Seeking recommendation for high efficient woofers 10" and up

[MichaelWC]

I'm seeking recommendation for high efficient woofers eg., 96db or higher to mate with my front horn using Fostex drivers. I will only be using the woofers (one or more for each channel depending on size) from 350hz down to 50hz.

I have been looking at JBL, PHL, B&C but they are a bit expensive considering I don't know what they sound like.

I have also looked at eminence (kapper or kilomax and even delta) or Paudio. These are a bit cheaper but again I have no experience with them and I don't have the budget to experiment with different ones.

The woofers will only be used in a simple sealed or ported enclosure - no fancy back loaded horn arrangement.

I appreciate anyone who can share their experience of the above drivers/models for home HiFi use - I know some of the drivers I mentioned are for PA. I would be even more interested if you got any good results of either the above or others woofers and are willing to share your cabinet plans.

A bit more information, my Fostex is 96db and with the front loaded horn, I expect to achieve 100 to 103 efficiency. Hence that is why i needed an efficienct woofer to cover the lower registers. I have thought about using an LPAD or other means to lower the horn efficiency to provide a smoother blend with the woofers but that would really defies my initial purpose of building a highly efficient speakers.


Cheers,
Michael.

[krell]

cant speak for the others but, I use a pair of jbl's (4311's).
truely sensitive speakers cost. those that are cheap and sensitive have rather nasty response curves and other anomalies.

if you used a folded horn then you can start getting away with cheaper drivers.

Considered going with an active crossover ??.
Solves many problems, no loss through passive components, easy to adjust phase, frequency and levels.

best person i can think of to help enlighten you would be Steve Massey of Queensland speaker repairs.
he's probably forgotten more than I will ever know about speakers.
He loves to take driver X and using cone C with surround G, make something really nice.
He often has really nice speakers that he picks up and then onsells (if he bare to part with them).

forgot to add, Fostex make drivers for whole pile of others (nakamichi sp80 for one). If the rest of their range is as good as the nak sp80, then i can only recommend them in the best of light.
they have an agent in sydney i think. look up fostex.com then track back to the two aussie dealers. only one of them does their drivers though.
from the info i d.loaded off fostex a while ago they should be very musical.
for a woofer to go upto 350ish you'll need to stay small. 8-10 maybe if your carefull a 12. might pay to consider a midrange, would take a load of the tweeter and cover the important vocal range with a single driver, rather than worry about xovers phase shifts etc........

[MichaelWC]

Originally Posted by krell

Considered going with an active crossover ??.
Solves many problems, no loss through passive components, easy to adjust phase, frequency and levels.........

Yes, I am thinking of going with an active x-over - bi amp config. Valve for th horns and SS for the woofers.

Originally Posted by krell

best person i can think of to help enlighten you would be Steve Massey of Queensland speaker repairs.

Do you have his URL/web site or contact details eg email.

Originally Posted by krell

forgot to add, Fostex make drivers for whole pile of others (nakamichi sp80 for one). If the rest of their range is as good as the nak sp80, then i can only recommend them in the best of light.
they have an agent in sydney i think. look up fostex.com then track back to the two aussie dealers. only one of them does their drivers though.
from the info i d.loaded off fostex a while ago they should be very musical.

Thanks, I already have the Fostex 8" full range for the front horns that will be used from 350hz and up - may need to add a supertweeter for 15Khz up, but that would be another story later :-)

Originally Posted by krell

for a woofer to go upto 350ish you'll need to stay small. 8-10 maybe if your carefull a 12. might pay to consider a midrange, would take a load of the tweeter and cover the important vocal range with a single driver, rather than worry about xovers phase shifts etc........

I'm a bit confuse here, are you recommending that I should use 8 to 10 "or so woofer from 350hz down ?. The thing is that I was thinking of a 15" woofer like the JBL 2225 (if money can scretch that far) or the kilo max 15". Is this a bad idea? I do realise that the larger the driver the slower it is, but since these are build as mid woofers I though they would be ok ? Is just that some of the high efficient 8/10" that I looked at start to dip at around 90hz - even in a ported box and they are not that smaller (ie cabinet size) than a 12 or 15" would required.

If going 12" then does any body have experience with the Cabasse 30m22 xover at 350 down ?

Thanks,
Michael.

[krell]

sorry cant think off contact details at the moment, try yellowpages.com.
never had his email actually, rarely see him, but weve done work for each other previously.

Ahhh, ok, (re 8"), well in that case a 15 should go very nicely. was basing my comments thinking you only had a horn tweeter.

if you can spring for the jbl i think you will not regret it.
dad has (cant remember numbers) built his own using jbl 15 (18's ???) and as a side by side comparison my 12's stay with his down to about 20hz.

Gotta love decent sensativity. 10 wrms will rattle windows and anything not nailed down in the whole house (brick/slab).