GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Bye-Bye, Fane

Post Subject: Feigning the 8MPosted by jessie.dazzle on: 3/16/2009

Decoud,

Though I have a pair of 8Ms, I did some searching around for alternatives just to make sure I couldn't find something "better".

Its not really a kosher approach, but my research was centered on vintage alnico drivers, originally conceived as direct radiators. There are no specs for most of these, and if there were they would probably not be indicitave of a particularly horn-friendly driver. But I was looking for tone, and was willing to take chances. I did A/B comparisons against the Fane drivers (had two 115Hz horns to use), and before I had the rear chambers done, thought I had found at least one pair that I liked better (less "dry" sounding and louder when playing low notes), but once I got the rear chambers done, I ended up reverting to the Fane drivers. This is because I found the sound of the vintage drivers down low was slightly slopy by comparison, though they would still play lower, louder. I did not of course try everything, and there may well be a driver out there that I would prefer to the Fanes.

For this reason, I would encourage you to consider any driver thats going for a fair price, has a large alnico magnet, paper cone, and paper suspension. If it doesn't work out, they are easy to sell. One nice thing about these older drivers is they are mostly wound with 4 and 5 Ohm coils, which means you don't end up with a huge filtering coil (if you are going with passive Xovers).

Romy,

Have you ever tried the Community M4? I'd still like to try this driver.

jd*

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