Hithere I just took an interest in full range single speaker design based on good stereo imaging, and simplicity.
I am intrigued to build my own, but would like to know what the crowd thinks about the pros and cons.
Cheers
Malik
I can help you if you want.
I have a long experience with full rangers.
The big problem is cone break up resulting in a rough frequency response and beaming.
If you use a single driver and want to run it up to 20 Hz its going to break up.
So the question becomes how is going to break up. The only guy that ever really solved this problem is Ted Jordan. The secret of his designs is that there is controlled break up with frequency, such that the radiating area decrease linearly with increasing frequency.
The heart of his success is the tractrix cone made to very precise specifications and tolerance.
Only his designs and full rangers built using his principals sound really good to me.
His first and probably his best design was the Jordan Watts module that appeared in 1959.
Here is a
link to my page about them.
Other designs using is principles are Bandor and Mark.
The JW module was and is revered in the Far East. I company out of Taiwan makes a driver based on these principles and is the closets modern version of the JW module.
This driver would be closest to the MK III JW.
One of the added bonus features of a driver that follows what I call Jordan's law is that they self compensate the baffle step compensation with no need for a network.
Now a lot of full rangers are designed for high sensitivity, so are low Q drivers, and need horn loading to pull up the bass like the Lowthers.
The JW or Mark can be loaded by sealed, reflex, or TL and therefore the Voight quarter wave pipe. I think and aperiodic TL is the better bet.
A JW module in a TL is actually quite astonishing. Power limitation being a problem, but if crossed to a sub at 80 to 90 HZ capable of surprising spl.
The only full rangers I have a lot of experience with are the Jordan design's especially the JW, and the Lowthers. The Lowthers are pretty good, but not as smooth as the Jordan designs.
I personally think full rangers based on Ted Jordan's principles just ace out all the other full rangers.