Single driver speakers - opinions

Single driver is great in theory, but doing it right is hard and usually too expensive to have mass appeal.

For example, I am most familiar with the Ohm line. Over the years, Ohm has been very successful in delivering very good designs that leverage highly omnidirectional single driver technology to various extents in a cost effective manner.

The Ohm F and A of years past are legends in this category.

The newer Walsh CLS designs from Ohm have built on this approach using a similar but different wide range driver that covers most of the frequency range that most people can hear, but uses a separate phase aligned super tweeter for the very top end.

If there were a true single driver speaker out there that did it all in a reasonably compact design for a price I could afford, I would be very interested.

Serious limitations with SDs, as others have noted. Fine for noncritical low level listening, in other words, background music. Certainly, they have their plusses, but looking at the big picture, they don't cover much ground. Unless there's some sort of equalization applied, they'll always have some anomalies in the frequency response linearity, and unless that EQ is applied before amplification, you've lost most of the benefit of an SD.

Would you mention the two commercial designs that you liked?

I suggest you investigate older designs such as Hartley/Lowther etc. - old whizzer cone designs or stuff used in car audio. Don't expect great linearity and bear in mind you will be forced to compromise between high levels of distortion/ringing/breakup/linearity but you can definitely achieve something that will be as good if not better than many audiophile designs....an have lots of fun!

One option would be to use the emminence bass guitar woofer - in fact some of you may recognize this as it is modified for use in a well known audiophile speaker. If you stick in a phase plug then you can probably get this to cover 40 Hz to 12 Khz really quite well (on axis - off axis will probably be a nightmare) and at impressive SPL levels (without a phase plug then I think it will roll off around 6 to 9 Khz - still usable).

Good luck and remember that in DIY it is safer to emulate a proven design rather than try to break a new path (unless you are a masochist!!).

If you really want to go first class, seriously, get in touch with Johnk. He uses fantastic parts quality and he has experience with a wider range of fullrange drivers than anyone I know, and is highly competent in enclosures that get the most out of a widerange driver. I have never seen one of his speakers up for sale - maybe it happens, but very seldom.

Or if you want to DIY, then scour the internet for Johnk's comments on fullrange drivers and use what he uses... you won't have his enclosure designs but you'll have a good starting point.

I used to make an "augmented fullrange driver" system, with a helper woofer on the bottom and a supertweeter on top. This is because I wanted to stay below the price range dictated by a fullrange driver and cabinet combinations that are worthy of the name, and besides it would probably take me years to learn how to coax sufficient bass out of a fullrange driver.

I'm not saying there aren't other good fullrange driver speaker manufacturers out there besides Johnk; there certainly are. Names that come to mind are Omega, Hornshoppe, Maxxhorn, Cain & Cain (now Lovecraft), Tonian Labs (mostly augmented by a supertweet), Rethm, and no doubt others that I can't think of offhand. Heck, it could probably be argued that SoundLab electrostats are technically a "single fullrange driver"... but that's probably not what you had in mind!

Give Johnk a holler. He's not as well known as some of the other guys out there, but do not let that hold you back. He is an artisan who does world-class work for a very reasonable price and we're lucky to have him participating here. He has the expertise to be able to do custom designs for his customers without killing you on the cost. Doing that would take me so long that it could never be cost-effective, but John is extremely fluent in loudspeaker system design, multi-way as well as single-driver.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer