Hi Guys, Looking at the last few comments about mixing light mass drivers with heavy mass drivers, speed and matching. I recently was on another thread where there was an argument going on about mass and speed. A lot of folks out there just don't understand what it takes in drivers.... I guess I'm going to tackle it by comparing it to 2 cars...Lets take a 1970 Cadillac Deville with a 472 cubic inch engine and a 1970 Volkswagen bug with a 97 cubic inch engine... Put the Volkswagen engine in caddy, will it move? it sure wouldn't move well, how would it accelerate? what about if you down shifted and had to slow down? The engine could not properly power this automobile without some serious souping up. Lets put the Cadillac engine in the bug.... Well, It'll be fast for sure, but the bugs suspension would not handle the big engine, if you stomped on the accelerator the car would be all over the road. You would have to seriously beef this automobiles suspension to have any chance of handling this engine.... Speaker Drivers aren't a whole lot different. A certain amount of mass requires enough motor to move it. We can tune the suspension to help, or turbo charge the engine (maybe neodymium) to improve performance but in every case matching mass & motor is what its all about.... On any driver, add mass and sensitivity will drop, MMS/QMS/QTS will rise, as you add motor the driver moves easier, get too much motor and the QMS/QTS get so low that the driver will no longer go down to its lower frequencies, a real problem on a woofer, but accurate for all traditional drivers.
Ribbons are a different beast, very light I have a pair of Founteks here at my house now as well as a pair of the old ESS Folded horns that were mentioned above... They are fast, but with careful selection they can be matched....I also love how wonderful impedance and phase are on ribbons. I'd love the Ess with a well matched 15. I really like ribbons, but you know, I still love a good dome too.
Tim
