Steve Deckert
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I think in the late 90's early 2000's there was a consciousness shift among those who can hear... towards the unrestrained raw sound of a single voice coil with no crossover combined with low mass aka high speed. Despite it's limitations, it clearly delivers twice or three times the information.
The first time you hear this, it's a wow moment. The wow can overpower the ragged edges and tipped response for almost anyone the first several times you cross paths with it. That in and of itself can create a real enthusiasm for any speaker that attempts reasonably successfully to hit that goal.
The true test is the same as with amplifiers or anything else in the chain... time. How long is it fully intoxicating, mind bendingly distracting and euphorically inclined... Weeks? Years? Decades.
The easiest path to success when dealing with a single 4 inch driver is a 15 inch driver near by for moral support.
I may as well expound a little bit since this is a thread about damping the cone which is to say make it sound less offensive...
A. The Lowther Shout, a somewhat unfair label, is not from the whizzer cone. B. The Shout from Fostex or any other driver of similar low mass and efficiency is mostly from the cabinet. C. Loudspeakers have to be designed completely differently for low mass cones. D. Open Baffle , ie. box less speakers let you hear what the driver actually sounds like from 80Hz on up on average in small baffles and 40 Hz in larger baffles.
It is the simple fact that because the cone is so thin, you hear EVERYTHING inside the box as if you had a microphone hanging inside the enclosure. (Which I have done BTW)
If you don't go with open baffle, you will have to create an exquisite design to handle the back wave so that it does not reflect back through the cone anywhere in the harmonic decay which can be seconds.
Of course with open baffle you have no low bass and no box bloat from overly simple reflex enclosures.
The more I watch the popularity of open baffles here around Decware and elsewhere, my spider senses are telling me that the dual 15 support for a single 8 inch full range driver as demonstrated by Pure Audio Project is the ultimate balance of tradeoffs and frankly if Decware were producing an Open Baffle Speaker other than the ZOB, this would probably be the approach we would pursue.
I can only imagine how good an FRX2 driver might sound in a similar open baffle design in place of the lowther.
And that brings me to a sudden reality check. Randy's Open Baffle Speakes using that magical 8 inch drivers of his for $500.00 is still the champion of diminishing returns. What I'm talking about would be easily twice as good in many but not all ways, yet cost 10 to 20 times as much.
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