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.
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.
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.
Original post whore!
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Stock Sync HU |AC LC2i | Phoenix Gold EQ215i | Soundstream SA120 -> ID CD1eMH | JL 300/2 -> ID X65 | JL 500/1 -> (2) 15" Pyle PL1590BL in IB
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.
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.
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).
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!
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
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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.
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? O.o
Would love to see that
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Original post whore!
Disclaimer:Opinions of the above are the property of the poster
Stock Sync HU |AC LC2i | Phoenix Gold EQ215i | Soundstream SA120 -> ID CD1eMH | JL 300/2 -> ID X65 | JL 500/1 -> (2) 15" Pyle PL1590BL in IB
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.
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.
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But the U.S. ARMED FORCES don't have that problem.".. Ronald Reagan
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.
^^^^^^^ 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.
Yep, he had them deadened with concrete, boy have we came a long way since then.
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But the U.S. ARMED FORCES don't have that problem.".. Ronald Reagan
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.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeatsDownLow
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.
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.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
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.
coaxials cannot sound as good as components
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