Interesting Drivers

**5th element** · 23 March 2014, 11:26 Sunday

I want a pair too

Certainly, you'd need to work the tweeter to its limits to keep the third order peak in the mid suppressed. Though it is a shame that the tweeter isn't as sensitive as the mid.

These are quite expensive, but when you consider that you're basically getting a high performance mid, a high performance tweeter AND a waveguide loaded tweeter at that, the price doesn't seem quite so objectionable. Not to mention the coincident driver. One thing to notice is that the second order on the mids rises quite quickly, unless that's a measurement artefact. It would be nice to see how these sound.

**Face** · 23 March 2014, 13:19 Sunday

I'd love to have these flanked with a pair of Anarchy woofers in a pair of desktop monitors.

**5th element** · 23 March 2014, 17:49 Sunday

I think if you did that you'd redefine what the word 'desktop' typically means

**JonMarsh** · 27 March 2014, 17:44 Thursday

Well, it would make one HECK of a gaming system! I bet the dark lord would like it, if he plays computer games... just imagine what it would do for the rumble of a Star Destroyer passing nearby... or the thudding steps of an AT-AT!

**5th element** · 27 March 2014, 17:47 Thursday

Well, I do play computer games through my FST/waveguide multiple sub system

**DS-21** · 28 March 2014, 16:45 Friday

Originally posted by 5th element

I want a pair too

Certainly, you'd need to work the tweeter to its limits to keep the third order peak in the mid suppressed. Though it is a shame that the tweeter isn't as sensitive as the mid.

These are quite expensive, but when you consider that you're basically getting a high performance mid, a high performance tweeter AND a waveguide loaded tweeter at that, the price doesn't seem quite so objectionable. Not to mention the coincident driver. One thing to notice is that the second order on the mids rises quite quickly, unless that's a measurement artefact. It would be nice to see how these sound.

It's worth noting that the "base model" Andrew Jones (Pioneer EX) concentric (magnesium woofer, ceramic-graphite tweeter) is basically the same price on Pioneer's parts website.

FWIW, here are Klippel measurements of one of mine: http://medleysmusings.com/pioneer-s-...-unit-testing/
Note that the FR of the tweeter is affected by surface mounting. These things have a very thick, rounded-over flange.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**Face** · 28 March 2014, 17:52 Friday

Or I could save quite a bit and use either the Q100 or Q900 coaxials I have here...

**Jonasz** · 02 April 2014, 10:59 Wednesday

Don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, maybe (thinking about the date) it's just a joke...

Page not found – Scan-Speak A/S

http://www.scan-speak.dk/news/20140402b.htm

**JonMarsh** · 02 April 2014, 12:58 Wednesday

Saw that, and wondered... I got some strange news yesterday at work that I thought was an April 1 joke, and turned out NOT to be, unfortunately. Could be in the same category...

**5th element** · 02 April 2014, 14:24 Wednesday

Hmm I'm kinda hoping that it is a joke. Although I am torn in two over that to a certain degree. Googling those that acquired SS doesn't show up anything that would appear that promising, which is a worry >.< Although if it has been bought out perhaps that will introduce some of SSs tech into other significantly cheaper drivers elsewhere.

Well we shall see.

**Face** · 02 April 2014, 18:49 Wednesday

According to Madisound, it's legit.

**5th element** · 03 April 2014, 10:35 Thursday

Interesting. I wonder what changes (if any) we will see.

**Face** · 03 April 2014, 10:39 Thursday

Originally posted by 5th element

Interesting. I wonder what changes (if any) we will see.

Nothing positive for us I'd imagine.

**Jonasz** · 07 April 2014, 17:20 Monday

Vance test the 18W/8545-01 driver: http://www.scan-speak.dk/datasheet/r...il_2012-10.pdf

**wowo101** · 10 April 2014, 09:42 Thursday

SEAS has quietly released a Prestige version of their new coax design: http://seas.no/index.php?option=com_...342&Itemid=284 – reed/paper cone and fabric dome instead of magnesium. Any thoughts?

**Jonasz** · 10 April 2014, 11:19 Thursday

I like it. Very narrow recommended crossoverrange though, 2000-2200hz. I have the ER18 in a pair of dipoles and like what I hear from the reed cone and as long as they can keep the price at a decent level I'm sure this will sell good. I notice the Le wich is actually lower than the Excelversion, maybe there's a decent motor in there somewhere...

It's quiet a looker in the classy understated sense imho...

**5th element** · 10 April 2014, 12:16 Thursday

Le is low enough, but they don't say there's any copper or the T shaped pole in the prestige version. If the prestige version doesn't have any motor linearising stuff going on then it makes it a far less attractive option. I'd say it'll probably cost $200-250 if the L12 is anything to go by. At this price point the driver really should include copper in the gap. Over the last few years we've seen most manufactures release drivers and driver ranges costing very little with excellently engineered motors + copper that produce remarkable results for the money. At one point SEAS didn't offer advanced motors in their prestige line and you got your performance when going excel. This was fine 10 years ago, but they need to catch up and add shorting rings to every new prestige product released. They've done this with some drivers, but not others.

Note that the L12 coax doesn't have any shorting rings either, I specifically emailed and asked SEAS if it did or didn't and at $160 per driver I'd expect nothing less.

The MR18s reed cone is an interesting choice and it would appear to be a good one if that horrible resonance at 4kHz wasn't there. If it creates distortion products lower down then it will really make the driver a bit of and oddity. If it doesn't then it will be absolutely fine, but usually one goes with the soft cone option to end up without resonances like that. If it does indeed screw up the HD further down then SEAS would have been better off going with a metal cone imo, as the breakup at 6kHz in the C18, is just about avoidable by crossing the tweeter as low as it can operate.

All that said, I do like the driver. Measurements will obviously tell the whole story, but given the price point that it's probably going to occupy, it is really still too expensive to buy just on a whim to find out that it's a bad egg.

**JonMarsh** · 10 April 2014, 13:53 Thursday

Hmmm, the bobbles in the impedance in the 1300 Hz range and 2.7 kHz range concern me- this is usually indicative of a mechanical resonance which will have energy storage and some time smear... I'd want to do some near field sweeps to evaluate. The tweeter will take a bit of effort to flatten out, too. I wonder how optimized the mid cone is as a waveguide compared with the mag model?

Have you looked at the reference design using DSP for the mag coax with a L26R04Y woofer? They're using a passive crossover, but combining it with some active HF DSP options.

http://seas.no/images/stories/excel/coaxial/app_note/KingRO4Y_doc.pdf

**5th element** · 10 April 2014, 16:39 Thursday

Indeed, it's an interesting approach, but my worry is mainly due to the sampling frequency limit of the DSP to 48kHz and then the DAC quality. They don't say what's used, but it basically looks very similar to a miniDSP allied to a pair of class D amplifiers. It's convenient, but probably not the best one could do SQ wise and seems a bit of a waste of the excellent drive units.

With drive units like that I'd want Ncore amps 192/24 native and ESS sabre DACs or similar top end DACs from the other big names. That'd be ridiculously expensive as a plate amp though.

**Jonasz** · 03 May 2014, 08:20 Saturday

Originally posted by JonMarsh

Well, interesting- you got me excited with the idea of a new SS Be tweeter- and eight ohms… but the raw response is a bit of a head scratcher - I wonder how they see the value proposition of this part compared to the 6640, which certainly measures flatter by Scanspeak's data as well as my own. And I agree the relatively large diameter is not a turn on. I'm having trouble seeing the rationale compared to the 6640,

German magazine Klang & Ton just released a 2.5-way design with the new berylliumtweeter and the 18W/8531. A total of seven components (cap, coil and a resistor for the 7140) were needed to get a basically rulerflat response crossed at 2.2kHz.

**5th element** · 03 May 2014, 11:30 Saturday

At least they picked the revelator and not the illuminator for the job.

**NyxOne** · 05 May 2014, 14:39 Monday

Well it appears that it's now Seas turn to be a Chinese company (www.sonavox.com).

Apparently it was announced in this month's issue of Voice Coil magazine.

I'm not the source of this information, I'm just reporting from Techtalk....

I don't see how things could get worst now!

**5th element** · 06 May 2014, 21:13 Tuesday

I'm guessing as markets become more competitive both the remaining Scandinavian big shots have realised that they need to make use of far eastern good stuff to remain properly in the game. I am guessing that the companies will pretty much remain as they are but with the added benefits of being able to do some things for significantly less. That and probably gaining a considerable budget for R and D. Well who knows what will happen, but I cannot see SEAS and SS copping out on what makes the companies what they are - ie quality driver manufactures that don't skimp on build quality or quality control.

**Jonasz** · 07 May 2014, 11:53 Wednesday

If this trend goes where we all hope it's not I can soon sell my "real Scandinavian made" Scan-Speak & Seas drivers for a nice profit...

If it on the other hand goes where we hope we can soon buy good Scandinavian made drivers for the same or less than they sell for today! :P

**Jonasz** · 25 May 2014, 13:20 Sunday

Rumour says it's a bigger Satori driver and also a berylliumtweeter in the pipeline...

**5th element** · 28 May 2014, 17:46 Wednesday

Beryllium from SB? Nice

Speaking of SB, I couldn't resist buying an SB65 for a mini project. Sadly the place I got them from only had 1 in stock, so I have 3 more on order >.<

These little things really are tiny but are very well made. The polymer frame is nicely ventilated and looks just like a powder coated cast frame. For a driver of such small stature it has a large amount of xmax and the coil is easily visible through the chassis. The voice coil former is well ventilated through perforations just below the spider, but then again, you can see all of this in the picture that SB supplies. One thing that you don't quite realise is how huge the voice coil is. I mean I know it's only 25.4mm in dia, but this is the norm for 5" drivers. Not 2.5" With such a large voice coil the dust cap makes up a significant amount of the drivers radiating area.

What you don't see on the website is the felt cap, I nearly missed this too, but when glancing through the coil former vents I could see something, but I wasn't sure what, then it twigged. They've popped a felt cap on top of the pole piece - a very nice touch.

Considering the drivers low price, SB haven't neglected anything in its design.

First up is a far-field measurement. Far is relative in this case because the enclosure I've got the driver in is only 78mm wide, 112 tall and 75 deep. The mic was at around 30cm.

Bafflestep and diffraction aside, these are very flat, especially when compared to other full rangers I've measured and they actually extend to 20k, this isn't something that can be said for all full rangers either. They already have a shallow depression centred around 1kHz, as is evident from SBs measurements and mine also mirror this. I'm rather pleased about this as it will offer an easy to listen to, type of presentation and the mild depression in the 5-7khz region should help keep sibilants to a minimum without sucking out too much air.

The near-field response shows how nicely controlled the cone is through the vast majority of its range, without so much of an issue out till almost 10k.

Here we now have a distortion sweep with the driver driven with a 2.8vRMS signal. This should equal around 2 watts into its 4 ohm coil or roughly 83dB.

Clearly SB have done their homework. Mid band distortion is exemplary. There's no peaking anywhere which is remarkable considering the rigid cone. I guess SBs dented aluminium cone actually does more than create marketing hype. There's also the huge dustcap which could also help dampen resonances. The higher order harmonics are very low too.

Next up is another distortion sweep but taken 10dB lower.

Here we are pushing the noise floor of the setup a little. Slightly lower 2nd and 3rd harmonics.

And finally a distortion sweep at 10+dB over 2.83v.

This one really surprised me. The rise in second harmonic wasn't a surprise, but the fact that the 3rd 4th and 5th harmonics didn't change at all in level really speaks to the quality of the motor within this tiny little driver. I did have to bandwidth limit this test to 300Hz because below this the thing really jumped around in a rather dramatic and worrying way. I did want to try running the thing at 10dB more, just to see what its limits were, but that would really be pushing it. +10dB over 2.83v is already ~20 watts, what SB says is this things limit. 103dB would most likely make smoke appear.

The only negative comment is really the drivers abysmal sensitivity, but in comparison to something like Scan speaks new 5F/8422T01, this SB looks like a much better performer and it costs a lot less. It isn't widely available yet, but it seems perfect for some designs. I'm thinking as a mid that could be fit into something like the modula neoD CC. Using the SB65 instead of the dayton mid, you could really reduce the height of the centre and probably use a standard 5" driver for the bass drivers. Something like a pair of SEAS L16RN-SL flanking it could work well sensitivity wise + band pass gain and tiny tweeter and you'd have a very compact, but capable centre.

By the looks of things, if you used it between 500-5000Hz it'd probably die from thermal stress before it showed any audible signs of being overloaded. It could work well in a car along side a tweeter on the dash or windscreen/door support.

**5th element** · 07 June 2014, 18:08 Saturday

Originally posted by Jonasz

Rumour says it's a bigger Satori driver and also a berylliumtweeter in the pipeline...

That bigger Satori. Any more information on it besides just 'bigger?' like how big, how long we will have to wait etc, or is it really very much just a concept at the moment?

I think I've seen some pictures that could possibly = a smaller Satori, which would be quite welcome I think, but those might have just been design iterations for the 6" driver that we have now.

**Jonasz** · 08 June 2014, 07:10 Sunday

Originally posted by 5th element

That bigger Satori. Any more information on it besides just 'bigger?' like how big, how long we will have to wait etc, or is it really very much just a concept at the moment?

I think I've seen some pictures that could possibly = a smaller Satori, which would be quite welcome I think, but those might have just been design iterations for the 6" driver that we have now.

Well to be honest the only real source I have is a quote from Joachim Gerhard, who works closely with Ulrik Schmidt, from earlier in march:

The Satori mid-woofer is rather small. More a 16cm then an 18cm.
So i heard that they work on an 18cm.
Also a beryllium tweeter is in the making

**5th element** · 09 June 2014, 08:09 Monday

Hmm a 16cm and an 18cm. I think most people would prefer something more different from what we already have.

Based on the current Satori an 8" version would still make a 2 way possible, but be more useful as a true woofer. And going down the other way, to 4.5" say, would make for a better dedicated mid/small monitor type loudspeaker. Still we will have to wait and see.

**Jonasz** · 10 June 2014, 14:43 Tuesday

Originally posted by 5th element

Hmm a 16cm and an 18cm. I think most people would prefer something more different from what we already have.

Based on the current Satori an 8" version would still make a 2 way possible, but be more useful as a true woofer. And going down the other way, to 4.5" say, would make for a better dedicated mid/small monitor type loudspeaker. Still we will have to wait and see.

I asked Ulrik about this and there is a 7,5" and a 5" on the way, both midbasses. I bet the 5" would be sweet as a mid in a threeway or in a small monitor.

**5th element** · 10 June 2014, 14:58 Tuesday

Interesting.

On the way though. Will this be relatively close 'on the way' or in a couple of years time. The original Satori took years to get right. It was worth it mind you.

**Jonasz** · 10 June 2014, 15:11 Tuesday

He said they're "on the way into production" whatever that means. Doesn't sound too far off but as you said, the current model took forever. :-)

**5th element** · 10 June 2014, 17:33 Tuesday

Well that sounds somewhat promising. I suppose we do have to bear in mind here that we've had the current Satori for a while anyway. I'd bet that the other versions would have been under development around the same time too, at least in part. Then once the first model was released focus shifted. One good thing is that the motor on the Satori is pretty much 'sorted' as it were, you could connect up pretty much any cone to it and end up with stellar performance, at least until break up occurs. I'd imagine that the development of the soft parts + cone on the original took a lot of time.

It'll be interesting to see where the sensitivity and SD of the 7.5" lands, at least from my point of view.

**Jonasz** · 16 June 2014, 16:31 Monday

New small formfactor SS Berylliumtweeter is coming, D3004/604050.

Also a new 12WU polyprop (I think) with a funky looking surround is coming up.

**5th element** · 16 June 2014, 18:24 Monday

Hmm what I am really after is a very small form factor high quality tweeter, something like the OX19/OT19 series, but, well better

**Jonasz** · 20 June 2014, 08:06 Friday

Here's a pic (borrowed from Troels G) of a system with the new ss-drivers.

**5th element** · 20 June 2014, 13:37 Friday

Troels needs lessons in taking decent photos you can't see anything of those drivers >.<

**JonMarsh** · 20 June 2014, 15:47 Friday

Shoot in raw, or at least adjust the gamma curve a bit! :T

**5th element** · 20 June 2014, 21:07 Friday

Well with a bit of quick jiggery pokery I ended up with this.

**5th element** · 18 July 2014, 15:49 Friday

Okay so I figured I'd add in some HQ speaker porn of my own.

The photo that SB has of the SB65 on their website is rather pathetic to say the least. The driver is actually rather attractive and looks more like a driver costing significantly more. Well done SB.

Image not available

And this one was the hardest to actually do. I was trying to get a shot of the felt plug sitting on top of the pole piece, you can't really see it here either, except for the domed outline through the vent in the voice coil former.

Image not available

Either way this is one nicely made driver with nice attention to detail in all the right places.

**JonMarsh** · 18 July 2014, 18:09 Friday

Do you have any measured results? How does it compare with the factory curves? Could be a great midrange driver, but the sensitivity is a bit low... what plans do you have for it?

**5th element** · 18 July 2014, 18:51 Friday

Someone needs to read more of this thread. (Post 125 more specifically :W )

Yes the sensitivity is a bit low, but when small is off the essence you don't have that many choices. Out of all the 2-2.5" drivers out there this new SB jobby is the cream of the crop imo. It measures extremely well, my FR, if you ignore the fact that it contains baffle step and diffraction, compares very favourably with the factory FR. Then there's the very low distortion, highest SD for a driver of the same chassis size and with the most impressive xmax.

I am going to be building a very small pair of side surrounds with them (us brits and our small rooms do have one advantage) and a similarly small pair of active, bluetooth, battery operated loudspeakers for a family member.

**Jonasz** · 21 August 2014, 08:01 Thursday

Page not found – Scan-Speak A/S

http://www.scan-speak.dk/datasheet/DIY/OPHELIAbyKlangTon.pdf

Nice design with the 7140 rev beryllium tweeter.

**5th element** · 21 August 2014, 22:20 Thursday

That is a nicely designed loudspeaker and I think it speaks volumes that they used the good old Revelator woofers, rather than going with the Illuminators.

**Jonasz** · 22 August 2014, 12:06 Friday

It's interesting they could tame that tweeter with just a cap and a coil.

Interesting Drivers

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