i’m talking about this driver:
if you don’t know Dayton is a house brand of Parts Express, so basically cheap Chinese trash - so cheap it’s literally cheaper than Ali Express garbage, because PE has the whole distribution chain from China to your door locked down and they can deliver UNBEATABLE value.
the problem is of course in the past all their drivers were dog shit.
and to be sure the Kraken is also dog shit but when you load it in a 20 hz tapped horn it matches or beats the best prosound drivers costing 2X to 3X as much !
in HornResp was getting crazy figures like 140 db @ 20 hz from this bad boy at 1/2 the price of Eminence Tour Grade and 1/3 the price of the iPal or Stereo Integrity
now the downsides to this driver:
1 - heavy as shit - double the weight of Eminence or iPal
2 - moving mass is high for a 21"
3 - inductance is laughably high
but none of those make any difference for an infra bass tapped horn !
by infra bass i mean you run this thing BELOW about 50 hz.
so you run it from 20 hz to 50 hz.
what makes the Kraken work in this application is:
1 - very high BL^2/Re ( Motor Strength ) and i mean VERY high !
2 - xmax at 21 mm matches the highest prosound drivers ( Eminence and iPal )
3 - 5" Voice Coil is one of the largest outside prosound
4 - the value is insane
so to Summarize yes Dayton is still dog shit. this driver for example uses aluminum sleeve for reducing inductance … i don’t know a single another driver that uses aluminum sleeve - everybody uses copper, but of course Copper is about 10 times the price of Aluminum, hence the laughable 8.5 mh inductance …
i mean good drivers use either copper sleeve or aluminum ring … but this one uses aluminum sleeve … i would expect nothing less from dogshit like Dayton …
but as Vance Dickason said it’s not the quality of the driver it’s how you use it …
in this case the moving mass is too heavy for direct radiator use … and inductance too high to use to 80 hz … but if you horn load it and use below 50 hz magic happens !
by separating sub bass and infra bass to different enclosures you gain more flexibility in your system design than having to cover everything with a single horn.
horns are large, and you are not always able to place them in optimum room location to control standing wave modes. by having the horns operate only in infra bass they do not energize room modes except the lowest one or two, and you can probably locate the horns properly to control those.
there are a lot more modes at higher frequencies and you will need better locations for subs to control those but PA style subs are 1/3 the weight of the Kraken and only need an enclosure 1/3 the size which will make it a lot easier to put them in optimal locations - including ceiling mounting ! ! !
and yes you SHOULD have some of the subs on the ceiling to control vertical resonance modes !
so we’re talking Kraken tapped horns 20 hz to 50 hz and PA style 18" subs 50 hz to 100 hz, but you would adjust this based on your room acoustics, where you can place the subs, type of content you use etc.
also Horns can obviously color the sound so being able to keep horn operation below 50 hz is a benefit on that front as well.