[chrisby]

I recently purchased the HoytBedford type 1's.  A single 8 inch driver in a beautiful wood enclosure, 48 to 18,000 freq.response, & 97 db rating.  I've had many speakers in the past decades (I'm 50 yrs young) and they all had multiple drivers. The sound that radiates from a pair of qualitly single source speakers is amazing- the soundstage & depth is unmatched. Jazz & opera are life like in my living room.

yup, for a lot of us, a good wideband system matched to our rooms / listening habits does so many things so well that its inevitable deficiencies can easily be overlooked 

[TerryO]

yup, for a lot of us, a good wideband system matched to our rooms / listening habits does so many things so well that its inevitable deficiencies can easily be overlooked

Yep!
Not always perfect, but often perfectly wonderful!

Best Regards,
TerryO

[JLM]

There's no such thing as the perfect speaker.

Pick your medicine (and which laws of physics you're trying to ignore).

[Mikeinsacramento]

There's no such thing as the perfect speaker.

Pick your medicine (and which laws of physics you're trying to ignore).

Gee, Ive never heard that before.  Thank you for your contribution.

[frank111]

 I recently came across Tannoys on youtube. Are they considered a single ? They appear to have just one driver from the front- The Westminster & a few others by Tannoy. Look very expensive by the way. I have never heard them in person.

[srb]

The Tannoy Dual Concentric™ (their tradename) drivers have been produced since 1948 and are a low frequency driver with a coaxially mounted high frequency driver connected by a passive crossover.  So not a single crossover-less wide-bandwith driver, but more a single point source.
 
Here is a very nice article about the history of Tannoy and the Westminister speakers from Positive Feedback:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue49/tannoy.htm

Steve 

[chrisby]

Steve:

For those us DIYers at risk of orthopedic damage from patting ourselves on the back over our accomplishments, a thorough read of this article can be very humbling

[frank111]

Steve,  quite an article there. Never new how much goes on inside that speaker. The skill & craftsmanship is amazing. Maybe someday I'll get to listen to them. thanks for the link.

[richidoo]

I was blown away by the sound of Tannoy Definition DC8T. So natural and realistic, easy with very low coloration. With Linn's top electronics it was just awesome. But not single driver. There is a bass driver under the coax, making it a 3way with 1st order filters.

[planet10]

I was blown away by the sound of Tannoy Definition DC8T. So natural and realistic, easy with very low coloration.

I had bought a pair of those, hopefully to satisfy  craving for a Tannoy. They didn't last long. One of these days a set of old 10s will come across my lab...  fingers crossed

dave

[richidoo]

I had bought a pair of those, hopefully to satisfy  craving for a Tannoy. They didn't last long. One of these days a set of old 10s will come across my lab...  fingers crossed

Cool...  What didn't you like about the 8? The Tannoy importer told me that the 8 sounds a little cleaner than the 10, but I've never heard the 10.  Thanks Dave

[JLM]

Dave, I think I just saw a Tannoy 10 incher on Agon.

[planet10]

Cool...  What didn't you like about the 8? The Tannoy importer told me that the 8 sounds a little cleaner than the 10, but I've never heard the 10. 

Flat sounding, listless, not very good DDR.

dave

[planet10]

Dave, I think I just saw a Tannoy 10 incher on Agon.

That would only take some money....

dave

[chrisby]

Flat sounding, listless, not very good DDR.

dave

Certainly for one thing, the impression of quality of enclosure design and build was that it came from a completely different company than that associated with the Dual Concentrics.  There are certainly far worse sounding speakers around, but for my taste this particular model had nothing to distinguish them from the budget models by B&W, Paradigm, Magnepan and whatever else was on the showroom floor.

[Soundminded]

Let me quote from page 419 of Floyd Toole's "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoutics of Loudspeakers and Rooms":

"Many investigators over many years have attempted to determine whether phase shift mattered to sound quality.  In every case, it has been shown that, if it is audible, it is a subtle effect, most easily heard through headphones or in an anechoic chamber, using carefully chosen or contrived signals... When it has been audible as a difference, when it is switched in and out, it is not clear that listeners had a preference."

The ear does not hear waveforms as such; rather, it deconstructs the incoming sound into energy at different frequencies.  So waveform fidelity is not nearly as important as eyeballing what happens to a square wave would lead one to believe.

On the other hand frequency response (not only of the first-arrival sound but also of the reflections) is a very reliable predictor of perceived sound quality.

"On the other hand frequency response (not only of the first-arrival sound but also of the reflections) is a very reliable predictor of perceived sound quality."

This is the same conclusion I came to 22 years ago.That is why I re-engineered all of my loudspeaker systems. The reflected sound from all of them have much flatter response at the point where the listener sits. BTW this is why speaker's like Revel Salon Ultima had a rear firing tweeter, something Toole's successors removed in the subsequent version after he retired. The ultimate challenge...turning Bose 901 into a very high accuracy speaker. Knowing exactly what had to be done, it still took me four years to get the results I wanted. Hard to believe? I expect nobody who is familiar with these speakers would say that is possible.

[squalor]

For me it's the definition, hearing those little things buried in the mix. I listen to FE206's ; a light cone and a lot of motor. It seems like it can follow and react to the signal more accurately. Greater BL and less MM for it's SD, is that the right tech-speak ?