Seeking full range single driver speaker recs

Dekay: Even a single driver has time delays as frequency is altered. If one wanted to "get picky" about it, the Manger and other "bending wave" type drivers are supposedly "more" time coherent across the band than other FR's. Mounting height of these types of drivers must be paid attention to though if one is to achieve the best / most linear results though.

Having said that, mounting height and arrival times become even more critical with "full range" drivers of more conventional design. Not only does radiation pattern come into play, but due to the amount of beaming of high frequencies taking place, arrival times will also vary as one sits further off axis. As such, one pretty much has to sit on axis with such a design IF one is worried about the time domain. Having done that, i found the tonal balance to be quite lean and forward i.e. not to my liking. Obviously, one looses bass as they bring the driver closer to ear level and these type of drivers are already lacking low frequency output to begin with.

As to the Jordan, i've seen limited testing on it. From what i can recall based on that information, it did more things wrong than right. As such, i lost interest in it rather quickly. I'm sure that others may be able to tweak better results out of the driver than what i saw, but "individualized specialty items" will almost always be built to address specific points while compromizing other aspects of operation.

As it is, i just threw the Manger out there as it seems to take a completely different approach. Whether it sounds good and is reliable is another story. It tries to deal with the various matters of sound reproduction in a rather unorthodox matter and does so as even-handedly as possible. As such, it may be a series of compromises that does nothing well. I'd be interested to hear from those that have heard or own Mangers.

El: Thanks for the info. I'll check it out when i get a chance. Sean
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I like my Hornshoppe Horns with Fostex drivers. I use them in the bedroom with Bottlehead Paramour amps and have been happy with them.
Mine were $700 new, but I believe the price has gone up to $775 now. They come up for sale used occasionally.
http://www.thehornshoppe.com/

Manger is not really qualified as a fullrange driver, even in the looser sense. It only responds down to 80Hz, and all the Manger speakers have a woofer, or use a separate subwoofer. If you plan to use the sub anyway, then they might be a consideration.

They are a very interesting design however, and I had some interest myself in them at one point. But the low efficiency was not suitable for my system. Quite expensive too.

Sean:

You looked @ measurments while I instead listened to the Jordan drivers in two different types of enclosures. The Jordan drivers offered an amazing amount of separation (single instruments and musical lines in complex material) which in turn made for great deal of realism.

To compare time coherence between the drivers I use and the typical, popular 2/3 way cone based speaker is like comparing apples to oranges. The single driver speakers (and even the coaxials) sound very much like decent planers, but with greater dynamic swings and a very 3D effect. My drivers are neither bright/lean nor are they lacking in bass/mid-bass while playing popular music (considering the size of the cones). The Stephens would be considered to be forward sounding by most (I enjoy this type of sound) and the Coral speakers are more middle of the road in this aspect. The Stephens 8" drivers present stronger (if not deeper) bass/mid-bass response than most of the 12" FR drivers I own or have owned, so go figure.

If you place any driver in a poorly designed cabinet (or mount it poorly in a well designed cabinet) there will be problems such as you mention (there were also problems with the early Lowther driver designs, in general, but from what I have read this has been addressed with their most recent offerings). I would not own vintage Lowthers on a bet having listened to various driver and cabinet combos over the years, but then this is but a small selection amongst a sea of FR single drivers of which to choose from.

Though I have not had any of my speakers set up properly for a while (we need to do some serious sorting/cleaning), when I did the desirable listening area covered pretty much the width of the living room with the Stephens drivers. These are a bit odd for vintage FR drivers in that their desired baffle width (in a non sealed enclosure) is approx. 11 inches. My current cab's are slightly wider than this so I do expect an even more open sound (wider/deeper presentation) when proper/narrower cab's are used.

I do agree that some of the older box/cabinet FR designs requiring a wide baffle area do seem to restrict the size (width/depth) of of the listening area, but then again the few open baffle setups I have listened to had quite the opposite effect, and the baffle area was huge. As I do not have room for large open baffle designs, I try not to dwell on this, but I suspect that open baffles with the right driver, and perhaps subs, are the way to go.

Why not pick up some FR's and experiment with them yourself?

Twl: I've not really read a lot about the Manger's other than a few bits and pieces here. I tend to be drawn to "freak" products that are technically adventurous and the requirements for high power are not a problem for me.

Dekay: I have experimented with a few FR drivers, but not as much as i'd like to. My brother was running some 8" full ranges w/ whizzers in a modified transmission line, but he never really liked the results. I don't think that he built the line right but he insists that he did. I wanted to tinker with the drivers that he had, but he ended up selling them to a mutual friend.

As a general rule, unless i can get something dirt cheap and it is something that i already have a bit of interest in, i basically try to weed things out by looking at the technical merits that specific designs / products have to offer. I realize that i may miss a few "garage built gems" along the way using this routine, but i've already got so many different projects going on that i have to use some type of "filtering" to keep things reasonable. This place already looks like Sanford & Son's Audio / RF Wrecking House, so i'm trying to be a little more selective lately : ) Sean
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