Tangband discussion thread

[joecarrow]

Speaking of this thread- had anybody had any experience with the following drivers?

W6-1139SI 6 1/2" subwoofer

W8-1363SB 8" subwoofer

I'm considering one or two of these in a portable boom-box as a concept piece, and I'm not sure if the sound quality is at least reasonable. Their size, weight, and possibly good performance in a reasonably small ported box are all very attractive to this application. I understand that they'd only be good to a few hundred hertz at best; any comments or links to the test results I've been unable to find?

[ThomasW]

I'm glad I stumbled across this thread - I was considering the TB neo tweet in lieu of the Vifa. John - have you measured the Chinese variant of that vifa?

Hi Deon,

Jon's traveling continuously until the last week in June. So I'll post as his proxy...

He bought the last dozen of the original 'Vifa' drivers from Madisound. I'll be ordering some of the new ones for testing. Given Jon's schedule that won't occur until the end of June.

Zaph tested the new ones and comments about them in his May 10th 2007 Blog entry

http://www.zaphaudio.com/blog.html

[dlneubec]

Speaking of this thread- had anybody had any experience with the following drivers?

W6-1139SI 6 1/2" subwoofer

W8-1363SB 8" subwoofer

I'm considering one or two of these in a portable boom-box as a concept piece, and I'm not sure if the sound quality is at least reasonable. Their size, weight, and possibly good performance in a reasonably small ported box are all very attractive to this application. I understand that they'd only be good to a few hundred hertz at best; any comments or links to the test results I've been unable to find?

Hi Joe,

Ask for "Wolf" over on the PE board. He has some experience with several of the small TB subs.

Regards,

[PoorboyMike]

Speaking of this thread- had anybody had any experience with the following drivers?

W6-1139SI 6 1/2" subwoofer

I built THIS little sub for my office system and am quite pleased with it. I only used the 25w dayton amp though, so I don't get quite the output that it would with the 70w amp used in Roman's plan.

Even with the little amp, I've had people come in to the room where I work (there is a sink by the door that other departments use) and walk back to my cubicle to find out where all the bass is coming from. Considering that my cube is probably 60' from the door, I'd say it's pretty impressive for an 11" sq. box.

[joecarrow]

Thanks Mike! It's good to hear that they're worth something, and do approximately what you'd think. I have a nice little discussion going on over at PE per Dan's recommendation, and it looks like a good number of people are interested in this kind of a project.

BTW- nice build! I like the paint job- I bet you get a lot of compliments on them, and some disbelief that you built them yourself.

[Mazeroth]

I was about to purchase a few of the Tang Band W5-704s drivers Zaph measured when I noticed PE now has them listed as a W5-704D. The picture still shows an S on the sticker so maybe it's a typo? Any ideas? The price did jump up a few dollars but I think that's true for a lot of the Tang Bands.

Thanks.

[augerpro]

I've read they are making a lot of running changes, and thus the model name change. Don't know if any of those changes are significant or not though.

[drBass]

Hi Deon,

Jon's traveling continuously until the last week in June. So I'll post as his proxy...

Thanks Thomas!

[jkrutke]

Here's a preview of my tests of the 4" titanium Tangband. Since we had this discussion going on for a while, I thought I'd give the HTguide residents a look. Same test conditions as my "small driver test" It will be a little while before it ends up in the comparison, as I have a couple other drivers to test.

Frequency response:



Impedance closeup:



Cumulative spectrum decay:



Harmonic distortion:



T/S parameters:



Overall, it looks pretty nice. Decent non-linear distortion, and a respectably smooth response curve. My original question was wondering if this would be a suitable driver for a mini 2-way. Running through some power handling sims and comparing that to some other 4" drivers, it's at least as capable. The only thing is that it would have to be vented at a relatively high 60-65 hz to get any useful low end out of it and then still it would only handle about 20 watts above tuning run full range. The Seas L12 seems to have the best low end so far in regards to extension and power handling but it's upper end non-linear distortion is not as clean as some other 4" woofers.

The other interesting thing about this TB titanium is that the rise in response in the top octave does not propagate as non-linear distortion further down the spectrum. This driver, with a response shaping filter, could actually work well as a full range driver if a person could live with the off axis limitations. On the other hand, this driver can be crossed over as high as you want, opening up a lot of tweeter options. Many of those cheap little neos would make a good mate.

Anyway, looks good. I almost regret having to send these back to their owner.

[Jim Holtz]

Here's a preview of my tests of the 4" titanium Tangband. Since we had this discussion going on for a while, I thought I'd give the HTguide residents a look. Same test conditions as my "small driver test" It will be a little while before it ends up in the comparison, as I have a couple other drivers to test.

Frequency response:



Impedance closeup:



Cumulative spectrum decay:



Harmonic distortion:



T/S parameters:



Overall, it looks pretty nice. Decent non-linear distortion, and a respectably smooth response curve. My original question was wondering if this would be a suitable driver for a mini 2-way. Running through some power handling sims and comparing that to some other 4" drivers, it's at least as capable. The only thing is that it would have to be vented at a relatively high 60-65 hz to get any useful low end out of it and then still it would only handle about 20 watts above tuning run full range. The Seas L12 seems to have the best low end so far in regards to extension and power handling but it's upper end non-linear distortion is not as clean as some other 4" woofers.

The other interesting thing about this TB titanium is that the rise in response in the top octave does not propagate as non-linear distortion further down the spectrum. This driver, with a response shaping filter, could actually work well as a full range driver if a person could live with the off axis limitations. On the other hand, this driver can be crossed over as high as you want, opening up a lot of tweeter options. Many of those cheap little neos would make a good mate.

Anyway, looks good. I almost regret having to send these back to their owner.

Hi John,

:T As always, excellent job! Your measurements certainly back up what I'm hearing. The W4's certainly aren't a particularly efficient driver however.

Thanks for your work!

Jim

[JonMarsh]

Here's a preview of my tests of the 4" titanium Tangband. Since we had this discussion going on for a while, I thought I'd give the HTguide residents a look. Same test conditions as my "small driver test" It will be a little while before it ends up in the comparison, as I have a couple other drivers to test.

Frequency response:



Impedance closeup:



Cumulative spectrum decay:



Harmonic distortion:



T/S parameters:



Overall, it looks pretty nice. Decent non-linear distortion, and a respectably smooth response curve. My original question was wondering if this would be a suitable driver for a mini 2-way. Running through some power handling sims and comparing that to some other 4" drivers, it's at least as capable. The only thing is that it would have to be vented at a relatively high 60-65 hz to get any useful low end out of it and then still it would only handle about 20 watts above tuning run full range. The Seas L12 seems to have the best low end so far in regards to extension and power handling but it's upper end non-linear distortion is not as clean as some other 4" woofers.

The other interesting thing about this TB titanium is that the rise in response in the top octave does not propagate as non-linear distortion further down the spectrum. This driver, with a response shaping filter, could actually work well as a full range driver if a person could live with the off axis limitations. On the other hand, this driver can be crossed over as high as you want, opening up a lot of tweeter options. Many of those cheap little neos would make a good mate.

Anyway, looks good. I almost regret having to send these back to their owner.

Thanks for sharing- considering the difference in measurement equipment and methods, looks quite similar to Evil Twin's results for SPL and 2nd and 3rd order distortion. Upper crossover point looks to be more limited by wavelength spacing issues than anything else.

[augerpro]

Here's a preview of my tests of the 4" titanium Tangband. Since we had this discussion going on for a while, I thought I'd give the HTguide residents a look. Same test conditions as my "small driver test" It will be a little while before it ends up in the comparison, as I have a couple other drivers to test.

Frequency response:



Impedance closeup:



Cumulative spectrum decay:



Harmonic distortion:



T/S parameters:



Overall, it looks pretty nice. Decent non-linear distortion, and a respectably smooth response curve. My original question was wondering if this would be a suitable driver for a mini 2-way. Running through some power handling sims and comparing that to some other 4" drivers, it's at least as capable. The only thing is that it would have to be vented at a relatively high 60-65 hz to get any useful low end out of it and then still it would only handle about 20 watts above tuning run full range. The Seas L12 seems to have the best low end so far in regards to extension and power handling but it's upper end non-linear distortion is not as clean as some other 4" woofers.

The other interesting thing about this TB titanium is that the rise in response in the top octave does not propagate as non-linear distortion further down the spectrum. This driver, with a response shaping filter, could actually work well as a full range driver if a person could live with the off axis limitations. On the other hand, this driver can be crossed over as high as you want, opening up a lot of tweeter options. Many of those cheap little neos would make a good mate.

Anyway, looks good. I almost regret having to send these back to their owner.

Hi John. I was wondering if you saw quite a bit of noise higher in the spectrum when running the THD sweep? Particularily at around 500 Hz mine really "lit up" the spectrum. I do show a bobble in the Z there and I thought maybe I had bad driver, but JonM had the same so I wasn't so sure.

Anyway, thanks for the test. It's comforting to see it agree fairly well with my own. After you mentioned me (thanks) in your blog I was sweating bullets wondering if I screwed up this or that test and now the whole diy world was gonna pick me apart :rofl:

[jkrutke]

Hi John. I was wondering if you saw quite a bit of noise higher in the spectrum when running the THD sweep? Particularily at around 500 Hz mine really "lit up" the spectrum. I do show a bobble in the Z there and I thought maybe I had bad driver, but JonM had the same so I wasn't so sure.

Anyway, thanks for the test. It's comforting to see it agree fairly well with my own. After you mentioned me (thanks) in your blog I was sweating bullets wondering if I screwed up this or that test and now the whole diy world was gonna pick me apart :rofl:

With the TB titanium, I saw a bit of noise in the top octave, but it was consistent with the driver's natural response, and not unexpected. Otherwise, the spectrum was relatively clean. Sometimes when I see a bit of noise at a particular frequency, it's one of two things: defective driver with rubbing VC, (rare) or or a driver that is not mounted to the test baffle securely enough. (a bit more common) I'll yank it off, put some gasket down and retest. That usually does the job.

I forgot to mention that I scalloped the rear frame opening quite a bit for airflow. This used the same cutout and countersink as the RS125 and the CSS WR125.

[JonMarsh]

This is a potential issue with the use of the 1337S, which is why I got aluminum plates to mount them on, to improve the rear opening compared with MDF or wood at 3/4".

[augerpro]

I see. Thanks for the replies. I look forward to the Seas reed cone results John.

BTW Jon are you familiar with or can you reccomend one of these books on filters?

http://www.amazon.com/Simplified-Design-Filter-Circuits-Engineers/dp/0750696559/ref=sr_1_2/105-4875242-7662861?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182230349&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Analog-Filters-Rolf-Schaumann/dp/0195118774/ref=sr_1_3/105-4875242-7662861?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182230349&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Filters-K-L-Su/dp/1402070330/ref=sr_1_10/105-4875242-7662861?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182230349&sr=1-10

http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Filter-Electrical-Computer-Engineering/dp/0195107349/ref=sr_1_7/105-4875242-7662861?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182230268&sr=1-7

[Jed]

This is a potential issue with the use of the 1337S, which is why I got aluminum plates to mount them on, to improve the rear opening compared with MDF or wood at 3/4".

Do you have a drawing of that and is it hard to shape / cut out the driver holes? I could use something like that for my C79s.

[JonMarsh]

Do you have a drawing of that and is it hard to shape / cut out the driver holes? I could use something like that for my C79s.

Bingo, that's what I'm using for the C89 and C79 in upcoming projects. I've heard there are cheaper places to get them,(online metals recommended by CJD) but I bought a stack of 6" X 12" X 1/4" thick plates from McMasterCarr before all the useful inputs from other guys- too quick on the trigger, but really nothing to complain about for the price or quality.

The plates will be mounted flush after being cut to size for a recessed opening in the midrange upper module. I should try to get them anodized, but will probably settle for metal primer and black epoxy paint.



Plans not complete yet, may work on those next week while in Denver or the following week possibly. Right now the CC three way has top priority.

~Jon

[Jim Holtz]

Tangband version changes...

Hi John,

I read you blog regarding the version changes of some of their drivers. I can't comment beyond the W4-1337S to W4-1337SA. I emailed Tangband about the letter designation and received a prompt reply stating the driver had not been changed but the designation was changed to indicate ROHS compliance. You mentioned that in the blog but I wanted to verify what I found out from Tangband.

Jim

Here's a preview of my tests of the 4" titanium Tangband. Since we had this discussion going on for a while, I thought I'd give the HTguide residents a look. Same test conditions as my "small driver test" It will be a little while before it ends up in the comparison, as I have a couple other drivers to test.

Frequency response:



Impedance closeup:



Cumulative spectrum decay:



Harmonic distortion:



T/S parameters:



Overall, it looks pretty nice. Decent non-linear distortion, and a respectably smooth response curve. My original question was wondering if this would be a suitable driver for a mini 2-way. Running through some power handling sims and comparing that to some other 4" drivers, it's at least as capable. The only thing is that it would have to be vented at a relatively high 60-65 hz to get any useful low end out of it and then still it would only handle about 20 watts above tuning run full range. The Seas L12 seems to have the best low end so far in regards to extension and power handling but it's upper end non-linear distortion is not as clean as some other 4" woofers.

The other interesting thing about this TB titanium is that the rise in response in the top octave does not propagate as non-linear distortion further down the spectrum. This driver, with a response shaping filter, could actually work well as a full range driver if a person could live with the off axis limitations. On the other hand, this driver can be crossed over as high as you want, opening up a lot of tweeter options. Many of those cheap little neos would make a good mate.

Anyway, looks good. I almost regret having to send these back to their owner.

[critofur]

Let's pretend that the W5-704 could be used to make a very good speaker and not limit ourselves to only considering "cheap" tweeters for a moment(unless we find one that fits the bill) ~ is there a tweeter that could nicely (or even just OK) cross with this woofer 1st order? Is the "I want to use only a cap on the tweeter for my crossover" a noob wet dream? A Holy Grail of speakers?

It's somewhat based on "gut feeling", but, I'm one of those "I want to just use a cap on my tweeter" nuts, I guess, at least until I've had a good try at it and I find out that passive 2/4 way x-overs really don't "muck up the sound"???

[joecarrow]

I too once felt the same way. When I was introduced to the world of DIY audio and general audiophilia, I was working in a radio shack in Chicago in 2000 as a summer job before college and somebody came in looking for some drivers. The part number was 40-1197 (I still remember!), and he bought all that we had- no more ever shipped. These things were apparently some kind of legend in the online community.

They were the radio shack branded (or un-branded) version of the Fostex FE-103, and they were supposed to have extraordinary midrange, and folks said that if you used them in quarter wave pipes you could get the full range of sound out of them- no tweeter, no woofer. That fascinated me, and I started reading audioasylum's forums, and in 2002 I built a pair of tapered quarter wave tubes from a generic formula. I used a pair of "full range" six inch drivers with whizzers, and they sounded really neat. There was something about them sounded more "real" than the old Infinity Qa speakers I'd had handed down to me.

After that I started reading and participating in DIYaudio's forums, and ended up designing and building a mass loaded transmission line (or extended bass shelf ported box, depending on how you look at it), with a Morel MDT20 tweeter crossed with just a cap to an Eminence Beta8a with just a coil. It sounded horrible. Seriously, it was bad- I thought it was amazing, but it didn't really sound decent until I had some +/- 18 db parametric equalizer going on. After I had forced the frequency response flat-ish with an iron fist, I found out there was something still wrong with the sound.

I found that with the large woofer playing so high- an 8" woofer going up to around 5 khz- the mids and low treble was all beaming straight ahead. The sweet spot was tiny, and the sound was inconsistent if I moved my head. There was also something not quite all there about the sound- there was sort of a discontinuity between the woofers and tweeters. I am sure now that it could be described as discontinuous directivity. The tweeters were spraying treble all over the place at 5 khz, and it was bouncing off the walls and ceiling and reaching me in a way similar to natural sounds in a room. The 2ish khz sound was mostly only getting to me by a direct line from the woofer, though, so it had a different character to it. I don't know if I've described and attributed all of those effects very accurately, but the bottom line is that it didn't add up to a natural sounding speaker.

Fortunately for my learning, I was also starting to read HTguide around that time, as well as linkwitzlab.com, zaphaudio.com, art ludwig's sound page, as well as rod elliot's. I learned about the various benefits of a well executed crossover, as well as the potential drawbacks. The crossovers in the Mission Accomplished section of this site mostly pay a lot of attention to those trade offs, and strike a good balance between introducing coloration and compensating for different drivers' shortcomings.

If you get a chance, try listening to one of the mission accomplished designs. The Modula MT can be built relatively cheaply, and in my opinion it rivals an awful lot of commercial gear that's within 3x to 4x its material cost.

The reason why folks mostly want to get the W5-704 to work well with a cheap tweeter is so that it can be a good "bang for the buck" design. If you wanted to use a $30 tweeter (because really, I think that's the next step up), then there are better woofers with more output for not all that much more.

On the other hand, it might be a really great test bed for a newbie who really wants to get their feet wet trying different designs. You could try it with the Seas 27TDFC, and hear what the different crossover orders sound like. It could handle a very low and low order crossover without damage if you're careful with the volume knob, and turn it down when it starts to sound bad.

Sorry if that's a long-winded reply on my part. Welcome to HTguide.

[critofur]

...If you get a chance, try listening to one of the mission accomplished designs. The Modula MT can be built relatively cheaply, and in my opinion it rivals an awful lot of commercial gear that's within 3x to 4x its material cost.

Are they going to sound better than speakers such as B&W 803s, or Wilson Watt Puppys? Etc? Because I don't really like most of such speakers that I've heard over the past few years. Out of all the "high end" speakers that I've auditioned the only ones that I liked much were the Revel Salon Ultimas which I listened to in a fairly small room.

The reason why folks mostly want to get the W5-704 to work well with a cheap tweeter is so that it can be a good "bang for the buck" design. If you wanted to use a $30 tweeter (because really, I think that's the next step up), then there are better woofers with more output for not all that much more.

Well, I'd rather spend more on drivers than on crossover components, and $30 per tweeter could still be great "bang for the buck", I would say, particularly since we're trying to build speakers that sound better than some that cost thousands of $ if you buy them at a shop rather than make them yourself.

When you say "better woofers" are you confident that they'll necessarily be able to make a better sounding speaker? You could pay 2,3,4 times as much to purchase a well respected woofer, but end up getting one with a rougher high freq. roll off thus requiring a steeper crossover, is that "better"?

BTW, I don't mean to sound acerbic there, sorry if it does.

On the other hand, it might be a really great test bed for a newbie who really wants to get their feet wet trying different designs. You could try it with the Seas 27TDFC, and hear what the different crossover orders sound like. It could handle a very low and low order crossover without damage if you're careful with the volume knob, and turn it down when it starts to sound bad.

Hmm, well the 3/4 Audax tweeters I have are actually rather hard to blow, unless you're trying to on purpose. When we had them on the test bench it took a lot of power to get them to burn out quickly.

Sorry if that's a long-winded reply on my part. Welcome to HTguide.

Thank you for the welcome, not too long at all.

I'm a noobie when it comes to crossover design, but not so much in some other areas. When I designed this speaker (with John Strohbeen): http://6moons.com/audioreviews/walsh/micro_2.html John did the crossover, with me basically providing feedback such as "yes, let's use that" (a patented bass boosting passive circuit) and what frequencies I wanted to tune the speaker too. Since I moved from NYC to Ohio I'm not working with Ohm Acoustics anymore, but I do communicate with John (the owner) in email occasionally.

My desire to hear a speaker without a crossover (or at least with a very simple one) comes from years of being so dissapointed with every speaker I hear that I almost don't even like listening to music anymore. Whether it's a $200 speaker at Best Buy or a $10,000 speaker at a Manhattan high end audio boutique, what stands out most on almost all of them is that they quickly become more tiresome to listen to than pleasurable. It's been difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what are the factors that cause speakers to be so unpleasant for me, but, my list of suspects:

metal dome tweeters
crossovers
directional output
compressed dynamic range
lack of time alignment / poor/imperfect "transient" response

I used to own a cheap pair of simple 2 way paper woofer / paper cone tweeter speakers that had (I think) just two parts to the crossover, an inductor and a cap. These speakers didn't have any "imaging" other than basic stereo separation, and there didn't seem to be much of a "sweet spot", and I like them fine whether they were on a shelf or on the floor, wherever, sometimes I even laid down on the floor and placed one on either side of my head a foot or two away. Whichever way I listened to them, I found listening to music to be enjoyable. Not super, and I wouldn't say that they would fool anyone into believing that they were listening to live acoustic music. But, they weren't fatiguing.

The most recent expensive speakers I auditioned were BeoLab 5s, ( http://www.beocentral.com/products/lab5 ) I was expecting them to be great, after reading about them, I left not at all impressed by the sound, though the design concept is intriguing.

Your post and my post are both fairly long and a little off topic, sorry about that, to the O.P.

[69Stingray]

Let's pretend that the W5-704 could be used to make a very good speaker and not limit ourselves to only considering "cheap" tweeters for a moment(unless we find one that fits the bill) ~ is there a tweeter that could nicely (or even just OK) cross with this woofer 1st order? Is the "I want to use only a cap on the tweeter for my crossover" a noob wet dream? A Holy Grail of speakers?

It's somewhat based on "gut feeling", but, I'm one of those "I want to just use a cap on my tweeter" nuts, I guess, at least until I've had a good try at it and I find out that passive 2/4 way x-overs really don't "muck up the sound"???

Lets talk about it. W5-704 seems like a good woofer to use if this is something you want to try. Relatively inexperience and doesn't appear to have any serious cone break-up modes.

In regards to the tweeter with just a cap (1st-order electrical). Assuming this 1st-order electrical gives you a 1st-order acoustic slope, then there are two design "rules of thumb" we can look at quickly (and hopes people can comment on).

1. In order to suppress the Fs of the tweeter, the crossover point would have to be 3 octaves above the Fs of the tweeter (tweeter Fs would be “down” ~18 dB). This means a low Fs tweeter.
2. A smaller flange tweeter will increase the crossover point by decreasing the center-to-center spacing of the two drivers.

Quick review of tweeters, I think the Morel MDT-22 fits the bill based on published data. $33.45 at Parts Express, Fs=650 Hz and a faceplate size of 2-1/8".

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=277-062

3 octaves above 650-Hz is 5,200 Hz. Assuming a 1/8" vertical gap between the two drivers, center-to-center spacing is 4-8/32", which is approx. 3,175-Hz.

Based on the tweeter Fs, you would want a X-Over above 5,200 Hz and based on the C-T-C spacing, you would want a X-Over below 3,175-Hz.

More experienced builders will have to comment on the trade offs of the two. Maybe experiement with a 3,000 Hz, 4,000 Hz and a 5,500 Hz X-Over to see which on you like the best, if any.

[joecarrow]

Are they going to sound better than speakers such as B&W 803s, or Wilson Watt Puppys? Etc? Because I don't really like most of such speakers that I've heard over the past few years. Out of all the "high end" speakers that I've auditioned the only ones that I liked much were the Revel Salon Ultimas which I listened to in a fairly small room.

Are they going to sound better? I don't really know- I'm not sure what fell short with the B&Ws and Wilsons. It could have been the room, or a source component, the recording- those speakers are supposed to be good enough at least not to be the weak link with reasonable gear. One time a sales guy tried to show me how great the speakers were by playing MP3s :lol:- and lots of times the flat panel TVs on display are fed gradually more horrendous analog signals based on decreasing price. Just because the name is "high end" doesn't mean that the shop really knows what they're doing, or the private owner for that matter.

Although I can appreciate the argument that there's some art to it, I believe that most of the "good vs bad" in audio is rooted in science.

Well, I'd rather spend more on drivers than on crossover components, and $30 per tweeter could still be great "bang for the buck", I would say, particularly since we're trying to build speakers that sound better than some that cost thousands of $ if you buy them at a shop rather than make them yourself.

I used to think that this was a trade-off as well. Spend more on the driver and less on the crossover- right? Well, this is not necessarily what happens. In order have low linear and non linear distortion distortion (good link here), a driver design may not be able to keep up with all of the other ideals of a perfect driver. The frequency response may be sloped, or there may be harsh breakup just a bit beyond the clean bandwidth, and that's just a consequence of what happens when a system the features that allow the better performance are pushed beyond their comfort zone. Fortunately, crossovers can address frequency response- but there's no way for them to reduce distortion inherent to the driver.

When you say "better woofers" are you confident that they'll necessarily be able to make a better sounding speaker? You could pay 2,3,4 times as much to purchase a well respected woofer, but end up getting one with a rougher high freq. roll off thus requiring a steeper crossover, is that "better"?

Having gone through linkwitzlab.com, Mark K's page (see earlier link), zaphaudio.com, art ludwig's page, rod elliot's page, and other random internet resources, I feel confident saying that there are a huge number of trade-offs to keep in mind when considering a driver's performance in a complete system.

One problem with a midwoofer- something that could be used in a two-way- is that it must have both the ability to play real bass and the ability to cross to a tweeter. Even the best tweeters have a problem crossing much lower than 1500 hz with a steep slope, so you might think that a higher crossover frequency would be desired. As a rule of thumb, a woofer begins to beam as its diameter approaches the wavelength of the frequency played. For 1.5 khz, thats only just over 9 inches. That's another constraint (beyond linear distortion) constraining you from using larger woofers in a two-way.

I say that there are better woofers because there are woofers with lower harmonic distortion and stiffer cones, allowing a more ideal output across a usable bandwidth. Some of these woofers also have more usable excursion, allowing them to deliver more bass as well. The Dayton RS180 is one such driver, and for $30ish dollars, is not double the price of the Tang Band in question. It is true that it requires a more costly crossover, but I think that the bar is just higher for the Dayton.

Regarding the audibility of crossovers, Art Ludwig has a nice piece on it here. My two cents- the effect on the speaker's dispersion and directivity are far more important than absolute phase. That is, as long as phase tracks well through the crossover region, then its effects out to be far less detrimental than what it can cure.

My desire to hear a speaker without a crossover (or at least with a very simple one) comes from years of being so dissapointed with every speaker I hear that I almost don't even like listening to music anymore. Whether it's a $200 speaker at Best Buy or a $10,000 speaker at a Manhattan high end audio boutique, what stands out most on almost all of them is that they quickly become more tiresome to listen to than pleasurable. It's been difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what are the factors that cause speakers to be so unpleasant for me, but, my list of suspects:

metal dome tweeters
crossovers
directional output
compressed dynamic range
lack of time alignment / poor/imperfect "transient" response

I used to own a cheap pair of simple 2 way paper woofer / paper cone tweeter speakers that had (I think) just two parts to the crossover, an inductor and a cap. These speakers didn't have any "imaging" other than basic stereo separation, and there didn't seem to be much of a "sweet spot", and I like them fine whether they were on a shelf or on the floor, wherever, sometimes I even laid down on the floor and placed one on either side of my head a foot or two away. Whichever way I listened to them, I found listening to music to be enjoyable. Not super, and I wouldn't say that they would fool anyone into believing that they were listening to live acoustic music. But, they weren't fatiguing.

I have to let the pretentions down here and say that sometimes distorted sound can be quite pleasant. If the distortion is mostly second order, and there are no sharp peaks in sonically objectionable ranges, then a "poorly performing" speaker can be quite pleasant to listen to. I think that this is where a lot of art comes into it, more than science, it's a process of saying "Does the way these speakers change the sound help or hurt my experience?" Paper cone woofers and tweeters that are not overstressed or too high in level can help with this.

Overall, I have to say that the Tang Band W5-704 is attractive because it has fairly consistent performance across the board, and although it's not a stellar performer, it doesn't have a major flaw to address in the crossover. It won't reach the same levels of performance as an overall better driver, but it could reach wonderfully adequate levels with less work and less cost- especially if there was something like the 27TDFC that just cost less. Unfortunately, tweeters that can go low aren't usually in the $15 range.

[Jed]

Tang Band has been fairly constant with production tolerances for the TBW4-1337, but I wonder how this driver tests:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=264-846

It appears to have a good motor like the TBW4-1337, and a nice flat response. The thing that bugs me is it looks like the current version at the TB-speakers.com website has a square frame. Does anyone know if the bamboo driver is offered in round and truncated frames or does PE just have the old stock etc?
PE stock:

Image not available

TB website:

Image not available

Any experiences comparing these W4 drivers would be interesting to hear.

Jed

[Hank]

One the bright side, the truncated frame might make for a nice line array implementation. 8)

[Jed]

Thought I would bring this part of the conversation over to the main board from the Statements thread because it has me a bit concerned right now. It may end up being nothing but I am willing to investigate. Looks like the W4 bamboo and W4 titanium have undergone some changes. These quotes are about the W4 1337 used in the Statements and Lineup series.

tangband has different version of w4 drivers. i would say upgraded. different in cosmetic and upgraded sq wise. cosmetically, it's got more complex looking basket now, and it's lighter, the connector plate is black. and sound wise, i can swear that it's even better than the ones i bought last year because i just replaced one of them after finding a small blemish on it and now it sounds as though i've done a minor upgrade to my component. say, upgrading an interconnect or better tubes in my preamp for example. i'm going ahead and ordering 3 more of these suckers even tho rest of my drivers are flawless. also, if i wanted to convert my statements to sealed, would i have to add more polyfil? mine's already lined up with owen corning and the ports are going to be plugged up and filled with sand on the bottom.

This is concerning because they may measure differently and considering how many projects around here use this mid I'm kinda pissed because now I'll have to order a bunch to confirm the specs are exactly the same as the last batch. TB needs better manufacturing tolerances because they are constantly doing this to not just the TB W4 1337, its ALL their drivers. See my post about the bamboo cone W4 in another thread. I'm sorry but if ANYTHING changes about the driver, like it's basket, etc- the model number should change to reflect that fact.

from what i hear W4 has become quite a popular driver now. so hopefully it's an UPGRADE, not downgrade? the cone surrounds are different, too. the new one has a glossy black ring in the inner edge. since the cone surround is different, the sound's definitely affected.

and also i just got done sealing up my statements. however, i'm needing a little suggestion on what i should put in there to fill up the volume. because the thing with my statements is that my top woofer is mounted rather far below the top of the cabinet- about 15" to the center of the driver from the top. and about 18" from the bottom of the cabinet to center of bottom woofer. so i can only fill up about 10" of sand before getting too close to the bottom woofer. and i'm not about to hack up the cabinet that i took so long to finish. what shall i do?

Would anyone be willing to send me a pair of the new W4s so I can confirm they are the same as the old ones? I'll take FR, IMP, and distortion measurements in one of my speaker boxes and compare it to last years model. After I'm done I'll send it back to you.

Jed

[---k---]

the new one has a glossy black ring in the inner edge

Based on this, I think I may have a new one. Can you post a picture of the new and old side-by-side. When do you think the switch was mine. Mine were Decemberish, I think. I'll pull one and check the back frame.

[Jed]

Based on this, I think I may have a new one. Can you post a picture of the new and old side-by-side. When do you think the switch was mine. Mine were Decemberish, I think. I'll pull one and check the back frame.

I'm not sure when the switch was made.

Here are the pictures I could find, but maybe Coconutout can help because he has both versions.

old

Image not available


new

Image not available

[augerpro]

Jed it looks like they are using the same basket from the bamboo W4, which I liked better anyway. If that's the only change they made it should be ok. As far as teh glossy black ring, are you guys talking about the glue? The old had this I believe.

[PoorboyMike]

Would anyone be willing to send me a pair of the new W4s so I can confirm they are the same as the old ones? I'll take FR, IMP, and distortion measurements in one of my speaker boxes and compare it to last years model. After I'm done I'll send it back to you.

Jed

I might be able to do that Jed. I can also send you a couple of those buyout tweeters that I never got around to sending before. I have 12 of those so I wouldn't mind putting them to use some day.

Let me know.

[Jed]

I might be able to do that Jed. I can also send you a couple of those buyout tweeters that I never got around to sending before. I have 12 of those so I wouldn't mind putting them to use some day.

Let me know.

Thank you Mike. I'll let everyone know my findings.

[Coconutout]

I'm not sure when the switch was made.

Here are the pictures I could find, but maybe Coconutout can help because he has both versions.

old

Image not available


new

Image not available

yes, that looks like the new driver i got. it is much darker in the picture. in real life they are of same tone. and as for the black ring (hm, yes. glue), there is more of it on the new one- little less than twice the width of the old version. perhaps the sq difference that i perceived was because the driver that i replaced was indeed damaged functionally along with a small cosmetic blemish. but i heard no distortion from the old driver and there's definitely a sq difference to my ears. maybe its placebo?

[Jed]

I'll let you know the FR, Imp, Distortion differences hopefully by the end of next week. Mike is sending me out some to test.

[---k---]

Jed, you're going above and beyond the call of duty. :T

(I got the old one btw.)

[Jed]

Thanks Ryan. Just want to make sure that everything is still within "spec." I'd hate to put something out there and then realize afterwards that there was something I could have done to avoid a potential money wasting headache for someone building a design with a W4 with a non optimized crossover design. If the W4 does indeed measure exactly the same, then I see the revision as a good thing if the basket is stiffer and freer flowing behind the cone. That might be what Coconut is hearing.

[Jed]

Got a W4-1337 in house for testing to compare to the old version, today. Impedance, frequency response, and harmonic distortion tests will be happening tomorrow. I'm on vacation so I will have lots of time to play with it.

I can say right now it looks like they improved the design. The basket is much better ventilated around the spider and it looks like a stiffer chassis. I'll take some pics as well.

[Jed]

Good News!

The driver is in my opinion very much improved. The spider is better ventilated. The chassis is stiffer. The harmonic distortion is lower, the FR is much unchanged, so all the existing designs with this driver should measure the same, yet sound a bit better.

Below you will find the evidence.

First I started with a basic frequency response comparison of the old versus new driver. This was tested in the Lineup D4 box so note there is diffraction and baffle step loss.

Image not available

Then I did some harmonic distortion tests. Here is the old driver expressed as a percentage:

Image not available

And here is the new W4-1337 harmonic distortion profile shown as a percentage at about 90DB per 1 meter (same as above):

Image not available

Clean, clean, clean! Note the reduction in 2nd order harmonic distortion. Maybe because the basket is much more open and freer flowing now?

Lastly, I decided to try the new versus old drivers in a pair of Lineup D4s. Note, the tweeters are different from new verus old, so the reponse difference above 2.5k is different because of the differences in the Vifa D26 tweeters. No crossover revisions here! The slight bump at 200hz is my room. These measurements were done with a long gate. Speakers were placed in the exact location. Mic was not touched.

Image not available

Cheers!

Jed

[Jim Holtz]

Excellent news! Better and no crossover changes is very good news!

Thanks Jed! ;x(

Jim

[Silversmoky]

Thanks Jed! That is good news. I think I am grabbing a couple of these. And they are on sale (a little)

[fjhuerta]

I thought I was seeing things. When I received my W4s I was positive they were different - even the box is different (the drivers are a bit better protected, IMHO).

[ahaik]

Great, thank you Jed.
But I'm a little confused, are the ones PE is selling now the new version ?

[mikela]

Thank you Jed.

I had just bought a shipset for an LCR arrangement (new version) and was completely unaware of the revision until it was mentioned in this forum. Hopefully, PE is selling the new revision as I would like to make the monitors as surrounds once Jim and Curt work their magic.

Mike

[Silversmoky]

Great, thank you Jed.
But I'm a little confused, are the ones PE is selling now the new version ?

Ya they are now selling the new ones. I ordered a single unit about three weeks ago and it is the newer model.

[chris4891]

hmmn, thats interesting. last friday (4/11) i was lucky enough to get two of the w4s at the special $35 price. I received them earlier this week and I would have sworn that they were the same as the previous three I had purchased for my mini statements and center builds. I'll check when I get home, but I do remember the boxes being identical, and the lot numbers on the boxes were the same. Maybe that was the reason for the special price.. selling off what was left of the previous stock?

[Jed]

The "new" version is what you will get if you order today from partsexpress.