Whizzer cone drivers
According to my expirience as speaker designer , i am wondering why so many companies still making loudspeakers with wizzer cone drivers and so many guys fall in love with this products choosing small paper cone as a additonal tweeter prefering high quality tweeter made from top quality components.Yes, no crossover ( capacitor) , but still ?
I've only heard Lowther. They were used as giant midranges In a 3 way horn system. Besides crossovers, they also had transformers. Also heard Supravox field coils in another system. Don't think they used whizzer cones. Both systems sounded great. Don't understand how whizzers work. If the main cone can't produce high frequencies, why would adding a whizzer help? Hasn't that added even more mass to a driver that weighs too much to reproduce high frequencies? Thanks, aldnorab |
@aldnorab Whizzer is the small cone attached or glued to main cone, Whizzer got resonance 4000-6000hz depending of size , nothing magic, you can pointed whizzer as mechanical tweeter with poor ability over 8-10 khz., But many from us especially most popular audiophile age , older 60 , dont listen anything above 12Khz. |
I use 8 inch drivers with a whizzer cone, AER BD3s, in my Oris 150 horns. They sound splendid over the range of 200 Hz to 8 kHz which is their pass band in my triamplified fully horn loaded DIY speakers. Horn loaded fifteen inch woofers play the music from 200 Hz down to 25 Hz where their output is identical to that at the 1 kHz reference. Fostex t900a bullet tweeters play above 8 kHz. I swear if the whizzer causes any distortion or other problems it is not audible to me or my audiophile friends. |
Kingharold, You have an interesting system. I’ve heard, and really liked, the BD3 driver and I also like Fostex bullet tweeters, particularly when they are crossed in very high up in frequency. What kind of woofers do you use, and what horn loading do you employ? I like your use of a full-range driver to handle the midrange. While I am a fan of horn midrange drivers, this typically requires a crossover at 500 hz or even higher, and modern, big, high efficiency woofers aren’t made to come in that high in frequency. A full-range driver can easily reach low in frequency so that is not a problem. |
The holy grail of these drivers is a flat power response combined with the transient capabilities enabled by the lack of hysteresis inherent in all inductor and capacitor based crossovers. Sonically, that is an immediacy and clarity traditonal speakers simply cannot achieve. The flip side is this is very difficult to accomplish due to the competing requirements. |
