I have RCA LC1B in big MLTL boxes , made by guy known here under nick Zoran ;
also have Tanns K3809 , soon to be in similar MLTL boxes
had Dorsets , with K2528 - mentioned by ivanlukic
all I can say - decent coax is as good as xover is good ;
my friend Aca RAAL said that - for home use - almost every Tann xover is overcomplicated ; I tried K3809 naked (boxless) with simple cap on squawker and it is much cleaner than with original xover ; big cone had sort of stock xover - series choke and not exactly Boucherot in parallel .
anyway - I like good coaxes , same as good FR , same as good VoT styled spks
disclaimer - I'm spoiled , so FR must be substantiated with , at least , 12" in bass ;
don't like compression boxes , same as plain reflex
also have Tanns K3809 , soon to be in similar MLTL boxes
had Dorsets , with K2528 - mentioned by ivanlukic
all I can say - decent coax is as good as xover is good ;
my friend Aca RAAL said that - for home use - almost every Tann xover is overcomplicated ; I tried K3809 naked (boxless) with simple cap on squawker and it is much cleaner than with original xover ; big cone had sort of stock xover - series choke and not exactly Boucherot in parallel .
anyway - I like good coaxes , same as good FR , same as good VoT styled spks
disclaimer - I'm spoiled , so FR must be substantiated with , at least , 12" in bass ;
don't like compression boxes , same as plain reflex
Max, I've heard all the P.Audio coax drivers except the 15. Strange, but true. It should be very good with the right crossover.
What! I take a two year holydays from here and this guy ZenMod is still around!!! 
Anyway, even crazy people can posses the Truth and what you say sounds as true.
Passive XOs are too complicated for my very limited skills and I had to get comptented with an active one until I made my B1 (Pass) based active crossovers which do not impede musicality to pass, IMHO.
I'm sure, dear Pano, that the PAudio's must be quite good...the seller at commonsenseaudio says they are better than the original Tannoy's.
ZM, we love you.
M
Anyway, even crazy people can posses the Truth and what you say sounds as true.
Passive XOs are too complicated for my very limited skills and I had to get comptented with an active one until I made my B1 (Pass) based active crossovers
which do not impede musicality to pass, IMHO.I'm sure, dear Pano, that the PAudio's must be quite good...the seller at commonsenseaudio says they are better than the original Tannoy's.
ZM, we love you.
M
I know that
........the seller at commonsenseaudio says they are better than the original Tannoy's.
...
he must say that - he's selling them
one must ask him - why is he selling pair of RCA's in origigi cabs (historical value , but certainly worse than proper MLTL) for 5K$ ?
what can I say - I'm finding my Tanns equally amusing as RCA's
not in same league regarding verity, but fun enough to put them in our living room
Link? I couldn't find it on CSA's site. If the cab is the vented variant of the LS-11 it is a proper 'MLTL' and AFAIK the original. Before Olson designed his circa 1950, it was believed that the best location for a vent was as close to the source as practical with the driver in the vent 'ring' being the ideal.
GM
RCA LS11A Studio Monitors w/ RCA LC1 15 inch coax spkrs | eBay
silly me - doubting Olson's work for a sec
silly me - doubting Olson's work for a sec
Bummer, this one is a 'thumper' bass reflex. The original had the driver at the extreme top with the slot vent at the extreme bottom to create what we now call a MLTL, though Olson/RCA always referred to it as a bass reflex, missing a patent/marketing opportunity.
GM
As always Freddy, when comparing 'apples to oranges' [damped reflex Vs band-pass] you have to define 'better'. No doubt it did have more upper mid-bass thru lower mids 'slam', but at the expense of accuracy/smoothness and depending on the recording, how much real bass was available, i.e. how low is each is ~ tonally balanced in-room.
Judging by B03$ marketing success and all the others that try to steal some of their market share, the vast majority of consumers would prefer some 'flavor' of Karlson over a speaker designed for HIFI if only it could be the size of a large sugar cube.
The only way I see the various Karlsons ever being remotely HIFI is as a well designed two way monitor with a low XO point due to both its 'ringing' and very wide horizontal polar response unless used for a mono or near-field app.
GM
Here's one solution for smoother coaxial driver.
Genelec MDC Technology
used in
http://www.genelec.fi/documents/datasheets/DS8260A_2.pdf
Not so easy to use in diy speakers though.
The MDC is a really cool design. So far as I can tell (I'm neither a transducer engineer, nor trained in any analogous field, just an interested hobbyist) what Genelec basically did is the following: design a concentric driver with the tweeter slightly proud of the midrange, and put a layer of foam over the midrange diaphragm that's transparent enough at midrange frequencies (probably some efficiency loss, both broadband and progressive) but solid at higher frequencies. So the tweeter just "sees" a waveguide, and the foam compresses on the "back" side when the midrange plays.
But the MDC is a good segue into the two real reasons why coincidents aren't more popular.
1) They require bespoke parts. Cones and surrounds need to be designed for a dual role as waveguides and diaphragms, phase plugs need to be designed to feed a dome into a cone, etc. When they don't, they're awful (consider the performance difference between the 5" Seas Excel coincident, and the vastly superior base-model KEF Q100 unit). So they're going to be more expensive than separate drivers, which can successfully use off-the-peg parts.
2) There's still a lot of protected intellectual property involved. Nobody but Tannoy and their licensees/assignees can use Mark Dodd's "Tulip" annual phase plug on their concentrics, because it's protected IP. Likewise, nobody but KEF and their licensees/assignees can use Mark Dodd's "Tangerine" radial phase plug on their concentrics. (Yes, the same person was behind both KEF's and Tannoy's modern concentrics.) I don't know if the MDC is protected or not. As for the TAD/Pioneer drivers, I don't know what (if anything besides the cone material) is proprietary IP there, but Andrew Jones has been doing "hifi-sized" concentrics as long as anyone, as he was with KEF during the early gestation of the Uni-Q. So I suspect there's some secret sauce there.
They're really very different drivers, though I think the broad goals leading to their design are similar. KEF's big changes in their latest units are the following, so far as I can tell from having had various speakers in my home since roughly 1997:
-that the tweeter sits lower in the woofer motor
-the voicecoil is much larger than those of previous Uni-Q's (I think the Q100's vc is on the order of 2")
-the scalloped Z suspension on the wider-band models. (The dedicated midrange units have very thin surrounds.)
-the Tangerine phase plug in front of the tweeter.
Yeah, KEF lost their way a bit between the end of Andrew Jones era and start of the Mark Dodd era.
The current KEF Uni-Q's and Tannoy Dual Concentrics are very good. B&C, BMS, and others make some decent ones, too.
Flat coaxes surrender directivity control and have even greater diffraction issues than conical ones.
Listen to a Thiel CS3.7 to see what I mean. Really fatiguing speaker. The Cabasses are close to flat, too, and not very good.
It's worth noting, though you already know this fact, that Krutke measured the KEF Q100 driver. It really doesn't do anything wrong. Zaph|Audio at June 4, 2012.
Have you seen any measurements of the R900?
Good point. I've wondered why we haven't seen more concentrics with very large underhung coils on the midwoofer. Because the pole would then be both wide and relatively short, it would give the designer more freedom in designing a throat that closely matches the cone angle.
Tannoy obviously thinks the Tulip phase plug is a better design than the old Pepperpot. After all, all of their modern speakers use the Tulip. Only a few baubles designed for and marketed to Asian retro-fetishists still use the old Pepperpot.
Um, the Dual is a CD-of-sorts (in modern ones, the compression ratio is relatively low) firing through a vented pole.
Even excluding the SM100, which is obviously a coaxial, I would say yes.
For that matter, their SM horns actually take a 5" BMS coincident driver and bifurcate it. The horn fits into the "snout" of the driver, and the midrange cone is loaded into a bandpass box that fires through ports downstream of the apex.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Really cool stuff.
hey GM - -your experience regarding Karlson must be very limited - they're not exactly bandpass and can sound very good. I would not fool with them if they couldn't sound good nor relegate them to LF duty.
--its a waste of a Karlson's attribute to run them low (other than Tucker's Exemplar "sub") -
fwiw K- and low xover I've run this combo - quite a bit of power in the low end - but still its a waste of a K other than being cleaner than a direct radiator
--its a waste of a Karlson's attribute to run them low (other than Tucker's Exemplar "sub") -
fwiw K- and low xover I've run this combo - quite a bit of power in the low end - but still its a waste of a K other than being cleaner than a direct radiator
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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Tulip waveguides still use a compression driver.
No doubt tulips are cheaper to produce but it is also arguable that they are a better design than the pepperpots.
JBL came up with practically the same waveguide shape for the compression drivers on their flagship K2s ie the profile is the same but the size is different.
Tulip waveguides do not require the equalization the pepperpots do so there is an advantage right there by removing components from the audio path.
No doubt tulips are cheaper to produce but it is also arguable that they are a better design than the pepperpots.
JBL came up with practically the same waveguide shape for the compression drivers on their flagship K2s ie the profile is the same but the size is different.
Tulip waveguides do not require the equalization the pepperpots do so there is an advantage right there by removing components from the audio path.
"Dual Concentric" is a defined term. Tannoy's ICT drivers do not fall under it. And the ICT's are not worthy of being mentioned in the same class. They are much rougher in the treble and don't have the same smoothness of midrange directivity. The inductive tweeter can't/doesn't go low enough.
Perhaps you should do some actual listening before pontificating.
Incorrect. True, the newer Tannoy Dual Concentrics have a lower compression ratio than the antiquated ones, but the diaphragms in both are under compression.
Doubtful. In both cases, there is a strong magnet, a fairly large dome diaphragm, damping material, and a phase plug. Perhaps tolerances need to be tighter on one than the other, but I see no reason to assume that tolerances need to be tighter on the Pepperpot designs than the Tulip designs.
Furthermore, the Pepperpot is a one-piece part. The Tulip phase plug has at least four bespoke parts that have to be of close tolerance and fit together.
The other piece of the puzzle is, if the Pepperpot was such a great phase plug, how come nobody uses it now? (Except Tannoy, in a sop or two to the Asian retro fetishist market.) There are a lot of compression driver makers. Many of them even make concentric drivers. There's no proprietary IP issue, and it's easy enough to reverse engineer. So every B&C, BMS, Beyma, Radian, JBL etc. could use Pepperpots if they thought the design was better than the annular phase plugs they currently use. But they don't.
May be that I am too old and conservative but I just do not see Tulips as true compressions.
Pepperpot is probably not used anymore because it is still more expensive for production than other phase plugs.
Also, I believe that 50mm VC is better in spreading heat than 33mm VC. Tulips have simpler xovers but impedance plot is not as uniform as old units and phase is also somewhat worse. Factories today are under heavy market pressure and they simply succumb to market forces. Tulip is good product, no doubt, but most producers are more concerned with shareholders interests than with uncompromising quality.
Pepperpot is probably not used anymore because it is still more expensive for production than other phase plugs.
Also, I believe that 50mm VC is better in spreading heat than 33mm VC. Tulips have simpler xovers but impedance plot is not as uniform as old units and phase is also somewhat worse. Factories today are under heavy market pressure and they simply succumb to market forces. Tulip is good product, no doubt, but most producers are more concerned with shareholders interests than with uncompromising quality.
Pallas: no need for the rude reply- I am not pontificating........Unfortunately i am not rich, so I cannot just 'go and buy and hear' without very good reason. Sadly, there isnt much 'value' in the cost sense in me buying any of the drivers mentioned.
Stop speaking elitist nonsense. This is a democracy, opinions may be voiced freely. And who knows? Mine may be just as valid as yours. Maybe in another parallel dimension, they may mean more to the average DIYer.
I speak merely from viewing schematics and looking for the design with the least compromises. A 2" tunnel at the front of a CD is a huge compromise.
And FWIW i do not 'like' the 'ICT' drivers either........
Lastly of all, brand loyalty is somewhat shortsighted.
Stop speaking elitist nonsense. This is a democracy, opinions may be voiced freely. And who knows? Mine may be just as valid as yours. Maybe in another parallel dimension, they may mean more to the average DIYer.
I speak merely from viewing schematics and looking for the design with the least compromises. A 2" tunnel at the front of a CD is a huge compromise.
And FWIW i do not 'like' the 'ICT' drivers either........
Lastly of all, brand loyalty is somewhat shortsighted.
Pallas,
DualConcentric is not so much a defined term as a registered trademark owned by Tannoy. All other drivers are co-axials.
Not sure if that is what you meant.
The tulip waveguide is substantially cheaper to produce then the pepperpots but that doesn't stop it from being the better, more elegant design.
And I say that despite owning two pairs of pepperpot drivers.
DualConcentric is not so much a defined term as a registered trademark owned by Tannoy. All other drivers are co-axials.
Not sure if that is what you meant.
The tulip waveguide is substantially cheaper to produce then the pepperpots but that doesn't stop it from being the better, more elegant design.
And I say that despite owning two pairs of pepperpot drivers.
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Charles Darwin,
I appreciate your response on the pepperpot verses the tulip design of the two Tannoy versions. It would from an engineering standpoint be obvious that the tulip is a much better design than the pepperpot. The pepperpot is just a series of randomly drilled holes that do not follow any type of expansion rate. they are in effect a straight non-expanding transition from the diaphragm to the throat area. The tulip is an exponential expansion that also helps to direct the wavefront and increase high frequency dispersion. It really shouldn't be a contest there.
I appreciate your response on the pepperpot verses the tulip design of the two Tannoy versions. It would from an engineering standpoint be obvious that the tulip is a much better design than the pepperpot. The pepperpot is just a series of randomly drilled holes that do not follow any type of expansion rate. they are in effect a straight non-expanding transition from the diaphragm to the throat area. The tulip is an exponential expansion that also helps to direct the wavefront and increase high frequency dispersion. It really shouldn't be a contest there.
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