# 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use



## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

I tried out all of the below "extended range" drivers from Parts Express. My goal was to see if I could find a single 3.5" inch or smaller single driver that would work as a center channel with the JBL MS-8. This means I don't need anything to play under 200HZ. I'm guessing with the MS8 there is going to be more interest in small form center channel speakers among the diyma crowd.

My testing was pretty unscientific. I ran stereo into mono plugs out of my home CD player into my NAD reciever, and ran the single full bandwidth channel out of the receiver into the driver. The drivers were mounted vertically on top of a 100lb subwoofer enclosure held down by vibration resistant sticky tack. All listening was at 1 meter nearfield directly on axis.

I did measurements...on absolutely nothing. I didn't do any level matching. I adjusted the volume with each driver as I wanted to get an I idea of how things sounded at low, medium, and high level...whatever my ear decided this was.

I listened to several tracks on Tracy Chapman self titled debut, Eric Clapton Slowhand, and Dire Straights(Mark Knopfler) Brother in Arms. The Clapton and Dire Straights were SACD's, which on my home systems clearly outperform Redbook CD's...it wasn't close to relevant here

This list is in order of listening:

Peerless India W3-LK76-PBK 3" Paper Cone Shielded Woofer 4 Ohm- way too "snappy", way rolled off at high frequencies but still really fatiguing, yuck

Peerless 830985 2-1/2" Full Range Woofer($18)- no oomph at all at low volume. Actually picked up at medium to higher volume, but then became a bit shrill. Male voices sounded hollow. Mark sounded a bit horse. Eric had a viral upper respirtory tract infection (AKA a cold). Tracy was shrill. I'll pass on this one.

JAMO 49101 3" Paper Cone Woofer 4 Ohm ($4)- nice and warm. No shrillness until high volume. Not real detailed, with high frequency rolloff that wasn't painful. Tracy's guitar+voice sounded natural. Mark sounded distant/recessed, but not hollow, his guitar was nice. Eric's cold was mild, with guitar sounding nice. Errors of omission. Not bad for $4.

Tang Band W3-1053SC 3" Full Range Driver ($12)- Erics guitar very detailed and pleasant. At low level Eric's voice distant, but sounded OK. Extended treble. Mark's guitar nice. Mark's voice a bit hollow. Tracy's voice and guitar sounded natural and full. Good off axis, plays loudly/grooves. Not too bad. Not too good. 

Dayton ND90-4 3-1/2" Aluminum Cone Full-Range Driver 4 Ohm($20) - Tracy's voice and guitar sounded nice. Marks guitar very nice, full and extended. Background a bit muffled and indistinct. Voice full and present. Detailed. Eric's guitar pleasant, voice full. He has no cold-his sniffles are resolved. A bit honky sounding overall and led to wanting to turn it down. Plays deep+loud. Alright.

Vifa TC9FD-18-08 3-1/2" Full Range Paper Cone Woofer- Erics voice was great, sounded truly full range with no shrillness even at higher volume. Full range of instruments was correct for the first time. Eric's guitar sounded RIGHT. Could play at loud volume without the need to turn it down. Can hear the backup singer in Clapton's "We're All the Way" distinctly. Tracy's guitar a bit rolled off at higher frequencies, but her voice sounded full and CORRECT, and there was some actual bass line. Mark's voice, once again sounded right, , backing music was all correct. His guitar a bit rolled off but still sounded correct and balanced. Found myself playing a few extra tracks. Best build quality (despite graphite basket). Clearly the nicest of these drivers running full range, with the least buzziness, fuzziness, shrillness and fatigue. It actually sounded like a speaker. I realized how bad the others were once I listened to this driver.

2" Full Range Aluminum Cone Neodymium Driver (no name $2 closeout) - The top end was- surprise, the most extended of the group so far. I was expecting it to suck, but it was actually my second favorite driver here. Voices and guitars were all nice and full without any major problems except that there was, surprise, no bass content and at high volume it fell on its face and hurt the ears during complicated musical passages. One Clapton track made a funny buzzing resonance which went away when volume significantly lowered. Biggest limitation was power handling, but sounded balanced overall. Man, for $2 you could do some fun stuff with this little guy.

Tang Band W2-852SH 2" ($16) Shielded Driver - Well, it made noise that sounded a bit like music. It could not play even a little bit loudly. Managed to be bright and buzzy on all music played. Inserted lots of distortion even at low levels, but to its credit it sounded equally bad off axis. I have no idea why it cost $16.

Tang Band W2-803SM 2" Driver ($16)- See above, only with even less bass, more tizziness and greater distortion at lower levels.

Tang Band W1-1070SE 1" Full Range Driver ($12)- Huh, this one surprised me given how terrible the two different 2" tang bands sounded. This, like the other 1" drivers here are built like a regular cone driver but very tiny. Absolutedly no bass response, what a shock, a bit tizzy, but not screeching even at higher level. Um, and I found that higher level when I ran the voice coil into the diaphragm, putting a small outward dent in the center- which didn't seem to hurt the sound. Would have kept it anyhow, but the dent sealed the deal. More full range than the two 2" tang bands. Interesting little guy.

Tang Band W1-1815S 1" Neodymium Full Range Driver ($8)- Just awful. Really. Inefficient and when turned up sounded like it was in some sort of echo chamber.

HiVi B1S 1" Shielded Aluminum Mid/Tweeter ($5) - another bit of a surprise here. It sounded like a tweeter with a bit more low end extension. As my wife said passing, "that is really teeny...and it doesn't sound too bad." It could play at a moderate level without doing anything funny. Interesting super little guy.

I'll only be keeping four of these drivers- The vifa 3.5", the no name $2 2" driver, the Tang Band 1" I dented and the HiVi 1". I'll actually play around with these a bit, eventually in car.

I was pretty amazed at how different all of these drivers sounded within size classes. The difference between the good ones and bad ones was striking. No amount of EQing could fix some of the deficiencies. And it had little to do with price.

I've got some various more expensive 3" drivers on the way to listen to. In addition I've got a Behringer 3 way active crossover coming so I can play with narrowing down the audio band to see if it improves the sound of some of the drivers. I'll post that when I'm done.

Regards,
Justin Wade


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## jbowers (May 3, 2009)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

Nice write-up!


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## t3sn4f2 (Jan 3, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*



wadejg said:


> I tried out all of the below "extended range" drivers from Parts Express. My goal was to see if I could find a single 3.5" inch or smaller single driver that would work as a center channel with the JBL MS-8. This means I don't need anything to play under 200HZ. I'm guessing with the MS8 there is going to be more interest in small form center channel speakers among the diyma crowd.
> 
> My testing was pretty unscientific. * I ran stereo into mono plugs out of my home CD player* into my NAD reciever, and ran the single full bandwidth channel out of the receiver into the driver. The drivers were mounted vertically on top of a 100lb subwoofer enclosure held down by vibration resistant sticky tack. All listening was at 1 meter nearfield *directly on axis.*
> I did measurements...on absolutely nothing. I didn't do any level matching. I adjusted the volume with each driver as I wanted to get an I idea of how things sounded at low, medium, and high level...whatever my ear decided this was.
> ...


Why Not Wye?

Also, testing on axis is not going to tell you how the driver will perform as a center channel because a center channel in the car will almost always be mounted off axis, even if it is reflecting off the windshield. unless you get very lucky and have a windshield at an angle that is will reflect the on axis beam directly on your head's position (that's very unlikely). 

This is where a 3/4" tweeter comes into play since it can widen that reflected top end sweet spot that the full range can't handle off axis.


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## DS-21 (Apr 16, 2005)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

So, basically your preferences were an inverse bell curve, where you liked the smallest drivers for the HF extension, disliked the middle-sized drivers for having neither the highs of the smaller drivers nor the lows of the bigger drivers, and liked the bigger drivers for playing lower than the others.


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## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*



DS-21 said:


> So, basically your preferences were an inverse bell curve, where you liked the smallest drivers for the HF extension, disliked the middle-sized drivers for having neither the highs of the smaller drivers nor the lows of the bigger drivers, and liked the bigger drivers for playing lower than the others.


Oh come on lets not be silly Although your statement would probably be dead on if I had included some 4" drivers. As stated on the Zaph Audio site 3" does seem to be optimal for full range duty. Actually, A couple of the 2" drivers (tang bands) were much worse than some of the 3" drivers at higher frequencies. The stand out among the group was the Vifa 3.5" driver. It did trail off at high frequency but did so in a gradual manner without distortion added. And it had good low end response. It might make a reasonable stand alone driver. I'd say the most noticable thing was errors of omission caused less problems than errors of commission (distortion).

Regards,
Justin


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## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*



t3sn4f2 said:


> Why Not Wye?
> 
> Also, testing on axis is not going to tell you how the driver will perform as a center channel because a center channel in the car will almost always be mounted off axis, even if it is reflecting off the windshield. unless you get very lucky and have a windshield at an angle that is will reflect the on axis beam directly on your head's position (that's very unlikely).
> 
> This is where a 3/4" tweeter comes into play since it can widen that reflected top end sweet spot that the full range can't handle off axis.


The Why Not Wye was an interesting read. I wonder how much that screws up my simple test. I wonder if I can find one of these that isn't silly expensive:
Audioplex LLSC-1 Line Level Stereo To Mono Converter | Parts-Express.com

And I did listen off axis, but I had no way to know how off axis to listen to that would replicate a front windshield reflection, so on axis is what I chose of describing.

Regards,
Justin


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## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*



jbowers said:


> Nice write-up!


And thank you for the compliment.

Regards,
Justin


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## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

Excellent reviews! Definitely helped me decide on which driver to replace the center channel in my Ram.


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## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*



chithead said:


> Excellent reviews! Definitely helped me decide on which driver to replace the center channel in my Ram.


Thanks. So what did you get?

Regards,
Justin


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## chithead (Mar 19, 2008)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

Looking at the Vifa TG9FD-10-04 to replace the factory center speaker.


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## wadejg (Apr 20, 2007)

*Re: 12 different 3" and smaller "full range" drivers for center channel use*

I listened to 10 more drivers here:
http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...-reviewed-center-channel-use.html#post1079827

Regards,
Justin


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