Single driver speakers - opinions

Thanks Paul,

and You are right on the money. Speed, soundstage, effortless presentation and accurate portray of "emotions" surrounding particulare recording.

There is definitely something seductive about "Single Driver"
speakers to be sure. Are they perfect? :) Nothing is.
You guys can help me out with my next statement.......

IMO, it takes a bit of growing-up, seasoning if you will -
to appreciate the qualities of horns & single-driver speakers.
I feel the same way about SET amps or tubes in general.
Even though I am relatively young, my understanding of music and the way it should be portray by speakers and associated gear is plain & simple. There are planty of speakers and electronics that sound good or great. But I am sure that "good or great" in most cases is usualy not enough.....I hope I could speak for most of us......obviously I can not, so let me place IMO - just in case someone disagree with that statment.

To get back to your post Paul,
yes - SET amp (Joe's Consonance Cyber 211 mono-blocks) sounded way better with CarderSound then SQ integrated (tube, moded) and my own RWA Sig.30.2 t-amp , which we brought that day for audition.

I would also think that good OTL amp might be another alternative with potential to do those speakers justice.

I personaly had very high hopes for RWA amp but it simply prove to be poor match (it worked great with Rethm Saadhanas though). I also brought Isabella (RWA) preamp which did not disappoint - to bad we haven't had a chance to use its build-in DAC and swap some tubes (Amperex BBoys and Mullards that I had in my car).I am sure that with little tweaking we could have raise its performence few bars higher.

Paul,
you are one lucky man to own Madisons, have the room to do them justice and angel for a wife :)

Regards

Mariusz

You have to live with single driver for a while. Then listen to multi-way to appreciate the degradation in sound.
Also I am not getting any H-F boost. That is more a characteristic of high efficiency single driver.
A small room is helpful to boost the bass.
I would not go over 4" as they become too directional when larger than that IMHO.

Yeap, 4incher image like no other but there is a trade-off.......Bass & dynamics. Unfortunatly you have to pick your poison. Rethem Saadhana, sort of figure it out by useing 6inch custom Lowther DX55 and added two 6" peerless drivers for bass below 70Hz or 100Hz (if memory serves me right).
As I recall, the image was excelent and sweet spot wide enough for avarage listener.
The single driver originality was a bit banded in this particulare exemple but it worked like a charm.

Mariusz

Mariusz - I checked Lowther website and found that EX series speakers go as high as $2k a piece. Some of designs they show use 2 speakers per box = $8k in speakers alone (I like to have the best). One of the titles of their FAQ is "Why bass refleks is the best". Now I'm not sure I should trust them. According to Andrew Lipinski (Lipinski 707 is A class in Stereophile) bass refleks is th worst possible choice because of coloration.

So far no-one has mentioned PHY or Fertin, both from France. These drivers are arguably the cream of the crop in high efficiency 'full range' drivers. The PHY is featured in the Ocellia loudspeaker, one of the few that can really get down to 40Hz (but not cheap by any means). Tonian Labs imports PHY and uses them in their speakers as well.

Both drivers feature Alnico magnet structures, exotic diaphragm materials and substantial basket construction. Various means of high frequency extension are also available including a peizo tweeter that uses no crossover

Being available in 16 ohms (or more in the case of the Fertin) they can be easily driven by any amplifier technology, although the discerning listener will notice that amplifiers with a high output impedance will sound better on them (Better: smoother, more definition and more impact in the bass region).