Single driver speakers. Are they worth considering ?


I don't mean electrostatic. How close to a full range speaker can you come with single driver ?
inna

Showing 2 responses by realworldaudio

Indeed, single driver sound is highly subjective, and it's also extremely dependent on the actual build. Among my audio friends' circles we have several single driver speakers which are phenomenal speakers. Bruce Edgar's Lowther horn comes to my mind (RIP Bruce Edgar! He just passed away...), 100+dB/Wm efficiency, and had enough bass and high frequency extension to create the most memorable Cantata Domino experience I ever had. (It has full size chorus and church organ.) My Fostex Voigt pipe could reach down to 30s, and surprised me with the most lifelike timpani reproduction I ever heard, from any speaker. Although Bruce Edgars legendary designs are well known, but not sure whether you can buy any... my Voigt pipe is certainly one of a kind... the commercial Rethms comes to my mind, but that, in comparison completely lacks bass. 
The most important consideration is that single driver speakers have NO CROSSOVER, and will give you the purest sound ever. That is, they will allow system weaknesses to pop up their heads that you had no idea there were. Generally, solid state amps are a terrible match for single driver speakers (although there are exceptions - Michael Yee amps sound great with them.) Also, they are EXTREMELY sensitive to you room acoustics and speakers placement, and it can easily take a year until you find their optimal position. However, if everything jives, you have an endgame situation. My Voigt pipe gave virtually identical experience with recorded jazz as a live jazz event - I listened to my friend's concert at the Dragon Upstairs (in critical listeners mode), and right afterwards put on the Jazz at the Pawnshop, and with closed eyes I did not get any hints which was the live, and which was playback... But that was after 15 years of playing around with them, and when I moved to my new place, I could never set them up so they image like that, and their midbass is not coming to life either. So, YMMV tremendously. They have almost infinite potential, but everything has to line up. If you want plug & play, look elsewhere, they are very long game speakers... provided you find the right one. If you can get an Edgar horn, go for it, although to my knowledge he designed that Lowther horn for my friend, and that might have been the only one he built. I have heard extremely disappointing reports from my friends when they ran into commercial single driver designs.  Good luck!  
With one driver we do not have any phase, timing and tonal discrepancy issues that plague multi-driver systems. There are no obscured bands in the midrange, hence there is a possibility to integrate the most sensitive midrange better to the room acoustics. When the integration to room acoustics is perfect, the jump is significant. With a well integrated multi-driver system the improvement is not as drastic, as the midrange is still plagued by issues from the multi-driver solution. The question is: do we want pure midrange (single driver) or extended extremes (multi driver)? Given that over 90% of our brain's sound processing power is in the midrange, we benefit most from improved midrange. We have a culture that obsesses with extremes, so most people go for that automatically. It's ultimately a personal choice. Just an observation: my friends who settled on a single driver solution have stuck to it, and rave about the music they are playing, and have no thought about speaker upgrades.... single driver sound has a rightness to it that multi driver cannot match. If you look for "submarine crashing to the iceberg" then they are not the right choice.