Speakers

[SteveTheShadow]

Speaking of lack of crossover, I built a pair of large, sealed box speakers, with no internal damping.
These use the Fane 12-250-TC, 12 inch full range driver, so there is no crossover. These are to me the best speakers I’ve ever had, in nearly forty years of the hobby.

I’ve had so called full range drivers before, mainly Fostex, but these Fanes come closest I’ve heard to operating in a true, full range manner. They are really meant for PA use, and are 100dB efficient, but work superbly for near field listening, in small rooms.

Speakers are of course a matter of individual taste and the Fane drivers are not for everyone, but for me, they play music like nothing else I’ve had.

[Daniel Quinn]

I don't think full range drivers do treble. But there is nothing wrong with a driver that's does most of the spectrum

[SteveTheShadow]

The Fane drivers actually do do treble.

[savvypaul]

I can remember Richard telling me that they were the only full range drivers he really liked.

[Docfoster]

Like others in the thread I enjoy speakers with large bass units.
This tends to imply 3-way, as drivers >12 inches tend to need a midrange driver to take over before the tweeter.
My two favourite speakers I've owned are a pair of 3-way Goodmans Magisters (15 inch) that I reworked, and a pair of 3-way speakers I built myself around Goodmans 18P woofers (18 inch). There is the bass of course, but there's a scale to them that I enjoy too.
I tend to find I prefer no wadding to a lot, but a few speakers I've played around with I have preferred with a little bit of foam on the walls to their sound with nothing at all.
I seem to be very fussy about achieving the right tonal balance (for me, judged subjectively) between the drivers, within my room. I have used doping on drivers to trim things back a bit. But, as I'm forever tweaking things (e.g. adding bracing, trying out different tweeters and mids, trying out concrete blocks underneath etc.,...) being able to regularly attenuate drivers accordingly and very accurately is essential. Hence, I tend to use L-pads (with over-powered resistors) rather than doping to manage respective driver levels.
Generally, my experience of doped bass units running full range is that overall I've liked them. Nice full sound. My Goodmans Magisters woofers run direct off the terminals (I wanted to keep that the same, just to retain some authenticity) as did the NVA Cube 1s I owned for several years. However, I think I much prefer my DIY 3-ways speakers which do have a 3-way crossover (pretty decent one from Monacor). Important to note that I have spent ages working on them to get them sounding as I want them in my listening room, so there are many other variables at play than simply the crossover. It's conceivable that my DIY speakers could sound better with doped (and mid) drivers, but as it would be irreversible, it's not something that I could tolerate, given my ongoing tweakery. I'm also doubtful that I personally could achieve an accurate enough tonal result for my fussy tastes. Especially if both the bass and mid-range speakers need dope.
I've not heard 2-way speaker that I'd choose over my favourite big, old fashioned 3 way after a bit of TLC (the old midranges drivers are often brittle sounding, and the early 70s tweeters even worse).
The most important thing I've learned is that if one can tweak (or even better build) one's speaker to sound good (however that's achieved) in the specific sonic conditions of one's own listening room, then I have found it helpful to do so.

[karatestu]

I am not sure i can be arsed tweaking my diy speakers anymore. Of course i am going to turn mine into 3 x 12", 3 × 5" & 3 tweeter isobaic monsters. If they turn out decent from the off then that will be it. Move on to someting else.

I can't see me ever going above 12 inchers even though i am inquisitive. They would take up too much real estate in my modestly sized living room.

[Ali Tait]

Current speakers are a set of Bastanis OB’s. These have a 12” wideband that is run open without a crossover, cone is doped to improve high frequency response in a similar fashion to what Richard did. They use a compression tweeter run from a single cap for a simple first order crossover above this.There is also a resistor in series to pad the tweeter down to the 12” sensitivity, and an Lpad to set tweeter levels to taste/room.Lows are taken care of with an 18” Goldwood driver, run from a 3000w Behringer Inuke with DSP, crossover set at 200hz 2nd order. These are capable of some serious bass should you require it, and easily tweaked to taste. Surprising these give more and better bass than my previous OB’s with twin 15” a side.

[Lindsayt]

The whole flat frquency response thing. Do some actually make their decisions on this one aspect and nothing else ? It is nice to have but not the ultimate goal for me.

Devialet Phantoms are a prime example of this. 16 to 25 khz claimed frequency response and incapable of recreating the sound of a bass drum or bass guitar or a bass in any way that resembles those instruments -relatively speaking.

On their website they say ' With performance 10 to 1000 times superior to anything previously measured, sound will never be the same.' and 'It took over 80 specialists in aerodynamics, automobile, acoustics and mechanics to perfect a system capable of sustaining these extreme physical conditions. 10 years of research and development and 25 million euros went into engineering the best sound in the world.'

[Lindsayt]

The primary difference with the cubes over normal speakers is the lack of mid/bass crossover.

An idea that deserves a wider audience.

I always put it down to them having reasonable quality drivers including a OK sized bass driver and not having a stooopid ports.

[karatestu]

The whole flat frquency response thing. Do some actually make their decisions on this one aspect and nothing else ? It is nice to have but not the ultimate goal for me.

Devialet Phantoms are a prime example of this. 16 to 25 khz claimed frequency response and incapable of recreating the sound of a bass drum or bass guitar or a bass in any way that resembles those instruments -relatively speaking.

On their website they say ' With performance 10 to 1000 times superior to anything previously measured, sound will never be the same.' and 'It took over 80 specialists in aerodynamics, automobile, acoustics and mechanics to perfect a system capable of sustaining these extreme physical conditions. 10 years of research and development and 25 million euros went into engineering the best sound in the world.'

Yes that marketing spiel smells of pure bullshit. Devialet is one of the brands i would never entertain. Too high tech for my liking (too much to go wrong), reeks of bullshit and if the pfm fanboys like it then that is a definite no no for me.

I have never heard any and don't suppose i ever will (knowingly ). How much are they ?