# Scan/Dayton/Peerless 3" Subjective Comparison



## 6262ms3 (Feb 27, 2008)

Wall of text warning, I like to be detailed. I haven't posted much in a long time but I've still been lurking around here. I don't see much activity in the reviews section and felt like sharing my opinions on 3 mids that I've used over the past few years, in a couple of different configs. I'm not a golden ear but I do have a lot of listening experience in cars, recording and broadcast studios. So take my opinions with a grain of salt. 

They may be listed as different sizes but they all have pretty much the same cutout. My car and other gear is in the sig. I think my car has a natural spike in the upper midrange, every single setup I've tried has had an exaggerated 1.6-3.2 khz range (even back when I ran 2-way with 6.5 mids in the doors). This, plus my preference to have a "BBC dip" in this range affected my results. I don't notice this spike on my JBL LSR305 monitors in the home studio, so I don't think it's my ears. I listen to a variety of folk, rock, psych, hip-hop, electronic, punk, classic rock and a little bit of experimental, world, jazz, classical. File types are mainly 256AAC, with some ALAC and older 192mp3

I experimented with sealed ABS pods on-axis at the top of the kickpanels (just below the dash), ~350hz/24db to 7khz/12db, but they stuck out too much. A couple of years later, I slimmed the pods down, mounted them off-axis on the side of the kickpanels and vented them behind the kickpanel, running ~350hz/24db to 3.6 or 4khz/18db. I used wool behind the drivers. I much prefer the latter setup: Way less obtrusive, my stage widened beyond the vehicle, height is still at dash level and 3.6khz-up sounds way better coming from the tweets. Only EQ is the 9 band parametric on the Alpine HU, a limitation that certainly affected my results. TC is from the HU. High-pass is from the JL Amp xover, low pass was originally passive, for the off-axis setup I moved to an Audiocontrol 2XS.

Aplogies, but with this being a subjective review I will have to use a lot of the audio tropes like warm, detailed, etc.

Scan Speak Discovery 10F/8424G (8ohm midrange version)
Pros: Very low distortion performance, good sensitivity, great detail.
Cons: Weak lower midrange, exaggerated upper-midrange, relatively expensive.
Verdict: Amazing potential, but tempermental. I think they need a ton of EQ to work well in-car. Out of the box they're shouty and lack warmth. Between 500-4k is their best range. Some may prefer the hyped upper mids but that's not for me.

I read so many glowing reports of these drivers, so I bought them first. Their price is still low compared to brand-name car audio, but they're a bit expensive compared to other raw drivers in this class. Indeed, they have very low distortion resulting in clean performance. They also have decent efficiency, on initial impression they have a very lively, detailed sound. However, in the response graph there is a rising response that I found to be exaggerated in my car. After the initial honeymoon, I realized the upper mids were shouty and became painful at loud volumes, especially with horns, rock guitars and loud vocals. I also found the midrange to be lacking below 500hz, even though they were in sealed pods. My 9 band parametric eq didn't allow enough bands to be stacked close enough to each other to tame all of the upper mids, it would always allow some spikes through. Due to 200-300hz problems with the doors and crossover limitations, I didn't have good results trying to run the midbasses high enough to cover for the weak low mids from these. The rising response also made using a high x-over to the tweets difficult. Unsatisfied, I moved on to other drivers. When I moved the pods to off-axis with a 4k low-pass, I gave the Scans another shot but I still couldn't get them to do what I wanted, though taking the treble out of them made a noticeable improvement. Obviously install/tuning is everything and my setup is limited, with a DSP and a better install you might be able to get these to sing and take advantage of their low distortion. Getting a new car soon, it will have a DSP, maybe I'll give them another chance then.

Dayton Audio RS100P-4 (4 Ohm, paper cone version)
Pros: Good value, neutral sonic character, able to play surprisingly low.
Cons: So-so distortion, neutral sonic character, slightly lacking detail, possible thermal compression issues.
Verdict: A good all-around midrange, but not a stand out performer.

After the tempermental Scans, I moved on to the Daytons. I chose the paper version for the flat frequency response, thinking I wanted a more neutral-sounding driver. This mid is just that, I still had to reduce the upper mids in my car but it was manageable and they have a very neutral character across a wide range. I could actually run them down to the 200's without them complaining but it did increase distortion a bit and there was no benefit to doing that in my setup so I stuck with the 300-350 range. They did well up to 7khz in the first setup (on-axis), but moving down to 4khz in the second (off-axis) was a noticeable improvement. My dome tweets just do a better job playing that range and it didn't cause much localization, which was my original reason for trying on-axis wide-band mids playing up high. They did have noticeably worse distortion performance than the Scans, resulting in a slightly grainy character. They still have detail, but it's just a bit too muted for my tastes. Being 4 ohms, they were getting 100 watts from my amp but it seemed like their sensitivity was poor, I had to run a lot more gain and I think they would suffer from some thermal compression on highway drives when I was cranking it. Overall, these are very useable mids that sound good out of the box on any genre, but there's also nothing special about them. If you're trying out a 3-way stage for the first time, these are very forgiving and not too expensive to replace if you kill one.

Peerless TC9FD18-08 (8ohm, paper cone version)
Pros: Stupidly cheap, low distortion, warm and smooth without losing too much detail, work very well across every genre.
Cons: Sensitivity could be better, might not have enough detail for some.
Verdict: A very good driver at any price, personally they do exactly what I want a car midrange to do.

I was always curious about these, but I stupidly let the low price affect my thinking. It wasn't until I tried the smaller TC7 version in my work truck that I became convinced I should give them a go. I had already switched to the off-axis pod setup when I bought them, but they work very well in that setup. I made a new module for the 2XS that dropped the x-over to 3.6k (from 4k) and it was a noticeable improvement. Out of the box, these just gave me exactly what I want. I've never heard Dynaudio mids but this is what I imagine they sound like. There's a warmth and richness in the lower mids that's lacking in the Scans and Daytons, it just gives them that special something. Heavy guitars (like Tool) are taken in stride and sound amazing. They have a smooth, yet still detailed character across the entire midrange. In my car I still had to cut the upper mids (1.6k, 2k and 3.2k), but that works well for me with no weird spikes. They have much lower distortion than the Daytons, not quite as good as the Scans but closer than you'd expect. They're rated with low sensitivity, but in reality they seem better than the Daytons. They get 50 watts and it's enough, they don't strain unless I get really crazy with the volume (which doesn't happen often, I must be getting old?). I'm sticking with these, probably even in my next car. I'd love to hear what they can do with a proper DSP. I could see how some would consider them too polite or lacking in detail, but for me it makes them very adept at sounding good on everything. They're forgiving of bad recordings, yet good recordings still shine. They just give me exactly what I want from a car midrange.

If you've made it to the end, thanks for reading!


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