I'll start by saying I was very impressed with the quality of the midbass driver in this set. I didn't evaluate the passive crossover, so no comments there. The tweeter I found to be adequate, and quite good compared to your typical run of the mill car audio set.
Some comments about the drivers; the midbass uses a very stiff and thin composite cone with a microfiber (yes the same material used in towels) high loss surround. This leads to a driver with both good resolution and dampening. The motor is also a world class design with a thick copper shorting ring above the pole and amazingly enough an underhung geometry. I also found the basket to be extremely sturdy and well constructed, along with the solid metal phase plug. All in all, very well done.
The tweeter on the other hand came in a rather solidly built aluminum chassis, however I wasn't overly fond of the obstructive grille bars running across it or with the profile and coating of the dome. I generally find that very round dome shaped profiles lead to poor top end dispersion, and the light see through coating on a silk dome tends to smother details. The cutouts diagrams of the tweeter also appeared as if the tweeter was a near even hung design, which should yield higher efficiency but at the expense of higher distortion.
Klippel results for the midbass:
Distortion analysis at 96dbm for the tweeter (red line indicates 1% thd threshhold):
T/s parameters for the woofer look well optimized for door use, although efficiency is rather poor. Very good bl and cms curve. The flat extended plateau is evidence of a well executed underhung design, although there is a small forward offset. LE curve looks good, and notice overall inductance is extremely low for a 7" driver. Combined with the low efficiency and underhung design, this driver is a bit output limited especially in the lower octaves as compared to drivers such as Seas RNX or Scan-Speak Revelator. Lastly, if you examine the impedance plot it's perfectly smooth with a very low rise due to the massive copper shorting ring and short coil design. Especially notable also is the lack of surround edge resonance indicative of soft cone drivers in the 800-2khz range. Although not included, the frequency response of this driver is very smooth with only a rather mild (+4-5db), well defined high q peak at 4.2khz. This is really impressive for such a stiff cone driver to be so well damped and controlled.
Listening to the mid, I found that compared directly to the Peerless Exclusive 830883 it was a bit more detailed and open sounding with very little coloration. Not an easy feat to accomplish as the Peerless is considered by many to be a top notch driver irregardless of price. For those who enjoy the sound of stiff cone drivers, this one proves to offer much of the same detail with far less compromise in terms of coloration and ease of use.
The tweeter I found to be an adequate performer. I felt that it was a bit sharp and shouldn't be driven too low or too hard, as evidenced by the fr/distortion plot. Surprisingly, for what I had assumed to be a near evenhung design the efficiency was rather poor.
Some comments about the drivers; the midbass uses a very stiff and thin composite cone with a microfiber (yes the same material used in towels) high loss surround. This leads to a driver with both good resolution and dampening. The motor is also a world class design with a thick copper shorting ring above the pole and amazingly enough an underhung geometry. I also found the basket to be extremely sturdy and well constructed, along with the solid metal phase plug. All in all, very well done.
The tweeter on the other hand came in a rather solidly built aluminum chassis, however I wasn't overly fond of the obstructive grille bars running across it or with the profile and coating of the dome. I generally find that very round dome shaped profiles lead to poor top end dispersion, and the light see through coating on a silk dome tends to smother details. The cutouts diagrams of the tweeter also appeared as if the tweeter was a near even hung design, which should yield higher efficiency but at the expense of higher distortion.
Klippel results for the midbass:
Distortion analysis at 96dbm for the tweeter (red line indicates 1% thd threshhold):
T/s parameters for the woofer look well optimized for door use, although efficiency is rather poor. Very good bl and cms curve. The flat extended plateau is evidence of a well executed underhung design, although there is a small forward offset. LE curve looks good, and notice overall inductance is extremely low for a 7" driver. Combined with the low efficiency and underhung design, this driver is a bit output limited especially in the lower octaves as compared to drivers such as Seas RNX or Scan-Speak Revelator. Lastly, if you examine the impedance plot it's perfectly smooth with a very low rise due to the massive copper shorting ring and short coil design. Especially notable also is the lack of surround edge resonance indicative of soft cone drivers in the 800-2khz range. Although not included, the frequency response of this driver is very smooth with only a rather mild (+4-5db), well defined high q peak at 4.2khz. This is really impressive for such a stiff cone driver to be so well damped and controlled.
Listening to the mid, I found that compared directly to the Peerless Exclusive 830883 it was a bit more detailed and open sounding with very little coloration. Not an easy feat to accomplish as the Peerless is considered by many to be a top notch driver irregardless of price. For those who enjoy the sound of stiff cone drivers, this one proves to offer much of the same detail with far less compromise in terms of coloration and ease of use.
The tweeter I found to be an adequate performer. I felt that it was a bit sharp and shouldn't be driven too low or too hard, as evidenced by the fr/distortion plot. Surprisingly, for what I had assumed to be a near evenhung design the efficiency was rather poor.