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Collecting audiophile good "feelz" regarding high efficiency mids/fullrangers.
I am going to use this driver from maybe 200 to 3K.
Although it may be considered a waste to use a fullranger for this, I don't want to rule one out that has
Want min 95db 1W/1m sensitivity, 8 ohm.
So? What's your personal favorite in this sort of application?
Fostex? Feastrex? Lowther? PHL? Audax? .... list goes on...
Cheers,
Presto
Follow Ups:
Not flat though. They require a 4th order crossover and some hard work to tame them. However, once the peaks are eliminated, they are efficient at 93dB and can be made quite flat in response.
PHL have decent resolution as well. However, their resolution is not up to certain super exotics.
Lowthers and Fostex (beetle juice and banana peels are nothing to brag about IMO ) are low-res drivers that distort just above table radio levels due to no throw to speak of. Their frequency response is horrifying and there is no low freq that they can produce without immense distortion. I have heard many iterations of both. They are a joke IMO.
YMMV
I certainly am no expert, but I have tried both Lowther DX-3 and AER drivers in Oris 150 horns. The Lowthers were interesting but ultimately annoying; the AER's are fantastic.
I totally agree with belyin about the AER drivers. I had Lowther PM4-A drivers in Oris 150 horns. I replaced them with AER-MD3s, and the improvement was obvious and substantial. I very highly recommend AER.
To answer your question/Poll:
Tang Band W8-1772
Of course, this is my opinion, but this driver just sounds "right".
As previously mentioned, a properly set up ( proper enclosure ) lowther can sound excellent. Ihave PM2A's and DX4's
I like the field coil lowther ($$$$)from Lowther America much better as you have some tuning options by regulating the field voltage.
I own and love the Supravox 215-2000 8" field coil drivers used from 150hz to 6 or 7K is VERY hard to beat unless you want to go for horns and serious compression drivers which is what I did.
Full Ranges dynamics have their uses but for horn mids compression drivers offer best results.
Phy-HP 12" silver coax. Stopped my speaker search with this one, going on 6 years now and still happy.
Even pretty decent (almost) full-range.
Dollar for dollar, I think they're unbeatable.
Probably not what you're lookin' for, though.
all the best,
mrh
Presto is actually asking a question?! Have I got that right? ;)
Let's review: Presto, who "knows all about" speakers. Yet, here we are, on a sunny/rainy Saturday morning, with this question from him. :)
Hey Presto, as you likely know, if you want to use that "as yet unknown" driver from 200 Hz to 3 KHz in a high quality system, it'll have to be smooth and clean and uniform from 100 Hz to 6 KHz.
Odd that you should ask now, since I'm right now trying to re-design my 4-way to a 3-way, and having a bitch of time doing it.
:)
Hi Presto!
Once treated with a proprietary cone treatment the Dayton PS220-8 has literally smoked the Fostex FE206E, FE206ES-R ---{ both which also had the same proprietary cone treatment applied }--- FE208ES-R and Lowther DX4 drivers! IMHO the PS220-8 is the full-range/wide-range driver to beat for anything near a realistic price!
I'm listening to: Zebra by Jeanne Newhall
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata)
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns
Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
Whats the treatment? do you sell it?
No I don't sell it. It's made by a fellow member of the Central Florida Audio Society. I also had it applied to my Fostex FE206E & FE206ES-R drivers and the improvement was quite dramatic. I know others who've had this treatment applied to the Dayton PS220-8.
I also know a fellow who had it applied to his 15" Hawthorne Audio Silver Iris coaxes. The fellow with the Silver Iris coaxes was going to sell them before having this 7-step, proprietary cone treatment applied ---{ he also had the compression driver's diaphragms treated as well }--- but after hearing his drivers treated he loved them.
If you're interested I can put you in touch with the man who developed this cone treatment. Just email me at thetubeguy1954@yahoo.com and I'll be happy to put you two in touch. I'm sure he'll answer any questions you might have...
I'm listening to: Red Dust & Spanish Lace by Acoustic Alchemy
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata)
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns
Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
Yes come on Tom, spill the beans!
I used Fostex once upon a time.
Was ok but nothing special.
Lowthers are crap. I've heard them at length in a number of cabs (all back-loaded horns) and they were all terrible. I'll never understand why anybody would spend real money on them.
Audax PR170MO are quite nice or use a pro mid like the 18Sound Zaph tested.
Lowther are not crap. The Lowthers you heard were crap in your opinion.
I'm sympathetic. I've heard more bad Lowthers than good ones, but there are good ones. Extraordinary ones, actually, when properly implemented.
Best,
Have to agree Most DIYers do not truly understand how to set up lowthers fostex and others fullrange in BLHs and I've heard many of those and they do sound poor but if done right a viable loudspeaker is the result.
I didn't set them up, the Lowther importer did in their specially designed showroom.
I just spent a week of afternoons carefully auditioning all they had to offer.
They were all horrible and vastly inferior to the Fostex I ended up buying or the Coral Beta 10 a friend of mine bought.
All modern Lowthers that I've heard at shows are well below what vintage units, lovingly cared for and properly implemented, are capable of. If you've only heard new ones, at shows or in audio showrooms, you don't have a proper reference for Lowther capabilities. Not to say that the new ones can't be made to sound good, I've just never heard it.
Best not to damn the whole brand based on limited experience. Honestly, I thought they were 'crap' too, until I delved a little further. Now I wouldn't live without them. Sure, you can't just hook them to any amp in any room and expect nirvana, they're fussier than that. If you don't want to bother with them, that's one thing, but to dismiss them as 'horrible' is simply incorrect.
Please define 'vintage'.
It wasn't just any showroom.
It was the demo room of the Lowther importer in the country I lived in at the time.
The two guys running the place sold nothing but Lowther and both held appropriate master degrees.
If they couldn't set them up properly nobody can.
All that happened in the late '70s.
May be Lowthers could be used as a mid if one were to slice that whizzer cone off but there are better choices for me for less cash..
I've heard many whizzer-coned drivers over the years and they were all bad. The best by far was the aforementioned Coral but I still wouldn't spend money on them.
Finally since pretty much all posts here are completely subjective and basically are just the opinion of the person posting it is in my view everybody's prerogative to roundly praise or condemn any brand or type of product.
For example if you don't like Technics or DD turntables you have the right to say so in as strong a language as you deem appropriate but I also have the same right to voice my opinion on whizzer cones in general and Lowther in particular.
The whole point of fora like this is to collect individual opinions, good or bad.
Personally I find negative opinions more useful than positive ones since most magazines in this genre aren't exactly forthcoming with anything that deviates far from gushing praise.
OK...sure. By 'vintage' I meant Lowthers from the 1950's through maybe the early 1970's.
The Lowthers produced in the late 1970's and through the 1980's are probably my least favorite iterations. I'm not surprised you didn't like them. The ones they make now sound better to me. You don't mention the associated equipment, but I can't imagine any of the 'in vogue' amplifiers (particularly SS) of the late 1970's doing much justice to a Lowther.
Look, I'm not trying to flame you or anything, I made a snarky rebuttal to your statement that 'Lowthers are crap' because it just landed wrong--it seemed to me to be a subjective pronouncement couched as an objective truth. From your explanation, I now see that it was a reasonable conclusion based on a limited experience with an inferior Lowther 35 or more years ago.
My initial comment might have been taken wrong, but I was assuming from your rather devilish nom de plume that you wouldn't mind a little sportive antagonism.
Regards,
P.S. What kind of Master's degree did it take to sell audio in the 1970's? ;-)
Just kidding! Different listeners create their aural reality in different ways with different priorities. When I sold audio equipment, I saw it as my job to find out those priorities an match them. Most salespeople simply sold what they liked, or what had the best SPIFF. Perception is an act of creation, not passive reception. heard
Dave
I recall that several years ago a Lowther-based open baffle system was rated one of the best of the audio show by the various listeners who heard them. So maybe b.l.zeebub would not care for a Lowther system, but perhaps 70+% of those who hear a properly set up Lowther system would.I had Lowthers in backloaded horns (Hedlund Horns) and when I switched to open baffles, I found that the Lowthers sounded significantly better. I think that open baffle and front horns are the two best speaker layouts for using Lowthers.
Finally, I found in a listening test that the EnABLe treatment to Lowther cones makes a significant improvement to the sound of Lowthers.
Retsel
Edits: 09/18/14
Can't like everything toss in near infinite variability and....I myself prefer Some Fostex full ranges over Lowther but still enjoy the PM4A and PM3a. A pm4a in modern front + BLH design sings.
lowther enclosure I've heard was the rethm II
To date the best full range I have heard has been Lowther. May be me but I can not see any reason to take something like it and use it just as a midrange driver. Defeats their purpose and makes nonsense to me.
There are plenty of fantastic midrange drivers such as the fantastic Bozak or one of the Biggs designed cloth surround mids from the 50s and 60s I would use first.
But, as my wife tells me, what do I know?
Don Brian Levy, J.D.
Toronto ON Canada
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