@mulveling Main stream very succesfull co like Wilson,Paradigm, JBL ets dont follow you suggestion LOL, I am not participate in forum only .
Coaxials - Reality vs. Experience?
Should say "hype vs. reality" in the headline.
Coaxial speaker design has been around in one way or another for a long time. I often think I’ll be absolutely blown away by them, but in practice traditional vertical layout speakers often have sound as good, or have other features that make them sound better.
Thiel, KEF, Monitor Audio, Tekton, Seas are among the many players attempting such designs, but none has, by the coaxial drivers alone, dominated a segment of the market.
What are your listening experiences? Is it 1 coaxial speaker that won you over, or have you always preferred them?
- ...
- 97 posts total
A coaxial application done right can give the best coherence and power dispersion in all directions. You have the potential for the biggest sweet spot and sound stage with proper supporting equipment, positioning and amplification. Unfortunately getting coincident drivers right is only part of the recipe. It has been ruined for me overall with the following errors- 1) Voicing. Coax drivers will not make up for a voicing and frequency balance you do not like. 2) Driver size step. using too big of a step between drivers (e.g. 8 or 10 inch woofer to a 1" tweeter) can cause issues that a coax setup will not make up for. 3) House sound. Some coax speakers sound artificial and metallic to my ears. Again, a coax design cannot make up for a bad house sound. |
@prof “:The other thing with the Thiels is the insane imaging prowess. There is a focus and precision and density to the imaging I have rarely heard before.”
I had the Thiel CS5 monsters, had to work at placement really hard to get imaging and even then it was finicky relative to slight changes in sitting position. Granted that model didn’t have coax drivers. Eventually gave up on them, too much work. Regarding coaxial drivers, as a general statement to OP with my take, slanted baffle speakers get the time domain right in the vertical plane. coax drivers get them right In both horizontal and vertical. So my question is this : a stereo setup offers a center image as if there was a center channel. So with D’appolito driver setups sandwiching a tweeter between 2 equally spaced midranges, do you get a phantom centered midrange that seems to come from where the tweeter is? Is that faking a coaxial presentation? |
@jacksky I think the prime benefit of the D'Appolito configuration is narrow vertical dispersion. with wide horizontal, so it is very different than a coaxial with equal dispersion in either direction. Because of the changing time alignments in a D'Appolito, he's gone away from low order filters and now recommends 4th order (combined electrical + acoustical) crossovers for best off-plane axis listening. |
- 97 posts total