horny wrote:

Those used to vintage gear might find it laughable…

Well, do not be under impression that vintage drivers are an assurance of some kind of quality. They are not; in fact in most of the case the opposite is true. I always proclaim – it is only God knows why the horn-loaded drivers suddenly sound in the way they sometimes do…

I never used this Eighteen Sound driver but in my past I had a “dream” about a perfect driver. It was not the real dream but rather a notion that I can go somewhere, at some kind eBay or junkyard; buy some kind of ugly and unknown driver that suddenly would throw the “perfect sound”. Since then I realized that this sweat hallucination although not improbable but not necessary helpful. I still feel that any contemporary driver might be perfectly fine or might be not – it is not upon the driver only but also upon the system designer’s intentions and references. The desire of the system designer to work with a given driver is very important…

Still, talking about the quality of sound from compression drivers I feel it is necessary to have a common denominator – sort of a scale where the all drivers would be projected – I call it the Compression Drivers Equivalency Scale. For me in the very middle of this Equivalency is the JBL-2440 - good mix of goodies, problems and results that makes it a reliable base for Equivalency…