High-Efficiency Single Driver Speaker System


For those of you who have gone to the 'Dark-side'---a high-efficiency single driver system and never looked back, I'd like to get your feedback on two specific things: 1)What type of music do you mostly listen to, and 2)What do you find are the most appealing characteristics that you find lacking in more traditional lower efficient, high power amplifier-based system. I currently have a custom EL34 JWN customized amp rated around 35-45 watts and I'm thinking about going this route.
a_passion
Don't know if i fit your description fully, but I have done a road trip down the lane of low efficiency speaker systems (probably not any of them known to anyone outside Scandinavia), through commercial hi efficiency horns from Avantgarde (Uno, Duo and Duo Omegas). I went all in and sold my Duo Omegas and went for an all out single driver design, barely known to anyone outside Japan. As Fostex made a new limited edition (500 pcs)fullrange driver, the Fe 203 En-S, there was finally an available suitable driver for the Nagaoka 3m long backloaded horn enclosure. This BLH construction provides an acoustic output down to 40Hz. After trying the driver in the Fostex recommended BLH enclosures i decided to go all in on a speaker system based on this driver in the legendary and "mythical" beerguts enclosure. The fullrange driver in the Nagaoka BLH is a fullworthy speaker in itself, but can be utterly be refined by adding help in both frequency flanks. See my system for reference. My point of all this is; To build my speaker system around this exeptional Nagaoka/Fostex fullrange BLH gave me a great possibility to build a system optimized for my personal preference with the freedom of choosing xover points more freely and keeping them in optimal range for the high/low drivers have given me the opportunity to keep the basic qualities the fullragne hieff BLH Nagaoka construction gave.

So to the first question: I listen to: prog-rock, fusion, prog-metal, metal, jazz. I like to see myself as a musical lover, loving music more than genres. So if it is good it works for me :)

Second question; A lot of good points have already been pointed out in this thread. I recognice most of the pros and cons mentioned.

I played for many months on the "bare" fullrange driver and loved the lack of overlapping problems i have heard on so many multiple driver speakers. To hear female vocals on a fullrange driver is a joyful and quite educating experience imo. The fullrange driver is good, but not state of the art in frequency extremes. As i had ambitions with my speaker system and had a lot of skilled people backing my project i decided to go all out with a system based on the best skills of the Fostex fullrange drivers. I am very happy with the result. It suits my preferences, my room and did not cost me more than the Avantgarde Duo Omegas in the end. I was very happy with my Duo Omega's and still regard them as very attractive speakerss:), but the BeerGuts reference system plays in another league imo.
Germanboxers nails it. Just add to that music list some indie rock and folk and anything with intricate, complicated, overlapping percussion and / or melody to a one note solo.
To my ear you just don't seem to notice a little lack of coherency in most well designed speakers but with the Rethm Saadhanas I drive with a Shindo 20w push pull tube amp and I can imagine some other crossoverless speakers, you do notice the very coherent sound in a speaker of this type.
If you list where you live I would bet there may be a member near-by who would invite you over to hear what one of these systems can do ...
That's a good idea---thanks. My zip code is 11510 and I live in Long Island New York.
Hi A-passion I live in Staten Island, NY. If you want to come over for a listen, let me know. Once you go to the dark side there is no going back. ;)

Joe