Over the years, we've often been asked why we didn't produce this type of speaker or that. Of course, in each case, there are reasons.
There is a school of thought that says home theater speakers must use high-sensitivity "pro" drivers for increased "slam" and "dynamics." While I may not completely agree, I fully understand the concept. The problem is, up until now we have never run across a driver that would result in a speaker we would put our name on.
The challenges with these "Pro" drivers are three-fold.
1) They typically require very large cabinets in comparison to cutting edge drivers being developed today.
2) The frequency response of many of these drivers is dreadful. FR plots tend to look like outlines of the Rocky Mountains.
3) They are relatively lacking in bass extension.
That last item is probably not a major issue for a home theater application in that subwoofers can easily take up the slack. And high-efficiency drivers do have some advantages. They take relatively little power to drive and they do offer that elusive "slam" that people find appealing in home theater applications.
Of course, we never want to close the door on any type of speaker a customer might want. So we are always on the lookout for drivers that might be workable for a given application.
We recently ran across a 96db sensitive coax speaker that showed promise. It is available with either an aluminum tweeter or a beryllium tweeter, the latter being about twice as expensive as the former. So we thought we'd give it a shot and here are the results...
Dennis Murphy did his usual stellar job creating a crossover for the driver. In the process, he commented, "It's extremely clean and focused. It's the first compression tweeter coax system I've heard that I actually liked. I'm not hearing any horn-type coloration, and there's lots of midrange detail."
The cabinet we designed for these was done in a "golden ratio" format. They are 27.5"H x 17"W x 12"D and weigh in at 71 pounds each. The sensitivity is about 95db and the F3 is about 47Hz.
This is obviously a niche product normally used in a dedicated home theater behind an acoustically transparent screen. But if there is some demand for it, we could certainly offer it as a standard product. In that case, we would need to work up pricing and we'd obviously need a name for them.
Comments/name ideas?
- Jim
