Modern single-driver speakers - thoughts ?

estreeter

Super Member
Guys, I'm *not* looking for a specific recommendation here - just your thoughts re the effectiveness of a design that seems to be relatively rare in terms of commercial offerings. My curiosity was piqued by a recommendation for an Omega speaker in another thread, and Google threw up this AK thread among more formal reviews:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=439153

I noticed that several of DiY speaker kits are single-driver designs, but most 'name' manufacturers seems to opt for 2 or more drivers per cabinet. I found the 'pros and cons' neatly encapsulated in one review of an Omega design:

There are many fans of full-range, crossover-less designed speakers due to their often heightened efficiency and the resulting purity and coherence of their sonic performance. These designs have at least two limitations that can get in the way of being able to use them on many different types of music. First, single driver designs often cannot reach very high pressure sound levels without distortion. Secondly, they normally cannot reproduce low level bass without using large enclosures that are loaded with a transmission line that allow the back wave of the driver to reinforce the last octaves in the bass region.


Given that I'm not a basshound and I dont have a large room, neither of the downsides sounds like a showstopper for low-level listening, but there are some interesting claims out there re the Omega's poor synergy with certain amp designs. As with anything in audio, swings and roundabouts - happy to hear about your own experiences with a single-driver design.
 
The much-copied Auratone 5" sits on the meter bridge of practically every recording studio in the world. Besides being useful for checking a mix in mono (for phase cancellation in the stereo mix, etc.), they give you an accurate view of the lower midrange and upper bass region, sans the phase shift caused by crossovers.

Be advised this speaker sounds like crap and is not used as a primary monitor as it was in the 1950s.

EDIT: And I forgot to name the modern copies of the much-copied Auratone. Behringer makes two powered models under the "Behritone" name. The more expensive of the two follows the original more closely. The other one, which I have in my home studio, is designed for modern users.
 
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I liked the original Omegas which used Fostex drivers. My friend bought a pair on A'gon but sold them as they weren't an upgrade to his Tektons. MWalt's HS Horns are better and will play effortless on 3 watts at 100 dbs without a hint distortion.

The huge advantage full range single drivers have is there's no passive crossover in the signal path. You have one channel of amplification per driver which allows the amp to see the easier load thereby increasing depth and dynamics. Passive crossovers turn sound into heat and are disruptive to the mid-range causing phase shifts. And it's the mid-range where our hearing is most sensitive and it's where FR single drivers excell. FR single drivers are the epitome of coherency and point source imaging. The first time I heard my little Tektons in nearfield it brought tears to my eyes.

Some back loaded horns can make decent bass when corner loaded but I use OB woofers for bass support. My Zu Omens were essentially FR single drivers with a cap on the super tweeter and their bass output was very good.

The reason you don't see more people jumping on the FR single driver bandwagon is they're not mainstream and there's really no where to audition them. Buying mine unheard and shipped from Utah was a giant leap of faith I took but I haven't looked back.
 
Hey Poultry, so for the speaker shown in your avatar, no x-over is employed? I notice you have three drivers total. Are they all powered directly and can they playback hard rock music convincingly?

The two limitations highlighted in the OP would make single driver speakers non-starters for me, unfortunately. The Zu Omens continue to look intriguing.
 
I just built a pair of speakers based on the CSS EL70 drivers. They sound excellent. I've always found myself enjoying full range speakers. I have an old pair of Philips fullrange speakers and a pair of JVC mini speakers with a single 3" driver. Neither pair of those speakers does everything right, yet I always found myself just listening and enjoying the music, vs. constantly analyzing what I am hearing. That is what made me decide to build a pair of fullrangers, hoping that some good modern drivers would take it up a notch. I wasn't disappointed. In fact I got much more than expected. The bass from the EL70's is incredible. These 4" drivers make the bass of a full sized floor standing speaker. And it's real bass, it doesn't sound like a small driver trying to sound bigger than it is. They lack the last bit of top end extension compared to a good tweeter, and lack the dynamics of my 12" 95dB open baffles, but everything else is so good. I guess it could be called coherent?

I designed the boxes myself with the help of WinISD and I don't know if it's pure luck, or if I actually did it right, but they work and I'm really happy with the outcome.
 
I've built a bunch of single full range driver speaker using various Fostex drivers from 3.5" to 8". There are similarities within a family of drivers (meaning from a specific manufacturer) and great differences between drivers from different manufacturers. Some are smoother than others. Some are more forward than others. And the cabinet they are used in has a great deal to do with their performance as well.

I enjoy the Fostex sound. Others find the unevenness in the highs to be intolerable.

Sometimes, a driver is picky about the amplifier. I have a pair of Fostex F120A in Metronome cabinets which sound terribly mediocre with typical direct coupled output SS amps; but they start to come alive with my old cap coupled Sansui receivers; and with the Dynakitpart.com ST-35 tube amp I built, I find them truly glorious.

As with any speaker, you can get hints from reviews and comments as to whether you should even bother listening to a single driver speaker, but the only way to know if you want to own a pair is to hear them. And as you already know: about the only way to hear a pair w/o buying is to find a friend who has bought or built a pair. :sigh:

Cheers, Jim
 
I can't really speak for the Omega speakers because I have never heard them. I have heard other full range speakers, but I haven't heard any that sound better than my Hornshoppe Horns. This weekend some friends came over to compare their favorite standmounts to the horns. They brought:

-Usher X-718
-Quad 12L Classic
-Nola Boxers (mine)
-Epos Elan 15

All of these standmounts sound great and all have their own particular strengths and weaknesses, but all in all some very respectable speakers. First thing that happened is that they listened to the horns and had no idea that I had my Sub on until I turned it off. They were all surprised. We listened and compared for over three hours. We tried them with and without sub woofing. At the end of the day it was quite unanimous that the Horns were the best sounding of the bunch. All of us wanted one of the two ways to win but it just wasn't that close. The overall consensus was that the two-ways got a little deeper in the bass notes, some more than others, but the horns sounded clearer, more cohesive, fast and excelled in voices. We played rock, jazz, classical, and even a little hip-hop. I really want to compare these Horns with some upscale fare such as Harbeth or DeVore. I honestly think they may give them a run.
 
I have a pair of Frugal horns which use Fostex FE126eN drivers. Combined with my back end, they define the listening experience for me. You can certainly get away with no sub, but what system didn't benefit from a sub?? I presently have an active 8" providing everything below 20hz, and let me tell you... it kicks. I had on Joe Satriani's Flying In A Blue Dream today... awesome.
 
Excellent feedback, guys - thanks. One explanation I saw elsewhere for the predominance of 2 and 3-way designs - and it may be totally off-beam - is that manufacturers realised that customers were more inclined to equate the quality of a new speaker with the number of drivers on offer, completely oblivious to the challenges presented to the crossover designer. Beats me, but you've given me food for thought.
 
I concur with most of what has been said, both pro and con, about full rangers in general.

The thing is, there is a huge selection of full rangers. They all have their compromises, of course, but one really can choose a driver/enclosure combo that suits them the best. Some of them are better at bass, some better at the high end, some intentionally rolled of on the high end to give a laid-back "vintage" feel, some that are really good "all-rounders",etc. All of them, however, offer coherence through lack of time-domain issues - the result is basically zero listening fatigue and typically a very "organic" sound. Imaging, sound stage, etc. are typically very good to excellent. Smaller drivers have better dispersion whereas larger drivers tend to "beam" more, but there are exceptions.

Both of my speaker systems are DIY full-range. My main system uses dual CSS EL70 per enclosure (straight series wiring, no crossover, one on the front, one on the top) and I agree with everything hypertone said. Fantastic drivers. But the same can be said for so many of them, to be honest. Fostex, Jordan, MarkAudio, Wild Burro, Feastrex, Lowther, Tang Band... All different price ranges and something to suit everyone. As development continues, there are fewer and fewer cons to using FR drivers.

Head over to the Full Range area of DIYaudio.com for basically unlimited discussion and advice. Great group of people over there.
 
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Thanks, cogitech - I will follow up that diyaudio link. As with anything in audio, there are always detractors, and you dont have to go far to find someone complaining about the 'Lowther shout', but the reviews for Zu and Omega claim that their fullrange designs dont suffer from the same malady.

(PS - no offence to the Lowther fans out there - I'm only repeating what I've read)
 
Hey Poultry, so for the speaker shown in your avatar, no x-over is employed? I notice you have three drivers total. Are they all powered directly and can they playback hard rock music convincingly?

The two limitations highlighted in the OP would make single driver speakers non-starters for me, unfortunately. The Zu Omens continue to look intriguing.

My OB's use full range mains, planar tweets and large bass woofers and since each pair of drivers has their separate amp it's like 3 single drivers combined but without a passive crossover. I use a Behringer electronic crossover.

They will play anything but the tangle of cables needed to pull this off is crazy. I had a pair of Zu Omens which were nice but not in the same league with these OB's.
 
estreeter,

I have also heard about the Lowther shout, and I can assure you that not all full range drivers suffer from it. AFAIK, very few Lowthers actually suffer from it. Most full range designers are likely acutely aware of the negativity associated with "shouty" drivers, and they engineer that out.

Take a look at the frequency response of the MarkAudio Alpair 10.2, for example. http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/10/25/3360273/Alpair 10 Grey Gen.2.pdf

Absolutely nothing shouty about these drivers. The right enclosure can pull that line flat to 35Hz with authority and the rest of the response is pure bliss. All that for around $100 each + enclosure build. Near perfect and very affordable. I just bought a pair on sale at Madisound for $80 each and they will be going into my next build (a 6 foot tall back-loaded horn).

But as I said, the choices are numerous and depending on budget and personal preference, the 10.2 might not appeal to someone else.

As to why mainstream vendors aren't building single-driver/full-range speakers. Beats me. As guessed earlier, probably a marketing issue, or maybe the fact that cabinet designs are often quite complex = costly for them to build (however there are many very simple designs, too, but the mainstream is likely not in tune with the cutting edge of FR design).
 
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A lot of people I've spoken to have reported excellent sound from single drive speakers in the $500+ a piece range. That coupled with the fact that a single driver doesn't require a crossover piques my interest. Since the impedence of a voice coil in a driver is relatively stable and tube amps like stable speakers, tube amp owners might want to check these out.
 
DIY is a great bargain with full range single driver speakers as builders can afford better and more expensive drivers than you'll find in mass produced commercial designs. Zu uses the $59 Eminence Legend in several of their simple bass reflex MDF cabs yet the completed speaker may sell for a couple of thousand.

Emerald Physics uses the same $69 Eminence Beta drivers that I use in my OB's and in a similar configuration. They get $5k for theirs whereas mine cost under $500.

Can you imagine what a company might charge using a Tang Band W8-1808 that cost $250 from Parts Express?

I'm only a novice DIY guy but if there was something out there that I really wanted but was too complicated I'd have it built by a cabinet man with a CNC machine. You could save a bundle and once you have the flat packs cut anyone can glue a pair together.
 
I'd love to see pictures of the single driver full range speakers you guys have built. I don't see many around here and it's nice to share my soapbox with others.:D
 
A lot of people I've spoken to have reported excellent sound from single drive speakers in the $500+ a piece range. That coupled with the fact that a single driver doesn't require a crossover piques my interest. Since the impedence of a voice coil in a driver is relatively stable and tube amps like stable speakers, tube amp owners might want to check these out.

The beauty of tube amps + full range drivers is sublime. I am new to this experience (just got a tube amp recently). I was running these same full range towers with SS for a long time and really enjoyed them, but moving to a tube amp (even at half the power of the SS amp) was a revelation.

No. I am not exaggerating. I am really that amazed at how the tube amp has transformed my system.

Someone in another forum explained to me that a tube amp is a current source whereas most SS amps are a voltage source. When a current source encounters higher impedance, the result is more power. When a voltage source encounters more impedance, the result is less power. If you observe the impedance curve of most full range drivers (maybe most drivers in general) you will usually find two things; a) a very significant bump or spike in impedance at or near the driver resonant frequency (Fs), which is typically in the bass region of a full range driver, and b) a significant but gentler slope of rising impedance from the upper mids to the highest highs.

In my case, my SS amp was reacting to a) and b) above with less power. So, I was taking drivers that excel at midrange and driving them with an amp that got limp-wristed on the bass and highs. The drivers are no slouch at bass and treble, but with the SS amp the odds were against them. I compensated with software-EQ and/or tone/loudness controls + a subwoofer, but there was always the feeling that the amp didn't really want to do what I was making it do.

The tube amp, on the other hand, reacts to the impedance curve in the opposite manner. When impedance rises, it fights back and moves those friggin' cones whether they like it or not. They really seem to like it, because I basically don"t need EQ anymore, and my sub has been switched off and unplugged since I turned the new amp on. The entire frequency response of my drivers absolutely stuns me now.
 
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I'd love to see pictures of the single driver full range speakers you guys have built. I don't see many around here and it's nice to share my soapbox with others.:D

I'll go one step further.

I'm going to shoot a video later and stick it on youtube. In the meantime you can check out the little bedroom system I put together with some DIY towers I designed myself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGiPnsFZAqM

$8 each driver. Watch/listen to the video on real speakers and you will not believe the bass out of those little 3" drivers!

Note: The goal of the system is light music and movies/TV, and for that it shines. Not a party system, obviously :D
 
The beauty of tube amps + full range drivers is sublime. I am new to this experience (just got a tube amp recently). I was running these same full range towers with SS for a long time and really enjoyed them, but moving to a tube amp (even at half the power of the SS amp) was a revelation.

No. I am not exaggerating. I am really that amazed at how the tube amp has transformed my system.

Someone in another forum explained to me that a tube amp is a current source whereas most SS amps are a voltage source. When a current source encounters higher impedance, the result is more power. When a voltage source encounters more impedance, the result is less power. If you observe the impedance curve of most full range drivers (maybe most drivers in general) you will usually find two things; a) a very significant bump or spike in impedance at or near the driver resonant frequency (Fs), which is typically in the bass region of a full range driver, and b) a significant but gentler slope of rising impedance from the upper mids to the highest highs.

In my case, my SS amp was reacting to a) and b) above with less power. So, I was taking drivers that excel at midrange and driving them with an amp that got limp-wristed on the bass and highs. The drivers are no slouch at bass and treble, but with the SS amp the odds were against them. I compensated with software-EQ and/or tone/loudness controls + a subwoofer, but there was always the feeling that the amp didn't really want to do what I was making it do.

The tube amp, on the other hand, reacts to the impedance curve in the opposite manner. When impedance rises, it fights back and moves those friggin' cones whether they like it or not. They really seem to like it, because I basically don"t need EQ anymore, and my sub has been switched off and unplugged since I turned the new amp on. The entire frequency response of my drivers absolutely stuns me now.

I appreciate the input as I was considering the possibility of single driver speakers, perhaps a few years down the road. Now, I know to check their performance with SS against tubes. More to explore. :yes:
 
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