distortion figures could suffer slightly from absence of this ring for the 830869.
At the end , how would be this influence on this specific bandwidth of 80-700Hz?
By the way is there any specific group of performance curves available that he would have done with this unit?


Luke

I've done some comparison on these since I needed a good 8" for a project of mine. I'd used the 5.25" Nomex before and was happy with it so I was looking at these too. If you look Peerless' specs the 8" Nomex shows quite the null around 800-1000hz. The 8" Exclusive does not. What concerned me was Jon's measurement that showed a pretty good dip in this area on the 8" Exclusive. I think this was an early sample of this driver and they have had some small changes over the years. I figured that Peerless's info was optimistic if anything, so that response pretty much ruled the 8" Nomex out and I bought an 8" Exclusive to see if it displayed a problem in this area that wasn't shown on Peerless's spec sheet. Here are the results: NOT AVAILABLE Later I seen Zaph had also measured this driver: http://zaphaudio.com/tidbits/ As you can see the 8" Exclusive doesn't show much trouble, compared to Jon's early measurement. OTOH the 8" Nomex probably does have some response problem as the Peerless spec sheet shows.

Outside of that issue you can see by comparing the smaller versions of these on Zaph's site that HD is considerably lower on the Exclusive series over the Nomex. My own informal testing of inductance at xmax shows the Exclusive to be quite superior to the Nomex also. None of this should be a surprise given the better motor.

So anyway the current Exclusive is an excellent driver, while the Nomex is good, but probably not worth the small cost savings because of the lower performance.

[Amphiprion]

Where does the RS225 fit in all this?

[Luke]

I've done some comparison on these since I needed a good 8" for a project of mine. I'd used the 5.25" Nomex before and was happy with it so I was looking at these too. If you look Peerless' specs the 8" Nomex shows quite the null around 800-1000hz. The 8" Exclusive does not. What concerned me was Jon's measurement that showed a pretty good dip in this area on the 8" Exclusive. I think this was an early sample of this driver and they have had some small changes over the years. I figured that Peerless's info was optimistic if anything, so that response pretty much ruled the 8" Nomex out and I bought an 8" Exclusive to see if it displayed a problem in this area that wasn't shown on Peerless's spec sheet. Here are the results: NOT AVAILABLE Later I seen Zaph had also measured this driver: http://zaphaudio.com/tidbits/ As you can see the 8" Exclusive doesn't show much trouble, compared to Jon's early measurement. OTOH the 8" Nomex probably does have some response problem as the Peerless spec sheet shows.

Outside of that issue you can see by comparing the smaller versions of these on Zaph's site that HD is considerably lower on the Exclusive series over the Nomex. My own informal testing of inductance at xmax shows the Exclusive to be quite superior to the Nomex also. None of this should be a surprise given the better motor.

So anyway the current Exclusive is an excellent driver, while the Nomex is good, but probably not worth the small cost savings because of the lower performance.

@Augerpro

Great infos!
Also this Zaph Audio site is quite interesting also.
Thanks.

PS. Hey guys don't forget the limited band usage of around 80-700Hz!!!

Luke

[Luke]

Where does the RS225 fit in all this?

I will to check this one also.
Thanks Mark

Luke

[Sakura]

I read that the Peerless Nomex 830869 DOES have shorting rings, says so here on Madisound site also: http://www.tymphany.com/datasheet/printview.php?id=13

I also prefer the HDS Nomex over the Exclusives in most sizes because of the smoother top end rolloff - but - I haven't heard the 8" in either series.

[Amphiprion]

All Peerless have had Faraday rings from the CSX to the HDS to the current Nomex and Exclusive (and maybe even PPB but I haven't checked). The cheaper units implement less expensive faraday shielding methods and materials.

[Luke]

All Peerless have had Faraday rings from the CSX to the HDS to the current Nomex and Exclusive (and maybe even PPB but I haven't checked). The cheaper units implement less expensive faraday shielding methods and materials.

Sakura and Mark...thanks!

First, Peerless like lots of other manufs don't say much about their products. Sad!
Hard to figure out sometimes with them!
We have to search hard for third party tests and some who dares dismantling components to learn and save infos.
Anyway these guys are always welcomed and thanked.

But for the sake of discussion and your contribution is welcomed, naturally...
The discontinued CSX's and a lot of other new driver like the 830869 and 830884 have aluminium modulation rings in the magnet structure.
The 830884 like some others has also a copper Faraday ring in the gap to control inductance behavior and further influence for lower H2 and H3.
This copper ring can be "seen" in its slow rising of impedance.
It would be nice to have distortion specs on the 830869.
It would also be nice to hear Jon about this 830869 over 830884 supposed preference as reported by ThomasW.
Later...

Luke

[Luke]

Where does the RS225 fit in all this?

Mark

Assuming what I saw in Jon's report about the RS180 in the #4 link of this thread, the RS225S could be a good candidate.
The specs look nice too.
As nice as the price also...like the 830884.

Luke

[Jonasz]

I would go with the Seas W22. The part about Le in Zaphs tidbits section convinced me that I already use the "right" driver for my application wich is similar to yours. It's halfway down the page: http://zaphaudio.com/tidbits/

The difficult question is "How do these different Le(X) performances affect the sound?" Tough question, but I'm very familiar with these three drivers, so I can toss out a couple subjective comments. Gulp. Here goes... It's all in the dynamics. The better Seas drivers are less likely to fall apart at high volumes. The RS180 is best crossed over steep and low "Jon Marsh Style" but it's not really going to be too bad crossed over anywhere under 2kHz.

[augerpro]

I think the Seas W22 may be a bit out of the OP's budget. If it's not than I agree it would be an excellent choice running from 80-700hz if the OP can swing it.

In fact it was the informal Le(x) test (which I heard about from Zaph) that really made my favor the 830884 over the RS225 for my Delphi project. Here is the impedance of the 830884 at +/- 5 or 6mm:



Here is the RS225 at roughly the same excursion:



The RS series is really quite good, but the Exclusive is just on another level. This would be much more important if the OP were running a higher passband as the impedance changes at xmax would begin to modulate the frequency response-probably quite noticeably-with the more uneven RS motor.

Another 8" woofer with very low Le and extremely good Le(x) behavior is the B&C 8NDL51

[Luke]

Thanks for help.
There's alot of nice drivers here.
But some are a bit too expensive.
Others are too powerful for nothing.
I find the 810884 to have a potentially nice combination of price and performance.
And it doesn't even look like a compromise as is!
Thanks very much everybody for these suggestions.

Luke