# coaxials cannot sound as good as components



## Ultimateherts

Just wanted to here the debate on the old saying that components always beat coaxials in sound. Whether it be output or just overall sound...


----------



## pocket5s

I'm no expert but my take is that coax could sound better as you would in effect have a point source setup. However it is rare for manufacturers to use their best stuff in that configuration. 

Besides that I'm sure there are some acoustic issues with the tweeter being "in the way", but that is speculation on my part.


----------



## jtaudioacc

I'm a big big believer in "point source" drivers. Whether it be a coax or full range driver. EG. HAT L3SE, Morel Integra Ovation XO4.


----------



## stochastic

Tannoy makes an interesting coaxial design they call 'dual concentric' where the tweeter is housed inside the midrange motor structure. They sound wonderful and flat.










In general though the coaxial design is primarily a budget speaker with many compromises in design.

If done right a coaxial can sound better than components, but very rarely are they ever done right.


----------



## minbari

stochastic said:


> Tannoy makes an interesting coaxial design they call 'dual concentric' where the tweeter is housed inside the midrange motor structure. They sound wonderful and flat.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In general though the coaxial design is primarily a budget speaker with many compromises in design.
> 
> If done right a coaxial can sound better than components, but very rarely are they ever done right.


similar to the old KEF uniQ. those sounded amazing, but where not cheap.

my $0.02 on coax or any point source in a car is location. if you have a 6.5" coax low in the door, the tweeter needs to be aimable or have fantastic off-axis response.


----------



## chithead

Just saw this posted in another thread:

FAITAL PRO 4FE30 - 4" MID-HIGH SPEAKER

These Faital look interesting... I might have to look into them further.


----------



## GLN305

Back in the late 90's I competed with a pair of MB Quart co-axials (bridge mounted tweet) in the kicks of my Mazda B2200. I had great success with them. I would love to see a 3-way component speaker with a midrange and tweeter, both mounted co-axially in a straight line with a sound shaping plug behind the tweet and midrange. Might make for a great sounding 3-way setup.


----------



## 14642

Coaxials can certainly sound as good or better than components, but unless they're similar to the Kef or Tannoy speakers, they aren't point source drivers because the acoustic origins for tweeter and mid aren't the same. There are a couple of big problem with coaxials. te first is obstruction and reflections between the midrange cone and the back of the tweeter. The second is the fact that the moving woofer cone is the baffle for the tweeter, which can cause a warbling sound (like IMD) at frequencies that the tweeter plays where the tweetre radiates into all angles (rearward as well as frontward). That can be improved by making a bigger baffle for the tweeter (which causes more of problem #1), by reducing woofer excursion (which reduces the amount of bass the speaker makes) or by the Tannoy or Kef deals.


----------



## stochastic

chithead said:


> Just saw this posted in another thread:
> 
> FAITAL PRO 4FE30 - 4" MID-HIGH SPEAKER
> 
> These Faital look interesting... I might have to look into them further.


What do those have to do with coaxial speakers? Are you trying to infer that a single full-range driver would be a substitute for a coaxial? Those 4" aren't full-rangers (there's much better examples of full-range speakers). I'm planning on adding some Mark Audio Alpair 10's (full-range) to my a-pillars with a sub in the back (two-way system).


----------



## chithead

stochastic said:


> What do those have to do with coaxial speakers? Are you trying to infer that a single full-range driver would be a substitute for a coaxial? Those 4" aren't full-rangers (there's much better examples of full-range speakers). I'm planning on adding some Mark Audio Alpair 10's (full-range) to my a-pillars with a sub in the back (two-way system).


Yeah... I had too many windows open. Posted that in the wrong thread. Thanks for pointing it out to everyone! :laugh::laugh::laugh:


----------



## JAX

lol...well for me the coaxials have been fine. I dont have a competition system or anything. 

if the install were correct I imagine comps would be better but for me the coaxials I have had lasted longer than any of my gear...going on 3rd car now with the same ones..

I noticed no real difference in the first car with all kinds of comps vs the coaxials I put in there for ease of install. had the install been better I am sure the comps would have sounded better.

but again, my system sucks compared to most here..lol

so I guess I would agree that comps would sound better..but I dont really care.

what I have works for me and is as loud as I can stand it. the current car kind of sucks for comps anyhow due to the stupid design of a door with no air space. I have basically speakers on stilts. thanks volvo


----------



## [email protected]

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Coaxials can certainly sound as good or better than components, but unless they're similar to the Kef or Tannoy speakers, they aren't point source drivers because the acoustic origins for tweeter and mid aren't the same. There are a couple of big problem with coaxials. te first is obstruction and reflections between the midrange cone and the back of the tweeter. The second is the fact that the moving woofer cone is the baffle for the tweeter, which can cause a warbling sound (like IMD) at frequencies that the tweeter plays where the tweetre radiates into all angles (rearward as well as frontward). That can be improved by making a bigger baffle for the tweeter (which causes more of problem #1), by reducing woofer excursion (which reduces the amount of bass the speaker makes) or by the Tannoy or Kef deals.


How come JBL, or any Harmon product, does not have any point source drivers? I was always amazed that there is not that many out there. I personally would love to see a 3.5" one, since alot of OEM systems come with that size on the dash. I know I would purchase some instead of having to run a fullrange which lacks the top end of a tweeter. Something with a super small tweeter crossed pretty high.


----------



## minbari

stochastic said:


> What do those have to do with coaxial speakers? Are you trying to infer that a single full-range driver would be a substitute for a coaxial? Those 4" aren't full-rangers (there's much better examples of full-range speakers). I'm planning on adding some Mark Audio Alpair 10's (full-range) to my a-pillars with a sub in the back (two-way system).


10" in the a Pilar? 

Would love to see that

Sent from my Motorola Electrify using Tapatalk 2


----------



## subwoofery

minbari said:


> 10" in the a Pilar?
> 
> Would love to see that
> 
> Sent from my Motorola Electrify using Tapatalk 2


More like 10cm  

Kelvin


----------



## stochastic

I think we've established that the general consensus here is coaxials can sound better than components, but what about any point source speaker? If a coaxial and a full-ranger had reasonably similar output range and efficiency, T/S, etc... which design would work better?

Do you guys think all coaxials need a sub - at least for a 'good install'? Or are there examples of coaxials without a sub that cover toward that range?

What sort of install would anyone on here do that involved only a coaxial? I'm not trying to turn this into a battle of subs stats, just an honest question.


----------



## trojan fan

^^^^^^^ Are you trying to do a build with coaxials only and expecting it to sound as good as components with a sub(s)


----------



## passtim

I remember back in the early 90's I heard a toyota single cab that had managed to squeeze 2 MB Quart 8 in coax's in each door. He cound'nt role the windows down, but it sounded phenominal with great BUF and actually imaged well.


----------



## trojan fan

passtim said:


> I remember back in the early 90's I heard a toyota single cab that had managed to squeeze 2 MB Quart 8 in coax's in each door. He cound'nt role the windows down, but it sounded phenominal with great BUF and actually imaged well.


Wow!!!! I bet the doors were taking a beating:laugh:


----------



## stochastic

trojan fan said:


> ^^^^^^^ Are you trying to do a build with coaxials only and expecting it to sound as good as components with a sub(s)


Nope, not personally. I'm just asking more coaxial questions to continue the discussion. I have encountered the attitude that 'coaxials might not need a sub' from some newbs in my personal experiences - was just curious if there were cases of such. I can imagine some installs that the driver wouldn't really want a sub.


----------



## trojan fan

Sound quality is very subjective in how it's perceived , if you can live without the lower octaves, than coaxials only might work for you


----------



## passtim

trojan fan said:


> Wow!!!! I bet the doors were taking a beating:laugh:


Yep, he had them deadened with concrete, boy have we came a long way since then.


----------



## hurrication

My thoughts: A "coaxial" is simply a woofer that plays full range and a tweeter with an inline capacitor. The woofer has no low pass so it plays to the top of the spectrum and an inline capacitor on the tweeter is a crude form of high pass. 

I think if you modify the terminals on a coaxial and run it with a 2-way passive crossover to bandpass the woofer, you will get better sound. I used to do this to Aura MR _x_.2 coaxials back in the day. They use the same tweeter and woofer as the _x_.1 sets except they just had inline caps on the tweeters instead of 2-way passive crossovers. They still sounded good but needed a little more EQ. I used to run them through the MR 2-way passives and they sounded identical to the _x_.1 sets.


----------



## thehatedguy

They do of sorts in the pro side. The Vertec array combines a couple drivers into a single source. The ceiling mount Control speakers have a pretty neat waveguide for the tweeter that has slits in it for the cone behind it to vent through.

They call that last invention Radial Boundary Integrator.

But generally JBL hasn't been keen on coax drivers on the pro/HPAV side.



BeatsDownLow said:


> How come JBL, or any Harmon product, does not have any point source drivers? I was always amazed that there is not that many out there. I personally would love to see a 3.5" one, since alot of OEM systems come with that size on the dash. I know I would purchase some instead of having to run a fullrange which lacks the top end of a tweeter. Something with a super small tweeter crossed pretty high.


----------



## Patrick Bateman

Ultimateherts said:


> Just wanted to here the debate on the old saying that components always beat coaxials in sound. Whether it be output or just overall sound...


I'm a real lunatic when it comes to intelligibility. I think good intelligibility is an aspect of a speaker that can improve *everything* that you listen to.

Here's an example of what I mean by this. I have an eleven foot tall subwoofer in my listening room that does 10hz, but it really doesn't add a lot to my stereo, *because there's nearly nothing that digs down to ten hz.*

And my reference speakers, a pair of Gedlee Summas, can do 130dB without breaking a sweat. But it's a semi-useless feature, because I simply don't need to play anything that loud.

But intelligibility is great, because it improves almost everything you listen to. It makes the lyrics in songs easier to understand. I listen to a lot of talk radio, and intelligibility makes it easier to listen to the radio, particularly if you're listening in another room. And intelligibility is something that isn't dependent on the source. It doesn't matter if you're listening to SACD or if you're listening to Howard Stern on XM Radio at 32kbps, *intelligibility improves both.*

The problem is, most component speakers have crappy intelligibility, because there's a big gap between the two radiators at the crossover point. Let's say you have a 17cm woofer and a 2.5cm tweeter, separated by 15cm, with a 2khz crossover point. 2000hz is 17cm long, so this means that your woofer and tweeter are separated by a full wavelength at the crossover point. This leads to a multitude of problems if you want good intelligibility. The first problem is that you can't get the woofer and tweeter in phase, unless you use a low order xover, and even then you can only get it right at one point in space. The second problem is that the sound off-axis will have a series of peaks and nulls due to the pathlength differences.


Reading all that, you might think, _what's the big deal? It can't possibly be THAT bad._

But it really is. The easiest way to solve all these problems, and improve intelligibility, is to get the woofer and tweeter within one quarter wavelength at the xover point, or at least one half. There's a few ways to do that. The easiest is to simply use a coax. The second easiest is to drop the crossover point. For instance, instead of using a xover point of 2000hz, use a xover point of 500hz. *Obviously, that rules out a conventional tweeter.*












Here's a real world example of what I mean by this. I listen to a pair of very expensive monitors for over eight hours a day. (Gedlee Summas) They sound great, but I've long noticed that you have to sit quite far from them for them to 'blend' properly. *This is because there's 38cm gap between the woofer and the tweeter.* By moving back, the woofer and tweeter 'blend' better. A couple of weeks back I took a pair of cheap 10cm coaxials (Jamo i300) and I set them up near my computer, and used them in lieu of my expensive over-engineered monitors. *And interestingly, I found that the 10cm coaxes were more intelligible in the nearfield than my expensive monitors.*

Now I'm not saying the cheap coaxes play louder, or have lower distortion. *But at very close range, they are more intelligible than a loudspeaker that retails for more than a used car.*


Now don't go and run out and ditch your expensive speakers, because coaxes have issues, as Andy noted. BUT if you set them up very carefully, and focus on what they do well, I think you may be shocked by how much better they can sound than a component set.

Here's some things I'd recommend if you do this. First, use a phase-coherent xover. One of the primary advantages of coaxes is that they're very close together, so you might as well use a crossover that has optimum phase.

Second, put the coax in a location where there are no early reflections. I have my Jamo coaxes mounted on one of those wire shelves you see at Home Depot, with nothing close to the coaxials to cause diffraction. This is important; early reflections will mask the excellent intelligibility of the coaxial. It's a really cheap experiment obviously; you can get a pair of car audio coaxes for under $40, a wire shelf for $40, and a couple of capacitors for $10.

Third, if you can afford to invest the time, consider a low diffraction enclosure like a sphere.

Once you do that, I think you'll be astonished by how articulate and intelligible a coax can be. I am listening to the Jamo coaxes as we speak, and though they're playing in another room, I can understand every word that's being played. This is due to the excellent phase behavior and off-axis response of a coaxial.


----------



## Jroo

One of the best systems I ever had was a coax and a sub. I ran the JBL gti 504's biamped with an old round solobaric sub. That system was so simple and people always got out of my car saying how clean the system sounded. I ran a few componets in the car and always went back to the 504's. Maybe it was the pointsource, but I always liked how everything sounded like it was all in the same space. You couldnt pick out anything, it just sounded like the music was up front.


----------



## The Baron Groog

BeatsDownLow said:


> How come JBL, or any Harmon product, does not have any point source drivers? I was always amazed that there is not that many out there. I personally would love to see a 3.5" one, since alot of OEM systems come with that size on the dash. I know I would purchase some instead of having to run a fullrange which lacks the top end of a tweeter. Something with a super small tweeter crossed pretty high.


The markets they sell into:

Cheaper end buy coaxials because they're cheap and they're not too bothered with SQ.

Higher end buy component sets because of their (perceived) higher quality and as they are used to component sets being regarded as the beter SQ option it then becomes hard to convince (educate) them otherwise. 

Combined with those two reasons Harman then have to consider how many cars are suitable for using a point source driver in and how many of those owners will spend the money on something they have preconceptions of being the poorer choice. Don't forget we are very much the minority when it comes to car audio, a large company isn't likely to make an entry into the market with a product like this-a small one might if they saw enough demand, email Scott @ HAT


----------



## jpswanberg

As I said in another thread, I LOVED my Kef Uni-Q's and I would run another pair in a heart beat if a) I could find a set BNIB (good luck with that, I know) or b) someone would release a new version (even better luck with that one I know). Presently, I have a set of ID Chameleons mounted as coaxes. For my next car, I would like to hear a set of SEAS point sources, or the HAT Mirus coaxes to see how they sound. If that fails, I may just go back to a set of Dynaudio System 262's mounted quasi-coax style.
JPS


----------



## The Baron Groog

I've heard great things about the UniQs too, never even seen a set though, let alone heard


----------



## rawdawg

At the T.H.E. Show this past weekend, I was chillin' in the KEF suite listening to their Coaxes. Real big, precise sound from those small boxes. Anyways, while all the old men were oohing and ahhing over the music, I was off to the side fondling a raw Uni-Q driver. That thing, although small, is packed full of shiny metal parts. Super heavy for the size too. I asked how much for the driver itself and the salesman laughed at me and said I could buy the actual speakers for 1800 bucks and strip them out. I told him that it might be worth it to stick them in my car. He looked at me like as if I had magically turned into a talking bipedal feral pig.


----------



## The Baron Groog

rawdawg said:


> At the T.H.E. Show this past weekend, I was chillin' in the KEF suite listening to their Coaxes. Real big, precise sound from those small boxes. Anyways, while all the old men were oohing and ahhing over the music, I was off to the side fondling a raw Uni-Q driver. That thing, although small, is packed full of shiny metal parts. Super heavy for the size too. I asked how much for the driver itself and the salesman laughed at me and said I could buy the actual speakers for 1800 bucks and strip them out. I told him that it might be worth it to stick them in my car. He looked at me like as if I had magically turned into a talking bipedal feral pig.


lol, how many drivers are in the enclosure-get a group buy done?


----------



## minbari

The Baron Groog said:


> I've heard great things about the UniQs too, never even seen a set though, let alone heard


they were popular in the early 90's. just like most KEF stuff, they sounded really nice, for a "coax" (even though they dont really act like a coax) as I have said before, in a car, they suffered the same problems any coax does. tweeter is too low in the door and WAY off axis. For the money they wanted, they didnt stay popular for long.


----------



## The Baron Groog

minbari said:


> they were popular in the early 90's. just like most KEF stuff, they sounded really nice, for a "coax" (even though they dont really act like a coax) as I have said before, in a car, they suffered the same problems any coax does. tweeter is too low in the door and WAY off axis. For the money they wanted, they didnt stay popular for long.


Cliff notes-it's all in the fitting


----------



## minbari

The Baron Groog said:


> Cliff notes-it's all in the fitting


I wont argue against that, but for the people that were going to go with a custom pod or placement, they ussualy went with comps. you have think. also, they were competing against MB Quart, who had a major market share at that time.


----------



## The Baron Groog

The Baron Groog said:


> The markets they sell into:
> 
> Cheaper end buy coaxials because they're cheap and they're not too bothered with SQ.
> 
> Higher end buy component sets because of their (perceived) higher quality and as they are used to component sets being regarded as the beter SQ option it then becomes hard to convince (educate) them otherwise.
> 
> Combined with those two reasons Harman then have to consider how many cars are suitable for using a point source driver in and how many of those owners will spend the money on something they have preconceptions of being the poorer choice. Don't forget we are very much the minority when it comes to car audio, a large company isn't likely to make an entry into the market with a product like this-a small one might if they saw enough demand, email Scott @ HAT





minbari said:


> I wont argue against that, but for the people that were going to go with a custom pod or placement, they ussualy went with comps. you have think. also, they were competing against MB Quart, who had a major market share at that time.


See my earlier post


----------



## minbari

right, and I am not saying you are wrong. just that most people that were gonna drop $700 for a pair of speakers went with comps, right, wrong or indifferent. that is the reality


----------



## The Baron Groog

Agreed


----------



## jpswanberg

Rawdawg, what day were you at T.H.E. Show? I was there Sunday. I also heard the Uni-Q's. I still have a pair of the original Q10's from almost 20 years ago on my patio (yes, they are covered from the infrequent rain we have here in SoCal). I prefer the silk tweeter in the originals to the metal in the newer ones. I like your thinking of using the drivers in the car .


----------



## rawdawg

I was there Saturday and Sunday. There were a couple of coaxial implementations at the show. All of them very good. My favorite set-up was the funny retro steampunk omnidirectional lamp speakers. Huge stage from anywhere in the room. Did you see the Scaena rig with the 6 18" Bazooka tubes? That was something else.

Absolute standout of the show was the ribeye blue cheese salad in a laced up, deep fried Parmesan cheese bowl from one of the Gourmet Food trucks.


----------



## The Baron Groog

rawdawg said:


> Absolute standout of the show was the ribeye blue cheese salad in a laced up, deep fried Parmesan cheese bowl from one of the Gourmet Food trucks.


Damn


----------



## TrickyRicky

All I can say is....LOCATION LOCATION and LOCATION. Has anyone notice how speakers sound like crap when their not pointing directly at the listener??? And the position of the speakers in a car are usually located.... pointing at the passenger and drivers knees.


----------



## jpswanberg

Rawdawg, I saw the Scaena rig and my mind flashed back to 1991 and my old civic with a 10" Bazooka tube (before I had a clue about car stereo, just wanted to be loud). My favorite room was the Magnepan room. I am not into HT, but it sounded really good. I didn't do the food trucks, but went to a little Mexican place I know about across from Trianglr-Square (while reminiscing about the Virgin Megatsore that used to be there). Good show and I will definitely be there again next year. Perhaps we should have a small DIY meet in the parking lot? JPS


----------



## Gary S

Andy Wehmeyer said:


> Coaxials can certainly sound as good or better than components, but unless they're similar to the Kef or Tannoy speakers, they aren't point source drivers because the acoustic origins for tweeter and mid aren't the same. There are a couple of big problem with coaxials. te first is obstruction and reflections between the midrange cone and the back of the tweeter. The second is the fact that the moving woofer cone is the baffle for the tweeter, which can cause a warbling sound (like IMD) at frequencies that the tweeter plays where the tweetre radiates into all angles (rearward as well as frontward). That can be improved by making a bigger baffle for the tweeter (which causes more of problem #1), by reducing woofer excursion (which reduces the amount of bass the speaker makes) or by the Tannoy or Kef deals.


 - I could not have said it better myself. This pretty much ends the thread.

The only thing I will add - even if the acoustic origins for the tweet and mid are the same, the crossover could still put the drivers out of phase with each other.


----------



## rawdawg

jpswanberg, the Magnepan room was awesome. Initially, I was like what? because the panels were offset 90 degrees. Then they pushed the button and the panels moved into place like X-wings. I kept walking around the plants looking for the subwoofer(s). Until they pointed it out, I would have never guessed the locations. Amazingly thin enclosures with big @ss sounds! Real big stage on that set-up.

Actually, there were about 6-7 of us DIYMA guys on Saturdays hanging out by the Bus.


----------



## v2kai

Gary S said:


> - I could not have said it better myself. This pretty much ends the thread.



Agreed.


----------



## zumbo

Why debate?

MB Quart PCE. Component, or coaxial mount.










German Maestro Status/Epic. Component, or coaxial mount.

http://www.german-maestro.de/US/status.htm

http://www.german-maestro.de/US/epic.htm


----------



## ChaunB3400

TrickyRicky said:


> All I can say is....LOCATION LOCATION and LOCATION. Has anyone notice how speakers sound like crap when their not pointing directly at the listener??? And the position of the speakers in a car are usually located.... pointing at the passenger and drivers knees.


Exactly


----------



## BuickGN

TrickyRicky said:


> All I can say is....LOCATION LOCATION and LOCATION. Has anyone notice how speakers sound like crap when their not pointing directly at the listener??? And the position of the speakers in a car are usually located.... pointing at the passenger and drivers knees.


I've never had an issue with speakers off axis and even blocked by legs. I keep all of mine in in the frequencies where beaming will never be an issue. The 10s in my driver's door is 60 degrees off axis, no problem. I played around with aiming it toward me and honestly couldn't tell a difference but that's probably because is cut it off at 320hz.

So the moral of this thread is coaxials have the potential to be as good or better for SQ when properly implemented and designed. Most are cheap and poorly designed.


----------



## Richv72

I would never buy a coax, ever.


----------



## pimpmyboat

What about running a coax and a pair of tweets, and crossing them over active where you would normally cross? like using a coax just as midbass?


----------



## 07azhhr

zumbo said:


> Why debate?
> 
> MB Quart PCE. Component, or coaxial mount.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> German Maestro Status/Epic. Component, or coaxial mount.
> 
> GermanMAESTRO - Powered by MAESTRO Badenia
> 
> GermanMAESTRO - Powered by MAESTRO Badenia


In some cases like those GM's you get a nice sized tweeter but in more cases then not you get a lower level tweeter and mid then you would for the equiv model components. This smaller less capable tweeter and sometimes mid too is enough to prevent me from wanting to run coax. 




pimpmyboat said:


> What about running a coax and a pair of tweets, and crossing them over active where you would normally cross? like using a coax just as midbass?


WHY???????

Then you would essentially be running a component set.


----------



## BigRed

zumbo said:


> Why debate?
> 
> MB Quart PCE. Component, or coaxial mount.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> German Maestro Status/Epic. Component, or coaxial mount.
> 
> GermanMAESTRO - Powered by MAESTRO Badenia
> 
> GermanMAESTRO - Powered by MAESTRO Badenia


those things sounded terrible at CES in their demo car. Part of the problem was the left channel was on the right and the right channel on the left


----------



## stochastic

Richv72 said:


> I would never buy a coax, ever.


Why not? I love my Tannoy drivers (no, they're not in a car). I think we covered at the beginning of this thread that coaxials can sound better than components if designed right. And yes, in a car they also need to be placed correctly.


----------



## BigRed

^^^. Placement. The most overlooked aspect of getting good sound in a car


----------



## KP

It has taken every ounce of resistance NOT to buy these..........

Tannoy Autograph Mini, 5" COAXIAL DRIVERS, PAIR, NEW IN BOX | eBay

PS A Pair IN the OEM cabinet sold for $1300 yesterday.


----------



## The Baron Groog

AcuraTLSQ said:


> It has taken every ounce of resistance NOT to buy these..........
> 
> Tannoy Autograph Mini, 5" COAXIAL DRIVERS, PAIR, NEW IN BOX | eBay
> 
> PS A Pair IN the OEM cabinet sold for $1300 yesterday.


How about some of these instead:
Speaker Exchange | Tannoy 7900 0411 Dual Concentric i6AW, i6MP, SYSTEM 600, Model 1678


----------



## KP

I just sold a pair of those.


----------



## jonbuilds

Ultimateherts said:


> Just wanted to here the debate on the old saying that components always beat coaxials in sound. Whether it be output or just overall sound...


This is kind of a trick question to me. Car audio installations are well-served by coax speakers when you want to keep things hidden, but you automatically impact what you hear if you have to place a driver that handles +2.6kHz by your ankles. Separates solve that issue (but of course create others). Higher frequencies are much more "directionally challenged."

Installing a coax can also be less time-consuming, thus less costly. To some, that sounds pretty good too.

The most profoundly expensive home audio components do not rely on coax arrangements too often, but I have seen pics of Nelson Pass experimenting with a coax in an infinite baffle arrangement, and I am certainly NOT qualified to debate him or his ears!

One of the most stunning sounding and cost effective installs I ever did included separates in the front with coaxes in the rear deck of a 4-door sedan. It just worked out. Bottom line, if you like one or the other better for your installation and sound quality requirements, then that's the better one.

I run separates, front only, no rear fill. But I also think car audio line level signal should be carried through balanced connectors/cable, so what do I know?

Have fun
Jonathan


----------



## avanti1960

I had a pair of Boston Acoustic 5 X 7 coaxials circa 2004 in my Ford Explorer. I did nothing to seal or deaden the doors. Bass was outstanding, imaging was never a problem and I had zero complaints about the system except for wanting a little better midrange clarity. 
On the flip side I have had lots of problems reconciling the SQ setup in my new car using 2-way component configurations. Door sealing and deading absolutely necessary, multiple driver and speaker swap outs, head unit upgrades, and without DSP / time alignment- basically forget about it. 
So theoretically it is possbile to sound as good if not better than components- they just need to be the proper design (crossovers, tweeter swivel, tweeter dispersion) and be in a good mounted position within the vehicle.
BTW KEF just released a new set of coaxials and they look absolutely stunning- a work of space age art. They are only $115 each. See Zaph's blog for pics, links and test results. It will not be long before some DIYMA member stuffs them into his kick panels.


----------



## niceguy

I'll be running a pair of ID CTX65 coaxes in the lower front doors of my Uplander work van this week in conjunction with an old Pioneer 860mp HU. I don't have a problem with coaxes except for when you have a passenger, the mids and highs get muffled to easily though this could affect a kick panel component install as well I guess....

But for me, that's been the main reason for my past and current active component installs in my other vehicles. I still remember my first car (parents car really), a 1984 delta 88 (yuk!), I replaced the front dash 3.5" speakers with coaxials....

I'm going to run the ID 6.5 coaxes off the 860 HU power for now, then add my old Next VRZ 4.400 active amp to power them a bit later, then probably throw in some component speakers laying around like the Peerless HDS, AA Polys along with misc tweeters or some old Neo3s that are still NIB...


----------



## Sptsmed

I am running a pair of KEF 160Q's in my front doors of my BMW 750IL and they sound absolutely amazing. I have owned several sets of KEF KAR speakers over the years and as much as I love my HAT speakers, these took the place of what was going to be the HAT L4SE and HAT L1V2 tweeter.

I still have HAT speakers in another car and love them, but for my application with small space behind my doors, the KEFs absolutely are amazing. So yes point source speakers can sound as good as the best components out there, the KEFs anyway.


----------



## meantaco

What about the hybrid audio Mirus ? I haven't found a review of them.


----------



## meantaco

bump


----------



## stochastic

meantaco said:


> What about the hybrid audio Mirus ? I haven't found a review of them.


Mirus Reviews

It should be noted that these have the same drawbacks as all other coaxials that do not feature the recessed tweeter design.

Or, if you were looking for some reviews from this site: Mirus Reviews from diymobileaudio.com


----------



## Genxx

The Morel Hybrid Integra might be an option if you are trying to do point source. They are at least much closer than a traditional coax driver.


----------



## Genxx

dbl post


----------



## lucas569

jpswanberg said:


> As I said in another thread, I LOVED my Kef Uni-Q's and I would run another pair in a heart beat if a) I could find a set BNIB (good luck with that, I know) or b) someone would release a new version (even better luck with that one I know). Presently, I have a set of ID Chameleons mounted as coaxes. For my next car, I would like to hear a set of SEAS point sources, or the HAT Mirus coaxes to see how they sound. If that fails, I may just go back to a set of Dynaudio System 262's mounted quasi-coax style.
> JPS


i loved the uniq's from the early 90's. we had a customer car that swept the novice circuit then the amateur circuit the next year. His car made it into Car audio and Electronics. 

Only problem was he kept blowing them, i don't know if it was the user or the speakers themselves. i see them on ebay once in a great moon. 

aren't the morel integras point source?


----------



## dablooz

Coaxials can sound damn good if you use the kind that allow you to bypass the stock xover. I prefer to have control over the xover frequencies on any driver I use. That's the only way I would use a coax.


----------



## t3sn4f2

dablooz said:


> Coaxials can sound damn good if you use the kind that allow you to bypass the stock xover. I prefer to have control over the xover frequencies on any driver I use. That's the only way I would use a coax.


I don't think there is a coax out there that doesn't allow that. Snip, solder, done.


----------



## dablooz

True, but I meant without ruining the speaker 

I've seen some that have separate terminals for the midrange and the tweeter.


----------



## junglejuice72

One of my favourite drivers is a pair of KEF UNI-Q 160s, I also have the exact same set in splits, the splits are easier to get to sound good, get the UNI-Q's right and they are great....

JJ


----------



## Richv72

Seems like if you throw enough money into a coaxial then it can sound as good as a componet set. But honestly if you were going to spend that much on speakers wouldnt you just buy the componets instead of risking it with a coax?


----------



## stochastic

Richv72 said:


> Seems like if you throw enough money into a coaxial then it can sound as good as a componet set. But honestly if you were going to spend that much on speakers wouldnt you just buy the componets instead of risking it with a coax?


Does nobody read the start of threads? We established early on that a good coaxial (point source, not staggered) will be acoustically better than an equally designed component set.


----------



## jhmeg2

I believe coax can sound good. I found this out first hand... I placed 3rd at world finals with my 2002 Accord. I replaced the stock speakers (front doors, 6.5", (rear deck 6x9")). I was told by one judge that my car acctualy sounded better to him than his own car. He had DynAudio components, I had SONY XPLODE coax.


----------



## BuickGN

jhmeg2 said:


> I believe coax can sound good. I found this out first hand... I placed 3rd at world finals with my 2002 Accord. I replaced the stock speakers (front doors, 6.5", (rear deck 6x9")). I was told by one judge that my car acctualy sounded better to him than his own car. He had DynAudio components, I had SONY XPLODE coax.


That judge should leave car audio forever.


----------



## subwoofery

BuickGN said:


> That judge should leave car audio forever.


Got the same reaction too  

Kelvin


----------



## minbari

BuickGN said:


> That judge should leave car audio forever.


maybe he didnt have his hearing aid turned up that day, lol.


----------



## Ole Skool

I've got a set of Focal 210ca1 coaxes I've been dying to install, just haven't had the time.....


----------



## Golden Ears

QUOTE=Andy Wehmeyer;1638066]Coaxials can certainly sound as good or better than components, but unless they're similar to the Kef or Tannoy speakers, they aren't point source drivers because the acoustic origins for tweeter and mid aren't the same. There are a couple of big problem with coaxials. te first is obstruction and reflections between the midrange cone and the back of the tweeter. The second is the fact that the moving woofer cone is the baffle for the tweeter, which can cause a warbling sound (like IMD) at frequencies that the tweeter plays where the tweetre radiates into all angles (rearward as well as frontward). That can be improved by making a bigger baffle for the tweeter (which causes more of problem #1), by reducing woofer excursion (which reduces the amount of bass the speaker makes) or by the Tannoy or Kef deals.[/QUOTE]



Gary S said:


> - I could not have said it better myself. This pretty much ends the thread.
> 
> The only thing I will add - even if the acoustic origins for the tweet and mid are the same, the crossover could still put the drivers out of phase with each other.


The Doppler effect is related , I suppose, to the excursion of the midbass driver. In the Genelec design the mid and tweeter coax don't suffer from as much excursion induced doppler.

The B&G Neo 10. ( non Harman product) has been used in a home speaker.. The. B&G Z92 . I have not heard it, it features a flying bridge coax design, which I would guess would not suffer from doppler induced distortion s much for these reasons

1.It is usable only to 300hz

2.The larger surface area has less excursion for the same SPL.

3.The tweeter covers less of a critical area of the midrange transducer. I am assuming in a cone driver there is less distortion from the center of the cone than at the edges ( so I would call that the critical area). 

With traditional coaxials:
Also the angle of reflection/diffraction from the midbass cone off the tweeter would be affected in a cone coax. Perhaps in a traditional cone coax with flying dome an inverted pointed bullet from the tweeter would help to act like a phase plug/acoustic lens to reduce the directional concentrated bounce off a flying bridge dome. I just thought this up....gimme a patent lawyer!

Concerning this issue without the inverted bullet, This angle of reflection and concentration of diffraction would be better distributed by a planar than by a cone.

In a planar, I would expect this to be as significant since the entire planar is equally push pull close to the magnetic field more than a cone driver. So it does not have as concentrated a sweet spot as a cone.

Kef made a flat 6x9 driver with I think a styrofoam transducer that was used in Wilson loudspeakers. It would be interesting to test this with a flying bridge as a coax to see if the benefits are similar to the NEO 10 COAX like in the Z92. It would still suffer from doppler and that driver is not a midbass, you would have to mix that driver other the newer Genelec to make a triaxial ( scary name...didn't Jensen make those in the 1980s). That might be an interesting driver.


Back to the planar coaxial...

If the height if the bridge (which remains nearly constant as opposed to the Genelec Kef example above) corresponds somewhat closely to the crossover frequency length or sub multiple 1/4 wave or whatever, you can adjust the crossover to accommodate for this, and there may be crossover delay that can be compensated for by the height of the bridge.

I just ordered Neo 10's and I want to try their coaxial flying bridge with non coaxial install of the same driver as well as with a dome.

Andy W., Harman made a giant EMIM planar magnetic for the infinity IRS BETA.... Too bad ther isn't something I between a regular IRS OR RS1 EMIM and the BETA EMIM.

EMINENT TECHNOLOGY also made a car speaker planar, never heard those though.

The other idea is to have a Concentric planar magnetic which act as a flat coaxial.


----------



## Golden Ears

cajunner said:


> I thought the Eminent Technology speakers were electrostatics?
> 
> Shaq had them in his van...


They were a Planar magnetic based on a driver used in their home speakers. At one point I was thinking about putting them in sun visors in a small convertible . 


http://www.eminent-tech.com/Manuals/LFT10Manual.PDF


----------



## Golden Ears

Some EMIM MAGNETS. Suffer from peel and delamination of both magnets and diaphragm. The diaphragm you fix with scotch tape.


----------



## ErinH

Just wanted to drop a line in this thread as it's something I have been struggling with myself.

I looked at the Seas offerings but found that the tweeter alignment in the 'throat' of the 'waveguide' (cone) was causing on-axis issues and the best way to listen to those was on-axis*. The cheaper version with aluminum cone yielded a modal issue in the 1-2khz range. The magnesium version at about $270/each looked better as it pushed out the breakup or at least tamed it, but seems to suffer worse tweeter integration. I'm okay with EQ'ing response to some degree but you can't fix on-axis without altering off-axis response... So, out with those options. 

I have really been interested in the UniQ drivers since Zaph tested one from the Q100 speakers earlier this year. However, obtaining these isn't easy... and they're not cheap. Unfortunately there are no publicly available specs and ordering the raw drivers isn't possible without having a serial number available. I've tried. I got brushed off. So, that meant having to pony up the dough for the speakers themselves. All that just to gut the speaker for the driver. 

Regardless, I finally pulled the trigger on a set of the Q100's as well as the HT3001SE. The 100's house a ~5-6" driver: Cone area from Zaph shows it being more like a 5.25" driver but the OD and Depth look more along the lines of a 6". IOW, the cone area is closer to a 5" driver but the overall size looks like a 5" on steroids. Huge motor... So, that may be a driver used best in a 6" location. Pictures from a recent ebay auction (busted surround, sold for about $27 shipped):


















See what I mean about looking more like a true 6" driver?



The HT3001SE features a 4.5" driver according to their site. This, to me, would probably be more along the lines of the car audio crowd. This doesn't seem to feature the same surround design as the one used in the Q100. 

http://www.kef.com.hk/upload/KHT3005SE site/images/2.HTS3001SE.jpg




I plan to post data and pictures of both on my site @ www.medleysmusings.com once I get everything in. I just wanted to bump this post as a reminder to myself, in some regards. 




*this is all heresay from previous owners. I've yet to own or listen to them myself in this regard.


----------



## Sr SQ

Nice, those look killer


----------



## ErinH

got the hts3001se in today. took it apart. took some pictures. will start testing this weekend and post the data on my site when I'm done. 


...here we go...


----------



## The Baron Groog

There was no pint dismantling them-you should have replaced your side mirrors with them and drive with the windows down


----------



## ErinH

I did. It killed my MPGs.


----------



## therapture

dablooz said:


> True, but I meant without ruining the speaker
> 
> I've seen some that have separate terminals for the midrange and the tweeter.


*THREAD REVIVAL ALERT*

HAT Imagines have individual terminals and can be converted to component as most here know. Mine are mounted midway in the door, and my stage is indeed at the top of dash, with a little rainbow at the edges. They sound great. I do want to break them out and run them active...eventually.

My 2001 Suburban (wife drives) has some 6.5" Kappa co-ax in the stock door locations, with a simple polarity change on the right side, I was totally surprised at how high and centered the stage is with the balance one click to the right. It has a single Dayton 10" sub in the far back, a Jensen 4ch amplifier that runs 90wx1 (bridged) and 40wx2. ALL of the bass is up front and for a system that cost less than $300, it's phenomenal.

Count me in the "co-ax speakers can indeed sound great" category.


----------



## Hi-FiDelity

Nice thread to revive, I've always believed that you can get coaxials that will sound as good if not better than some comps.



dablooz said:


> True, but I meant without ruining the speaker
> 
> I've seen some that have separate terminals for the midrange and the tweeter.


My Nak SP-C522 are like that they have a set of terminals for the midrange and another set on the opposite side for the tweeter and the built in 12dB/octave crossover 1 cap and 1 inductor crossed at 3Khz (if I'm remembering correctly) bridges the two together. You could desolder them and use the crossover for the SP-S5200 comps or even run them active.


----------



## 14642

There was also a LEMIM, which was a much bigger planar driver.


----------



## bbfoto

^ Got pics?!


----------



## cerwinvega_fan

Some really good info in here!


----------



## mires

Thread revival as I have a soft spot for a good set of coaxials/point source. Anybody tried out anything new recently? I know Audison has a new point source but that's all I can think of right now.


----------



## Chaos

I tried a pair of MMATS "point source" coax low in the doors just to hear for myself if there was any advantage to them. Bottom line, I thought they were too far off axis to really hear any difference from a typical post or bridge mounted coax, but they certainly weren't any worse either.

Now if I can manage to fit them in the kicks somehow, I would like to hear that for sure.


----------



## mires

Chaos said:


> I tried a pair of MMATS "point source" coax low in the doors just to hear for myself if there was any advantage to them. Bottom line, I thought they were too far off axis to really hear any difference from a typical post or bridge mounted coax, but they certainly weren't any worse either.
> 
> Now if I can manage to fit them in the kicks somehow, I would like to hear that for sure.


Yeah, I was kinda curious about those but couldn't find much about them. Do you remember what you paid for them? I'm curious about the Eclipse point sources as well. I don't think I will ever replace my Morels but I'd still like to hear what's out there.


----------



## Chaos

mires said:


> Yeah, I was kinda curious about those but couldn't find much about them. Do you remember what you paid for them? I'm curious about the Eclipse point sources as well. I don't think I will ever replace my Morels but I'd still like to hear what's out there.


I think they retail for $199, but that was for 6X9s. The 6.5" are probably around $149.

MMATS has done a lot with their website in the last few months, but unfortunately it still has a long way to go.


----------



## Golden Ears

There are a few interesting coaxial drivers that I've experienced. One of them is from the CEntrance masterclass speakers.

https://centrance.com/products/masterclass/

Both the tweeter and the midrange share the same magnet so there are no strange flux conflicts. It doesn't have very high output but can be a good choice if you use a mid bass driver to relieve some of the bass duty.

GENELEC has a new coincident coaxial too.. This is a midrange tweeter only.... Not midbasss...

http://www.genelec.com/products/3-way-monitors/


I think because of Doppler effect and IM distortion it is best to limit any of these coincident drivers to tweeter midrange duty above 400hz. Certainly this design eliminates time related distortion, and also allows to eliminate an outboard tweeter if no stock tweeter location is available,

In my GFs car we are not going coaxial yet... But might.... We have BG Radius Neo 10 planar mids... We like the Z92 loudspeaker from BG Radius...which features a coaxial driver

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/198578-bg-z-92-a.html


----------



## cajunner

mires said:


> Thread revival as I have a soft spot for a good set of coaxials/point source. Anybody tried out anything new recently? I know Audison has a new point source but that's all I can think of right now.


that's what we need, a point source shoot-out!

bikinpunk's got the KEF LS 50's, Q100's, R300's, etc.

there's someone running the newest Morel Integra's, forget who...

then you could tie in the Tannoy dual concentrics with the little horns, and go old school with:

Memphis Aria's, Orion has some XTR point source, Kef's KAR models with uni-Q, Eclipse's, maybe a few oddballs like Critical Mass, or Illusion Lucent/Carbon etc. and the Scans, for upscale represents...

would be great if we could identify acoustic centers and see if the passive crossovers adjust for it, and how much off they are using impulse tests.

then there's the edge termination, Kef's got that going on, along with a good transition at the tweeter to mid cone.

I'd throw in a couple of the expensive dual cones, just to see if that kind of speaker can compete still, old school JBL and Pioneers.


----------



## t3sn4f2

cajunner said:


> that's what we need, a point source shoot-out!
> 
> bikinpunk's got the KEF LS 50's, Q100's, R300's, etc.
> 
> there's someone running the newest Morel Integra's, forget who...
> 
> then you could tie in the Tannoy dual concentrics with the little horns, and go old school with:
> 
> Memphis Aria's, Orion has some XTR point source, Kef's KAR models with uni-Q, Eclipse's, maybe a few oddballs like Critical Mass, or Illusion Lucent/Carbon etc. and the Scans, for upscale represents...
> 
> would be great if we could identify acoustic centers and see if the passive crossovers adjust for it, and how much off they are using impulse tests.
> 
> then there's the edge termination, Kef's got that going on, along with a good transition at the tweeter to mid cone.
> 
> I'd throw in a couple of the expensive dual cones, just to see if that kind of speaker can compete still, old school JBL and Pioneers.


I bought me a set of Q100(s) recently. Not only for my own in home pleasure, but for those precious serial numbers to use later in a center channel car build.


----------



## cajunner

t3sn4f2 said:


> I bought me a set of Q100(s) recently. Not only for my own in home pleasure, but for those precious serial numbers to use later in a center channel car build.


I've been watching the ebay feeds, on Kef product.

Saw a set of Q100's go for cheap not long ago, I wonder if they register the serial numbers with the original owner through the dealers, or not?

I imagine a process exists where they don't just acknowledge the serial number as valid by it's being in the database, but they cross check with who registered the speakers as the original purchaser.

maybe you could zoom in on a set of used ones on the ebay and just try buying a replacement driver that way?

Although, I don't see any reason not to have a set of the home speakers, they seem plenty good in that application as well..

except for that initial authorized dealer pricing, whew...!


----------



## gstokes

The debate between coaxials and component is entirely subjective on the type of installation, individual acoustics will favor one design over another but for the most part components rule the world..


----------



## Patrick Bateman

gstokes said:


> The debate between coaxials and component is entirely subjective on the type of installation, individual acoustics will favor one design over another but for the most part components rule the world..


I'd actually argue the opposite. Some of the smartest guys in the business have been pushing coaxes for years now.

Andy Jones is one of them. He worked at Kef, then went over to TAD. He did TAD's coaxes, while carefully sidestepping the Kef patents. He also designed some Pioneer speakers.

It's possible that part of the reason that coaxes aren't seen a lot is because of patents and cost. For instance, the new 'Anya' prosound arrays seem to borrow some ideas from the Danley Synergy horns, but the Anya speakers tip toed around the patents. And the designer of the TAD coaxes speaks openly about avoiding the patent lawyers.

On top of all that, the designs are expensive. Neodymium ain't cheap anymore.




To put it another way, imagine you're a loudspeaker designer. If you want to use a coax in your design, you basically have about six options. (B&C, BMS, Seas.) Outside of those five or six drivers, you'll have to use a driver from a competitor like Kef or TAD, or you'll have to license the Synergy horn patent, like Yorkville and VTC did.


----------



## Patrick Bateman

^^ I thought this was a neat 'statement' from the folks at DSL.
They used two coaxial cabinets to provide the sound for an entire nightclub, with a capacity of about a thousand people. Admittedly, there's ninety four drivers arranged coaxially, but it's still a coax.


----------



## passtim

Come on man, Components rule the world I had an running argument with a member on a truck forum I frequent who kept referring to mounting his tweeter close to his midbass low in the door as a "Point Source Driver" and then went on to tell me that this type of installation was what most winning systems used and that mounting your tweeters/mids on the a-pillars/dash ruined your imaging because they were not close to the low mounted mid in the door. Some people never learn.


----------



## gstokes

Rephrase, i have coaxials high up in the door panel of my E150 and they sound sub par because of two reasons, the tweeter is blocking the midbass and the tweeter is firing across my lap, if those same coaxials were mounted in the dash facing me they would sound better because of alignment but that's where components shine by using individual drivers that allow the end user to reposition the tweeters and/or midbass to better suit the acoustic environment, coaxials may have improved over the years but they still can't beat the versatility of a component set, cheers..


----------



## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL

The main problem is you are talking about a traditional coaxial. Look into a point source, where the tweeter is inside the voice coil of the woofer and doesn't block any of the woofer. You also will never have as much coherence separating the tweeter from the mid as you will with a concentric driver. Time alignment can only do so much.


----------



## gstokes

TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL said:


> The main problem is you are talking about a traditional coaxial. Look into a point source, where the tweeter is inside the voice coil of the woofer and doesn't block any of the woofer. You also will never have as much coherence separating the tweeter from the mid as you will with a concentric driver. Time alignment can only do so much.


i will look into them, never heard of point-source until now, interesting concept..


----------



## Infinity

Loved the old *" Arias I had in my kicks. Awesome sound


----------



## Patrick Bateman

passtim said:


> <snip>mounting your tweeters/mids on the a-pillars/dash ruined your imaging because they were not close to the low mounted mid in the door. Some people never learn.


I agree that having two drivers seperated more than about a third of a wavelength is a recipe for crummy imaging. For instance, if you're crossing your tweeter at 2khz, six centimeters is about as far as you can go.

Here are a few winning cars that adhere to this standard:









^^ Gary Biggs. Awarded 'best sounding car in the world' in 2003 by IASCA









^^ Jon Whitledge. Only car stereo ever featured in 'The Absolute Sound' magazine. The CTC spacing of Jon's tweeters is about 12cm, so it's not *quite* a point source, but it's within one half a wavelength. Jon is using DSP time alignment. IIRC, Biggs wasn't.









The "midranges" in the winning Buwalda G35 also function as a tweeter. The whole reason he can get a winning soundstage with such large center-to-center spacing is that the large size of this front stage driver allows for a lower crossover point than is possible with a conventional 1" tweeter.



I could go on for a while here... If you want excellent articulation and an accurate soundstage, you simply must get your midrange and your tweeter within about one third of a wavelength. There's two ways to do this; either tightly space the two drivers, or use a tweeter that allows for a very low xover. And when I say "low" I don't mean 1500hz, I'm talking 350-700hz or so.


----------



## Patrick Bateman

TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL said:


> The main problem is you are talking about a traditional coaxial. Look into a point source, where the tweeter is inside the voice coil of the woofer and doesn't block any of the woofer. You also will never have as much coherence separating the tweeter from the mid as you will with a concentric driver. Time alignment can only do so much.


Actually the wavelengths emitted by the woofer are so large, it mostly doesn't 'see' the tweeter in a setup like this:










But there's still a bunch of problems with this type of setup:

1) The sound from the tweeter 'wraps around' and is reflected by the woofer. This creates comb filtering in the tweeters response.
2) It's hard to get the woofer and the tweeter in phase. The voice coil of a woofer is an inductor, and that inductance creates a small delay. So mounting the tweeter an inch in front of the woofer increases the delay between the two drivers. (This is one of the reasons the Unity and Synergy horns work without a DSP delay; the woofers may be in front of the tweeter, but the woofers enclosure and it's inductance introduces a fraction of a millisecond of delay, which is enough to make it 'sync up' with the tweeter.)

Back in the 90s there was a hifi speaker that mounted the tweeter coaxially with rubber bands. That would probably work pretty good. It allows us to make our own coaxes, instead of relying on the five or ten coaxes that are actually good drivers. For instance, you could coaxially mount a SB Acoustics tweeter with a Dayton woofer, or a ScanSpeak tweeter with a Seas woofer. Rubber bands allow for combinations that manufacturers don't sell.


----------



## TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL

^ for the most part I agree, except that most coaxial like the one above let the woofer roll off naturally, in which case the cone will eventually see the tweeter, and second, thats a pretty non-obstructive tweeter housing compared to many other cheap coax speakers. 

Everything else completely agreed on. If you head down to the riverside gtg, there will be a few cars running the point source drivers from illusion. Definitely worth a listen.


----------



## ErinH

Patrick Bateman said:


> But there's still a bunch of problems with this type of setup:
> 
> 1) The sound from the tweeter 'wraps around' and is reflected by the woofer. This creates comb filtering in the tweeters response.
> 2) It's hard to get the woofer and the tweeter in phase. The voice coil of a woofer is an inductor, and that inductance creates a small delay. So mounting the tweeter an inch in front of the woofer increases the delay between the two drivers. (This is one of the reasons the Unity and Synergy horns work without a DSP delay; the woofers may be in front of the tweeter, but the woofers enclosure and it's inductance introduces a fraction of a millisecond of delay, which is enough to make it 'sync up' with the tweeter.)


Patrick, right on...

I will add some other things I've experienced that lead to most of the freely available coaxial/concentrics just not being on par with Kef and the Andrew Jones' designs. 


Midrange as a waveguide:
With a concentric (not necessarily a coaxial), the tweeter is horn loaded and the midrange cone is the waveguide. Dispersion patters at the crossover are not trivial and I can say that Kef has done an excellent job of shaping the cones on their drivers to help direct the tweeter's radiation well. And it's not just the shape of the cone that matters; it's also the surround. Kef has a few different designs where there are tradeoffs and there aren't. The tradeoff drivers are the ones expected to play lower (ie; the z-flex surround based drivers found in the Q-series and LS50). The ones that don't have that tradeoff are used as dedicated mids in their speakers, such as the R-series concentric (excluding the R100 which is a bookshelf and also uses the z-flex surround). The R-series 3-way designs use a mid with a much shallower surround profile and one that also progresses with the shape of the cone. 

Midrange cone breakup:
Like any standard drive unit, cone breakup is a fact. Kef's R-series, blade, and ls50 drive units have ribbed cones to help mitigate this. Pioneer's in-wall concentric driver actually has little pieces of felt glued on the back to serve the same purpose. Picture here. With the experience I have testing all sorts of drivers, I'd venture to say that a lot of the other coaxial type designs aren't this well engineered. Especially the lower line stuff that runs $99 at Best Buy. 

I can't speak for all, obviously, but these are key design factors that seem to really what separate the men from the boys, so to speak.




Patrick Bateman said:


> For instance, you could coaxially mount a SB Acoustics tweeter with a Dayton woofer, or a ScanSpeak tweeter with a Seas woofer. Rubber bands allow for combinations that manufacturers don't sell.


I did something similar about 2.5 years ago (just showing the progression over the past couple years). This is a picture... and unfortunately the best one I have; never got a final installed version (complete with Roxul and grill cloth ).











It wasn't as clean as a coaxial but man it worked so well. At the time, I didn't really try to _make _it coaxial per se... I just wanted to limit the CTC lobing, which is indeed a property of coaxial/concentric designs. I rolled with this setup for a while and then moved the tweeters out wide to get a wider stage (which helped in some regards but I'm smarter now and realize the error of my ways). 

A few months later is when I got interested in Kef designs and went that route. Now I have this and have had zero desire to go back. 












Link to my build log just in case you want to see more information:
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...edan-v-my-full-disclosure-build-tune-log.html


----------



## Patrick Bateman

^^ Wow I bet that sounds incredible.
I heard a Kef speaker with a similar driver (Kef LS50) at CES in 2013 and it was probably the 2nd or 3rd best speaker I heard at the show.
Most impressive was the 'bang for the buck'; all the speakers that bested it cost at least twenty times as much. IMHO the LS50 and the $50,000 Kef Blade sound virtually the same above 300hz. A LS50 and three or four good subs would be a giant-killer. (The LS50 costs only $1300.)


----------



## Patrick Bateman

TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL said:


> ^ for the most part I agree, except that most coaxial like the one above let the woofer roll off naturally, in which case the cone will eventually see the tweeter, and second, thats a pretty non-obstructive tweeter housing compared to many other cheap coax speakers.
> 
> Everything else completely agreed on. If you head down to the riverside gtg, there will be a few cars running the point source drivers from illusion. Definitely worth a listen.


Yep, I'll be at the Riverside show with my Synergy horns.


----------



## BigRed

Patrick Bateman said:


> I agree that having two drivers seperated more than about a third of a wavelength is a recipe for crummy imaging. For instance, if you're crossing your tweeter at 2khz, six centimeters is about as far as you can go.
> 
> 
> 
> Here are a few winning cars that adhere to this standard:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^^ Gary Biggs. Awarded 'best sounding car in the world' in 2003 by IASCA
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ^^ Jon Whitledge. Only car stereo ever featured in 'The Absolute Sound' magazine. The CTC spacing of Jon's tweeters is about 12cm, so it's not *quite* a point source, but it's within one half a wavelength. Jon is using DSP time alignment. IIRC, Biggs wasn't.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The "midranges" in the winning Buwalda G35 also function as a tweeter. The whole reason he can get a winning soundstage with such large center-to-center spacing is that the large size of this front stage driver allows for a lower crossover point than is possible with a conventional 1" tweeter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I could go on for a while here... If you want excellent articulation and an accurate soundstage, you simply must get your midrange and your tweeter within about one third of a wavelength. There's two ways to do this; either tightly space the two drivers, or use a tweeter that allows for a very low xover. And when I say "low" I don't mean 1500hz, I'm talking 350-700hz or so.



No offense to Jon, but that van has not won anything in the context of competition. So when u say winning I assume u mean in the relationship to the tweeter being close to the mid. In that case there are lots of winners


----------



## ErinH

Patrick Bateman said:


> ^^ Wow I bet that sounds incredible.
> I heard a Kef speaker with a similar driver (Kef LS50) at CES in 2013 and it was probably the 2nd or 3rd best speaker I heard at the show.
> Most impressive was the 'bang for the buck'; all the speakers that bested it cost at least twenty times as much. IMHO the LS50 and the $50,000 Kef Blade sound virtually the same above 300hz. A LS50 and three or four good subs would be a giant-killer. (The LS50 costs only $1300.)


I actually have tested the LS50, R500, and Q100 drivers and the data is on my site if you are curious about the comparisons. I was going to use the LS50 for my towers but the R is much better suited for that task of 3-way than the LS50 for the reasons I mentioned in my above post. 

The LS50 is an incredible value, though. I can't tell you how many times I've considered just buying those speakers and using them with the subs crossed high (100hz or so). But, really, the aesthetic of a bookshelf on a stand in a dedicated HT bothers me. Silly reason not to buy them, I know.


----------



## quietfly

bikinpunk said:


> I actually have tested the LS50, R500, and Q100 drivers and the data is on my site if you are curious about the comparisons. I was going to use the LS50 for my towers but the R is much better suited for that task of 3-way than the LS50 for the reasons I mentioned in my above post.
> 
> The LS50 is an incredible value, though. I can't tell you how many times I've considered just buying that and using it with the subs crossed high. But, really, the aesthetic of a bookshelf on a stand in a dedicated HT bothers me. Silly reason not to buy them, I know.



So do like Bose did for those "famous" tests. they built acoustically transparent large boxes and placed them around their tiny speakers then pulled them away to surprise every one.....

I've heard the LS50's at a local high end home theater place. they were Amazing!!! I wish i could get my hands on a set of drivers.....


----------



## ErinH

quietfly said:


> So do like Bose did for those "famous" tests. they built acoustically transparent large boxes and placed them around their tiny speakers then pulled them away to surprise every one.....
> 
> I've heard the LS50's at a local high end home theater place. they were Amazing!!! I wish i could get my hands on a set of drivers.....


Oddly enough, I considered making a pseudo enclosure covering those and my subs. So, you'd just see a black rectangle and nothing else. I'm already indebted to my active based setup, though, after all this work. If I ever needed to scale back for some reason, though, it wouldn't be out of the question to still do that.


----------



## quietfly

So pseudo on topic, how did the Pioneer in wall concentric drivers compare Q100's, R500's and LS50's ?


----------



## t3sn4f2

bikinpunk said:


> Oddly enough, I considered making a pseudo enclosure covering those and my subs. So, you'd just see a black rectangle and nothing else. I'm already indebted to my active based setup, though, after all this work. If I ever needed to scale back for some reason, though, it wouldn't be out of the question to still do that.


I'm kinda wanting to do something similar with the Q100s I bought recently. I'm not much for bookshelves on stands either. Not as much because of the looks but more so because the room they're in is only 11'x11' and I fear someone could accidentally bump one and topple it. So I'm planing on building a tower that houses a top enclosure for the Q100 driver and one in the bottom/depth area for a side mounted 10" sub. Something to this effect.










It'll also serve the purpose of being an upgrade to the Q100's relatively resonant enclosure. Going to be difficult though since the enclosure width can't be more than 7" and not many HQ subs are going to fit. It might go with a Peerless XXLS and have the magnet embedded into the side MDF panel. Then a shaped protruding grill on the other side for surround clearance.

I'm limited to the OE passives in the Q100s along with bass management and Audyssey MultiEQ XT from my Denon 3312CI. So I'll probably seal the Q100s and run them high enough where the 4th order slopes HP/LP slope meet up nicely, and keep cone motion down for better highs.


----------



## thehatedguy

Hopefully my Tannoys will be here soon...Erin may have seen them this weekend.

For a coax to really work well in addition to the things Erin as mentioned...you really would want the tweeter to be behind the woofer to sum phase correctly. It is easier to get them aligned with a passive XO that way.

The tweeter to cone transition is very important...since Erin and everyone is talking about KEF and TAD (and they are great), Tannoy does a pretty good job in the coax department too.


----------



## moparman1

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I think one of the big advantages component sets have over coax is a properly designed crossover. Higher order slopes aswell as hp and lpf. Some will also have some phase tweaking. Your typical coax has nothing more than a hpf on the tweeter, often just a simple capacitor. With a bi ampable coax I think you could best the sound of a typical component set (mid low in the door and tweeter in the pillar). This is just me thinking out loud. Not based on any experience.


----------



## thehatedguy

Yeah that is certainly one area where off the shelf coaxes fail for the most part.


----------



## Patrick Bateman

moparman1 said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong here but I think one of the big advantages component sets have over coax is a properly designed crossover. Higher order slopes aswell as hp and lpf. Some will also have some phase tweaking. Your typical coax has nothing more than a hpf on the tweeter, often just a simple capacitor. With a bi ampable coax I think you could best the sound of a typical component set (mid low in the door and tweeter in the pillar). This is just me thinking out loud. Not based on any experience.


When your tweeter is two feet from your woofer, getting the two to blend at the crossover point is basically a roll of the dice. When your tweeter is an inch from your woofer, it's much easier. So the use of high order slopes is necessitated by the distance, not by some inherent superiority of high order slopes.

Dynaudio, Thiel and Dunlavy use those 'improperly' designed crossovers with first order slopes. Thiel uses coaxes, the other two just put the mid and the tweeter within one wavelength at the xover point.


----------



## moparman1

Patrick Bateman said:


> When your tweeter is two feet from your woofer, getting the two to blend at the crossover point is basically a roll of the dice. When your tweeter is an inch from your woofer, it's much easier. So the use of high order slopes is necessitated by the distance, not by some inherent superiority of high order slopes.
> 
> Dynaudio, Thiel and Dunlavy use those 'improperly' designed crossovers with first order slopes. Thiel uses coaxes, the other two just put the mid and the tweeter within one wavelength at the xover point.


Sorry. I should have been more clear. It isn't so much the slope as it is the woofer not being low passed, letting it roll off naturally and play well into beaming and breakup. Again, another advantage is the use of more sophisticated crossovers to tweak and smooth response.


----------



## cajunner

one thing a coax has as an advantage is the distance from the tweeter to woofer, is fixed and a known quantity.

getting a coax to behave may not take much more than a first order, or capacitor crossover.

this is also true of plate speakers, since the spacing is usually quite close but if you look at most plate speaker crossovers they are more complex (usually) and more resemble the workings of a nice home audio speaker.

The additional costs and real estate of a complex component crossover also make the coax more appealing in profit margins and lower entry points to the consumer.

I feel as if just adding a coil for a midrange low-pass, can make some coaxes very near component quality sound-wise, and it's not that hard to implement if you are handy with a soldering iron, you can make most coaxial speakers into bi-amp versions if you really want to do it. 

So for people stuck with coax locations, or unwilling to drill mounting holes and wiring passages into their luxe door panels, this small adjustment in a coax could go a long way in taking out that common "coax harsh" that comes from a hard-coned midrange without any filter on the break-up region, and replacing it with a cleaner sounding speaker response.

Of course, suggesting people cut tinsel wires, add a terminal plate for the tweeter, etc. may seem too intrusive a task.

but it wouldn't have to be, and a lot of people who are settling for coax mounts, for the price of a cardboard terminal plate, and the time to drill a hole, cut and solder, and the coil's couple dollars, could do more for their system than a whole bunch of other things that won't have such a direct effect on the sound.


----------



## cajunner

someone could even offer this service for a fee, such is the value I feel towards keeping a stock interior, stock looking...


and saying this, I'm fully aware that there are convertibles and coaxes with proper crossovers available in the market.

My braxial Aura's have a component quality crossover for their "coax" design, with highly satisfactory results.

I would go so far as to say (again) that the braxial mounting scheme is under-utilized in the car environment, since you can adjust time-alignment and polar 'matching' of the dispersion pattern, by simply rotating the speaker in it's mounting location until the angled tweeter is in the ideal location.


----------



## thehatedguy

It's a fixed physical distance...but the acoustical offset could be an entirely different distance.

My reason to go coax was to get the biggest speakers I could physically fit in the front. Which I didn't exactly do...I could do 10" coaxes in front and was going to do that with some Eminence Beta 10CXs and a Celestion compression driver. But this deal on the Tannoys came a long that I couldn't pass up...and if that feel through I had some B&C 8CX21s lined up.


----------



## FG79

The limitations with coaxes is it limits your ability to use large woofers, horns, big cabinets, etc. So the large sound will never come out of a coax setup in a home setup. 

My particular speaker at home happens to be a small studio monitor...8" woofer with horn loaded tweeter, small passive radiator cabinet...probably 1.5 cubic feet. It sounds really nice and images really, really well. 

However, so what if it can image 10-15% better than a nice 18" woofer with horns? Not worth the trade off in the grand scheme of things. 

In car audio I think it's a big deal given the general imaging challenges of the environment.

Bottom line is that a well designed coax will sound great. There is no debate on that.


----------



## Bluenote

bikinpunk said:


> Patrick, right on...
> 
> I will add some other things I've experienced that lead to most of the freely available coaxial/concentrics just not being on par with Kef and the Andrew Jones' designs.
> 
> 
> Midrange as a waveguide:
> With a concentric (not necessarily a coaxial), the tweeter is horn loaded and the midrange cone is the waveguide. Dispersion patters at the crossover are not trivial and I can say that Kef has done an excellent job of shaping the cones on their drivers to help direct the tweeter's radiation well. And it's not just the shape of the cone that matters; it's also the surround. Kef has a few different designs where there are tradeoffs and there aren't. The tradeoff drivers are the ones expected to play lower (ie; the z-flex surround based drivers found in the Q-series and LS50). The ones that don't have that tradeoff are used as dedicated mids in their speakers, such as the R-series concentric (excluding the R100 which is a bookshelf and also uses the z-flex surround). The R-series 3-way designs use a mid with a much shallower surround profile and one that also progresses with the shape of the cone.
> 
> Midrange cone breakup:
> Like any standard drive unit, cone breakup is a fact. Kef's R-series, blade, and ls50 drive units have ribbed cones to help mitigate this. Pioneer's in-wall concentric driver actually has little pieces of felt glued on the back to serve the same purpose. Picture here. With the experience I have testing all sorts of drivers, I'd venture to say that a lot of the other coaxial type designs aren't this well engineered. Especially the lower line stuff that runs $99 at Best Buy.
> 
> I can't speak for all, obviously, but these are key design factors that seem to really what separate the men from the boys, so to speak.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I did something similar about 2.5 years ago (just showing the progression over the past couple years). This is a picture... and unfortunately the best one I have; never got a final installed version (complete with Roxul and grill cloth ).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It wasn't as clean as a coaxial but man it worked so well. At the time, I didn't really try to _make _it coaxial per se... I just wanted to limit the CTC lobing, which is indeed a property of coaxial/concentric designs. I rolled with this setup for a while and then moved the tweeters out wide to get a wider stage (which helped in some regards but I'm smarter now and realize the error of my ways).
> 
> A few months later is when I got interested in Kef designs and went that route. Now I have this and have had zero desire to go back.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Link to my build log just in case you want to see more information:
> http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...edan-v-my-full-disclosure-build-tune-log.html


Beautiful pillars AND Drivers! What is the mounting depth on this Kef R300?


----------

