Midwoofer+Tweeter vs Wide band

kingharold,

I find your description of your DIY system very interesting.  I too really like the AER BD series of wide-range drivers and I really like the idea of using them as a wide-range midrange driver.  When the vast majority of the lower midrange to high frequencies are covered by a smooth driver like the AER drivers, the sound is quite special. 

I like horn-based systems that also utilize a compression driver/horn to cover a similarly large part of the midrange, with woofers coming in quite low and a tweeter on top for just the very highest frequencies.  This can be done without using digital time delay for the drivers and it still sounds good.

I have a system with a compression driver/horn midrange (Western Electric 713b driver KS12025 horn), twin 12" woofers in a Jensen/Onken cabinet) and Fostex bullet tweeters like yours on top.  The 713b driver is my favorite compression driver, but, it does have the disadvantage of not going very low, so mine is crossed over at 700hz.  A local shop, Deja Vu Audio (Tyson's Corner VA), makes a lot of horn-based custom systems, and with the really big horns; they crossover the compression driver as low as 150 hz, with the tweeter coming in at a 8,000 hz or higher.  These horn systems, as well as systems utilizing wide-band cone midrange drivers (like yours) are so lifelike, vivid, and harmonically saturated, unlike many more conventional systems.

larryi2, I couldn't agree more.

I have a system with a compression driver/horn midrange (Western Electric 713b driver KS12025 horn), twin 12" woofers in a Jensen/Onken cabinet) and Fostex bullet tweeters like yours on top. The 713b driver is my favorite compression driver, but, it does have the disadvantage of not going very low, so mine is crossed over at 700hz. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You see for my needs your system is way too much speaker. Dual woofers running to what hz?? 713b what sensitivity?? Bullet Fostex Tweeter = too high sens for my needs. I know your speaker would feel like attack mode to my experience. I want a speaker that fills the room and the music embraces me with zero fatigue, no agressiveness, a speaker that allows the music to come through as natural, nothing over extended. Woofers I can't stand. There is not 1 Scanspeak woofer that would compete with my DavidLOuis 8 inch. The big advantage to a FU + tweeter(S, I may run dual tweeters of just a single Scanspeak, not sure). Is the musical image is not broken. A high end FU 8 inch gives up at least 50 hz through 12k+ hz. Clean pure image. A woofer + Horn is the musical split at the 700 area fq. A high end FR is super linear, and this gives it the edge over all woofers + tweeters. Tweeters might be functional below 3k, but a FR's 2k-3500 hz is far superior in performance vs a tweeter. I really hate tweeters below 4k, 4k-5 k is my ideal xover point in tweeters. I thought the world of my Seas Thors, Til I placed a crappy Diatone FR on 1 channel. The crappy FR blew away the woofers + tweeer. A single 6 inch FR DESTROYED Seas highest end speaker. I never looked back. Experiemented with several FR speakers til I hit on DavidLouis highest offerings. Since DL VX8 is no longer avaliable, you can try AER or Voxativ's wooden cone or Cube. The DLVX6 is still avaliable, limited quantity. Actually dual DLVX6's will work as good as my DLVX8 + DLVX6. + any tweeter of your choice w a sens above 92db. Woofers IMHO is the worst thing to enter into audioland. Its a scam, pure snakeoil. Unmusical, highly inefficient and worthless trash. Are you listening Troels???

My new full-range driver blh with floor boundary re-enforcement hits 30hz strong is an honest 96db 1 watt 1 meter can play pipe organ at high SPL and does all the other things full ranges excel at. I also have a few giant horns systems and all of those are better but much much larger. Still, I disagree with you about horns working well in smaller rooms if set up properly they can perform very well indeed. And the SEAS Thors to me is one of the worst sounding dynamics I have ever owned. My friend owns Madisound I have much experience with it. If you’re using that to compare to.........Most anything would sound better.

I've never heard a single driver speaker perform as well as a good multi-way speaker.

Having said that the Woofer Assisted Wide Band, a type of two way with very low crossover point, makes a lot more sense to me. One might even argue that the high-tech @Arion speakers are a type of WAWB; speaker.