Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?
Should say "hype vs. reality" in the headline.
Coaxial speaker design has been around in one way or another for a long time. I often think I’ll be absolutely blown away by them, but in practice traditional vertical layout speakers often have sound as good, or have other features that make them sound better.
Thiel, KEF, Monitor Audio, Tekton, Seas are among the many players attempting such designs, but none has, by the coaxial drivers alone, dominated a segment of the market.
What are your listening experiences? Is it 1 coaxial speaker that won you over, or have you always preferred them?
Erik, I’ve had a pair of KEF Reference 5’s for about a year and a half now and have been mostly happy with them. They have a pretty good sound stage and even with having an aluminum tweeter, they are not as bright sounding as I first feared. I’ve been powering them with a Hegel H390, which is a slightly warm sounding A/B amp and I’m thinking that is why. |
I was thinking that they are becoming more and more popular. I was close to buying Fyne but they jacked up the price just before I decided. In general I assume that coaxial elements are more expensive for a given quality. That may explain why not everyone is using them. The best coaxial I've heard is Cabasse Le Pearl Pelegrina but they are also active and $30k. |
erik, you post some puzzling questions. My guess is that speakers with concentric drivers from different manufacturers can sound as different from one another as speakers with concentric drivers can sound from speakers with each driver mounted separately. I don’t think there is a specific sound that all concentric driver speakers have in common, do you? Maybe you could be more specific about the sound qualities you ascribe to concentric drivers. |
@tomcy6 For me: Coherent, natural sound with solid & sharp imaging, because the tweeter and mid/woofer covering the critical midrange crossover point act more like a single point source rather than a tweeter and woofer barking at you from different locations. That said, high tech multi-driver speakers like Magico and Acora are getting better at this and seem to be closing the gap, plus the other benefits all that tech & exotic material offers. Tannoy materials are rather pedestrian by comparison. |
I guess class D hybrid and Walsh drivers are as hip as I can get but my point was not the age of the design but that there are successful designs of most all configurations and coax drivers are not a magic tonic. |
