Would you mind elaborating a bit regarding what bothers you about the internal geometry of the other drivers you looked at, or conversely, what features you specifically look for in terms of internal geometry?
What I look at is how the internal geometry of the compression driver matches up with the horn or waveguide geometry. So what works really wall for one pairing might not work so well for another.
It also sounds as if you were specifically targeting a polymer diaphragm. Is that an acoustic or engineering derived preference?
I generally prefer polymer diaphrams because a) I think they are less likely to sound edgy and b) they don't have a spike in the response that I have to deal with. Now there are metal diaphragm compression drivers that behave very well, but none that have the combination of characteristics I'm looking for in this case.
By the way, were you targeting a specific throat diameter to match a given waveguide, or were you looking at the driver regardless of opening and then finding a waveguide to match?
Yes, 1" throat. That size will go higher than a large-format driver (1.4" to 2" throat), still go low enough for my target crossover, and the cost is far less. Also I like the available off-the-shelf options in horns and waveguides better at 1" throat than in the larger throat sizes. While it is possible to get wide pattern coverage up high with a large-format compression driver, you have to use some sort of diffractive horn, which I try to avoid. So now we're looking at a three-way if we want to do justice to the top octave. I'm not saying you can't build a killer system around a large-format compression driver, but it's considerably more expensive and complicated to do so.
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