would you rather have a pickup truck or a scooter ?
only at low output levels.
compression drivers can reach distortion levels in the range of 100% or so but those occur at output levels an order of magnitude higher than what a regular dome can even surivive.
somebody at DIY Audio measured the Axiperiodic compression driver which uses a 5" voice coil and 7" diaphragm and at normal listening levels distortion was basically nonexistent. admittedly this is a latest and greatest compression driver that costs $1,000 and weighs 20 lbs despite using a neodymium magnet … but the point remains.
compression drivers most likely will deliver LOWER distortion than regular domes AT THE SAME OUTPUT LEVEL.
it’s just that drivers are typically measured at 1 watt which would be 90 db for a dome and 110 db for a compression driver. obviously a driver producing 20 db more output will be creating more distortion. but if you test both drivers at 100 db then quite likely the regular dome will have 10 times more distortion than the compression driver. because the regular dome will be operating at about 50% power while the compression dome will be operating at about 0.1% power.
i know this is a DIY audio site but the fact is it’s always better to buy a commercial product than to DIY if possible.
you should only DIY when there are no commercial options available.
think of what Elon Musk did with Tesla - it was basically a DIY car. the reason it was worth it is because there was nothing else like it at the time that you could buy commercially.
now imagine if Elon instead decided to start a car company building cars that were basically the same as all the cars that were already on sale ? that would be idiotic.
i started to DIY in high school, but not only that, it was shortly after Soviet Union collapse, that is to say i was brought up in a Communist Country where everybody fixed their own cars, then i came to America and immediately got into DIY audio.
in other words it was actually communist brainwashing and experience of living in a communist country that drove me to DIY because in a communist country you can’t buy anything in store and also you’re brainwashed into thinking that capitalist businesses provide no value to society and exist only to exploit …
once i recovered from the trauma of having been brought up in a communist country i realized that DIYers were actually a zombie cult. trying to recreate a version of Communism on a local scale within the west. I have also seen this in organic food co-ops in Brooklyn, NY which were basically modeled after the Israeli Kibbutz or the Soviet Kolkhoz.
Yes DIY has it’s place but 99% of all DIY is misguided.
DIYers say how they save money … total BS. A single high quality plastic horn for a compression driver ( without the driver ! ) can cost more than my entire JBL EON 1500 speaker cost, which has a horn integrated into the plastic cabinet.
DIY is actually MORE expensive compared to commercial speakers mass produced in Mexico or China. Of course DIY is cheaper than any commercial speakers hand-made in US or Europe.
But remember - those hand-made speakers like the Avantgarde acoustic:
they aren’t going for sound quality … but for something else …
so as a DIYer you can beat a speaker on value or sound quality only if you are competing against a speaker that was not designed for value or sound quality to begin with …
get it ?
DIYers are fighting strawmen then congratulating each other on their victory.
when you take a well designed and mass produced commercial speaker designed for pro or semi-pro users like most of the JBL and RCF speakers in this thread you will find it very hard to beat them as a DIYer …
the only time a DIYer can really beat a commercial speaker is with very large subwoofers, in which case you’re basically just saving on the cost of shipping by not having to ship basically air in a plywood box and instead buying plywood from a pallet that has multiple sheets stacked in a space efficient manner.
the other obvious case for DIY is any custom application like building subwoofers into furniture or into any kind of niche in the wall or closet and so on.
i am not against DIY but you have to be honest with yourself in terms of what it is you’re actually gaining by going the DIY route. with the exception of large subwoofers or custom installations 99% of the time DIY will lose to the commercial option unless you you play mind games to delude yourself into thinking otherwise …
imagine you wanted to convince yourself you were best - you would have a tree climbing contest with a fish, then a swimming contest with a cat, then a running contest with a tree - you would win all the contests hands down and conclude yourself amazing. well this is exactly the mental gymnastics DIYers use to justify DIY. they will literally take a speaker designed for rich people to show off how rich they are and beat it on value, then they will take a speaker designed for deaf people and beat it on sound quality, and so on.
but if you were to TRUTHFULLY find the strongest competitor possible for any given contest - you would lose every time. You would never beat a fish at swimming. You would never beat a cat at climbing. You would never beat a horse at running.
DIY is mostly a scam. I know this is a DIY website but in case you can’t tell it’s not exactly like other DIY websites. it’s a self-hating DIY website 
anyway DIYers will never admit any of this. i have tried talking to them about this.
to be on a regular DIY forum is like being on a forum for drag queens and suddenly realizing you are surrounded by child rapists … confronting them about it and having everybody deny it with a single voice, getting very angry and banning you.
then you go to a second forum for drag queens and the story repeats. then it repeats 3rd, 4th, 5th time.
at some point you’re like i think i see a pattern here and there is probably not much value in continuing to try to get them to admit to the truth.
now there may be some drag queens who aren’t child rapists just like there may be DIYers who aren’t buffoons ( like me for example ). but don’t expect to go to a forum where 90% of users are engaged in something sickening and just expect them to admit it.
in my last days at AVS they would literally write things like " i did not read the above post " in response to anything i would write. they didn’t have a comeback to anything i was saying so they simply, like 6 year old children, started acting " la la la can’t hear you ! " - i am not joking ! they are THAT pathetic.
DIY is a good way to learn. a good way to save on shipping costs for large subwoofers. a good way to do custom installations. no real benefit for vast majority of cases.
Try to learn as much as possible then just test out good commercial speakers, save up and get something that you know you could be happy with for the next 10 years.
that makes the least sense of all.
when you buy a kit you’re paying more than what a complete speaker would cost and then you still have to do work to assemble it.
it would be CHEAPER for them to ship an assembled speaker in ONE BOX than to individually protect every component for shipping.
with a kit you’re not designing anything and not saving anything. you’re paying somebody to delude you into thinking you designed something or saved something. Kits take the mental masturbation i described in the above post to its ultimate conclusion.
You pay more and get less and you do it because you want to tell people that you built it yourself.
Of course psychology tells us that we value things higher when we built them ourselves - this is a known phenomenon, and it goes a long way towards explaining why DIY even exists.
Think about it - most people have much higher opinion of their Wife or Mother than of some random woman that is also somebody’s wife or mother. It’s a cognitive bias. ON AVERAGE a person’s wife or mother is no better than any other woman, but at the same time ON AVERAGE people think their wife or mother is a LOT better.
Likewise on average a DIYer thinks his speaker or kit is better than a commercial speaker … but it is WORSE.
Most people will never tell him this truth. I will. So they will say " la la la can’t hear you " and then ban me.
the main problem with something like RCF NX 985-A is that once the plate amp goes bad you’re out of a speaker unless you’re lucky enough to find a replacement or be able to fix it …
from that perspective VTX F35 is better as you would have a much better chance finding another Crown I-Tech amp on eBay as it’s not a custom product that works with just one speaker …
so something like VTX F35 is more modular in that sense … but also much more expensive.
basically a more high-end solution. it’s about double the output of the RCF NX 985-A but about 4 times the price when you consider the cost of amps. but it isn’t a disposable product like a self-powered speaker that can be rendered useless by a single failed capacitor somewhere.
you asked for a PA style speaker but top quality - VTX F35 is it. best components. best design. best build quality. MODULAR high end DSP and amplification. just best. the price reflects that.
as a DIYer though, you can get ( an otherwise disposable ) self powered speaker like RCF NX 985-A and use it for as long as it works, but if the plate amp fails and you can’t fix or replace it, you can an then custom design either active DSP or passive crossover for it ! this is a safety net only a DIYer has. As a DIYer you are investing into cabinet and components whereas an average buyer just buys a disposable product that can simply decide to stop working and that’s that. Of course the people who actually buy these are DJs who use them to make money, so they can do that math and accept that risk.
but as an audiophile we don’t make any money on something expensive and unreliable like a self-powered PA speaker, which makes it harder to justify … until you realize you can potentially salvage it when it fails.
this would actually be a legit application for DIY ! because you would be taking something that is FREE ( a non-functioning speaker ) and turning it into something pretty good. you wouldn’t get back 100% of performance but you would get plenty of performance for your dollar.
so we have to add that to the list of good use cases for DIY - taking something for which original parts are no longer available and making it work again not by “fixing” it but by designing an alternative solution.
so i’m not anti-DIY … i’m just anti-bullshit.
Well that was a lot to read lol. Are you trying to become the next great Russian novelist?
Anyway, I agree with you for the most part. However, when you look at the cost of the parts for an expensive speaker and then look at the cost of the speaker itself, the parts are often significantly cheaper than the speaker. Take the JBL M2 for example. It will probably set you back around $8-10k to buy a pair of those without amplification. The woofers, compression drivers, and horns only cost a couple thousand bucks by themselves. The DIY people have taken advantage of this and built DIY clones of the JBL M2 that look and perform just like the real thing for a fraction of the cost.
What’s more is that the JBL M2 was designed like 10+ years ago. Since then JBL has produced better woofers and you can get better compression drivers. So build a JBL M2 clone with even better parts and have a speaker that performs even better than the M2 for a fraction of the cost.
Or if you have the money, buy speakers from Genelec or Neumann. They have plenty low distortion even at high playback levels and better dispersion than PA speakers.
People are also building Klipsch Jubilee’s for a fraction of the price. That’s a great speaker. You can get all the parts online. A pair of Jubilee’s from Klipsch will set you back around $30k.
if you read my novels above i mentioned that one area in which a DIYer can have success is where he is competing against what are essentially hand-build speakers. when i said hand-build what i really meant is very-low-production-volume, not literally hand build. so a speaker like M2 fits that definition, however i need to point out that the M2 uses custom versions of drivers that are not necessarily available to the public even though they are essentially based on the drivers similar to the ones used in the VTX F35. the VTX uses an annular ring tweeter like the M2 though it also adds a midrange and doubles up on the woofers. the VTX F35 has about $1,500 worth of drivers and horns in it and costs $5,000 … however some of the drivers in the VTX aren’t readily available separately and the horn is completely custom. the VTX is a higher volume speaker than M2 and thus better value, but still fairly low volume and still fairly expensive.
it comes down to volume. higher volume products are better value. JBL EON speakers are exceptional value because of the extremely high volume sales. just like Civic, Corolla, Camry and Accord are exceptional value due to extremely high volume sales.
a Rolls Royce is not a great value due to low volume. that would be the M2.
VTX F35 would be like an Audi R8 V10 or something. just one step above a performance workhorse like Porsche 911 and Chevy Corvette, yet not quite exotic like a Genelec Main Monitor.
LOL
OK then build the VTX F35 clone. That’s pretty much what you described. You don’t need to slot-load the woofers. You can have the woofers on the side like a Genelec Main Monitor:
or you can just buy a JBL Cinema speaker which is already pretty cheap.
3-way, dual 15" for a thousand bucks.
suddenly your DIY doesn’t save so much money anymore when you aren’t specifically seeking out overpriced speakers to compare DIY to …
yes component quality in that $1,000 speaker will be lower than in a $5,000 VTX - obviously - but will you actually be able to tell the difference ? or to put it another way - will your DIY speaker outperform this $1,000 JBL ? i bet this $1,000 JBL will be more than enough for your needs.
better components doesn’t mean better results. properly selected good-enough components and proper design is all you need.
if you want to know why i would rather spend double on the RCF NX 985-A it’s because the NX 985 is a multi-purpose speaker while the Screen Array is a one trick pony in terms of its physical size and lack of grille and handles limiting its uses.
i think VTX F35 is better than the best Genelec.
also, the VTX is a prosound speaker not a PA speaker.
and VTX is actually BETTER optimized for dispersion than Genelec. they just don’t talk about it in marketing because the pros that buy them don’t need to have that stuff spelled out to them - they look at the included charts that have that information.
well … their directivity isn’t optimized for the same use cases. Genelec may be more appropriate for an audiophile. but the level of engineering is higher in the VTX than the Genelec in every respect from drivers to crossovers to amps and yes, directivity.
at first glance Genelec is 3 times the price of VTX but when you consider Genelec includes the amps and goes to 19 hz while VTX needs amps and subwoofers you realize that a proper VTX setup is actually more expensive, even despite being a higher volume product, which means it’s actually a significantly higher level product.
VTX with proper amps and subs will hit twice as hard as Genelec at the same distortion level and probably go to 4X as loud on max.
yes Genelec will be more analytical but you’re not mixing recordings - you’re enjoying music. VTX was designed to enjoy music, while Genelec was not.
but to be honest with you either one would work very well.
one potential issue with speakers like this is hiss from the tweeter though. when you have a 110db/watt tweeter directly hooked up to an amp without any padding resistors you could have some hiss issues …
now that i think about it maybe a semi-active setup like SRX 835 and RCF NX 985-A is actually better as they use passive tweeter crossover which means the tweeter is padded down reducing the hiss … of course that’s not why they do this, they are just saving money - but for home use this may be a real benefit.
though personally i think i would get used to the hiss. it will bother you for the first 15 seconds after turning the speakers on then your brain will just tune it out.
it’s funny i explained the game DIYers play and you just keep playing it anyway.
you find the most outdated and overpriced speakers and point out you can out-do them with DIY.
but i would never consider buying those speakers to begin with.
why don’t you as a DIYer beat the speakers that i am actually suggesting such as RCF NX 985-A, JBL VTX F35 and JBL Screen Array …
nobody doubts your ability to out-do some speaker that no sane person would ever buy …
can you out-do a speaker recommended by me ? that’s the real question …
if you can you should. maybe you can. come up with a plan and i will criticize it.
but don’t compare your DIY designs to irrelevant companies, outdated designs or to prices for speakers that were never intended to sell more than maybe 100 units like the JBL M2.
and when you look at the Genelec don’t forget that the price includes amps and crossovers and the system weighs 400 lbs. make sure to include the cost of ALL the materials when you estimate the cost of your Genelec clone - not just drivers. you will need wood, stuffing …
don’t forget the cost of driving to Home Depot, the wear and tear on the tools, breathing carcinogenic saw dust, hearing damage from power tools etc …
if you are honest and thorough enough with your analysis you will at best break even.
i am NOT trying to discourage you. you CAN beat the system, but it is VERY HARD and i just want you to be realistic.
give me your plan on how you’re going to beat a CURRENTLY IN PRODUCTION design from a MARKET LEADER like JBL, RCF or Genelec that is a FAIRLY MAINSTREAM product and not some ultra-niche oddity and i will critique your plan honestly.
nothing would make me happier than somebody using my help to do the impossible against all odds.
i’m just not going to pretend that beating some oddball obsolete design made for extremely niche application and overpriced by orders of magnitude is smarter than simply buying a top notch modern mainstream product.
realize also that JBL M2 just like JBL Synthesis Everest and other such speakers are designed to simply pay homage to JBL’s overall engineering - they are a sort of museum pieces.
VTX is a workhorse - you can buy them used and they have been beaten the shit out of on tour and you can tell that from just the shape they’re in. M2, Everest etc - just sit in a museum somewhere. Their price is irrelevant since they were never meant to make JBL money - just be statement pieces glorifying the technology in speakers like VTX for which the technology was actually developed.
i don’t know how much clearer i can be - if you resolve to fight strawmen you will win every time. the M2 is a strawman. the Jubilee is a strawman. nobody buys those speakers.
pick a speaker that is currently moving unit volumes and tell me how you are going to beat it. i sincerely would be extremely happy if you were able to do that because if you did that then my site would be the single most useful DIY Audio site in history.
i’m actually not familiar with the Jubilee - i can look it up if you want - but my understanding is that Klipsch is a name that got big in the old days and was famous for using giant horns.
as i explained in the other thread Horns have fallen out of favor recently, replaced by arrays due to the advent of high power class D amplification.
if the Jubilee is yet another homage product that is a giant horn or some sort then it falls into the other category i outlined where DIYers can shine by simply defeating the costs of shipping, while also falling into the hand-build boutique product category i outlined as well.
either way, you are firmly trapped by the laws of economics that i have outlined. you aren’t beating the system. you’re fighting strawmen.
no homage products, no boutique niche products, no vintage products - no strawmen.
“but i can build this outdated design with more modern drivers”
well why would you want to do that ?
what’s the point of wasting good components on a trash design ? it would be infinitely smarter to use cheap components in a great design than expensive components in an outdated design.
i was in that same mental trap before. took me decades to dig myself out of that hole. now i see your jumping through the same mental hoops to justify completely irrational course of action.
i’m not attacking you it’s just that i had more than a quarter of a century to think about this and i have figured a few things out which other people haven’t …
the reason i’m banned everywhere is because the things i have figured out are things that most people don’t want to hear …
you don’t seem to want to hear it either but if i wanted to pretend you’re right i could just go to any forum on the internet where people are already doing that …
let me put it this way - if you really think you can do better for less you need to start your own speaker company
why do you think i don’t have my own speaker company ? it’s because i actually spent decades analyzing information and concluded that it’s a fool’s game …
DIYers have the luxury of being fools without having to come face to face with this fact - they simply ban anybody who points out reality to them
as Mark Twain said it’s easier to fool somebody than to convince them that they have been fooled - unfortunately one of the most accurate statements ever made
you are not far off right now from where i was in High School when i looked at something like Focal Utopia and realized i could build a similar speaker for a few hundred bucks, and i did, and even used Focal components to do it … that was over 20 years ago.
in the decades since i realized i was fundamentally looking at the problem wrong … that the only reason DIYers are cloning the most overpriced speakers is to make themselves feel as if they are getting something for nothing and enjoy that delusion …
aside from feeding that delusion there is simply no reason to do it …
i don’t expect what i’m telling you to be easy to understand. in fact i expect it to be impossible to understand. but it’s true.
by the way the reason big boxes are expensive isn’t just shipping cost, but warehousing cost.
imagine a giant horn or subwoofer has to sit in a warehouse for 2 years before anybody buys it. whoever buys it has to eat the cost of not just the shipping but also warehouse rent, utilities, staff salary and even health insurance.
this is one area where DIYer can win - by cloning a large speaker like that and avoiding all those costs.
but that only makes sense if the speaker NEEDED TO BE that large to begin with.
for example the VTX F35 is as small as it can possibly be, but some retro Klipsch horn is probably 5 times the size of what a speaker made with modern technology could be for same performance.
so really for a DIYer to win, you must clone a speaker that isn’t just big but one that is big and can’t be any smaller.
and that is why everybody on AVS builds subwoofers with 10 hz tuning - it’s not because anybody needs 10 hz - it’s because they are trying to justify the need for an enclosure big enough to make the economics of DIY speaker building work in their favor …
which is to say they are again deluding themselves … they are fighting strawmen … they are setting nonsensical goals simply because they know these are the goals they can achieve, not because anybody needs that stuff …
by the way if you want to go that route i have nothing against that. i just want you to be conscious of what you’re doing and why.
i didn’t create this site to tell anybody how to live but to open people’s eyes.
IMO the best of all worlds is when you buy a quality sound reinforcement top box like RCF NX 985-A that is designed to be used with subwoofers, and then build a DIY subwoofer for it that is a large vented box - larger than what is commercially available, but not comically large.
cheap PA Subwoofers are tuned to about 40 hz. biggest and best prosound and cinema subwoofers from JBL are tuned to 26 hz or so. you can use that as a starting point for your design and make it slightly bigger and tune it slightly lower.
if you do this you will have a system that is legitimately impressive sounding and also BETTER and LESS EXPENSIVE than one that was 100% store bought.
why ?
because you fully understood the economics of the industry and used them to your advantage, while avoiding the pitfalls of strawman fighting.
Among the Spinorama measurements that have been posted for JBL Pro speakers most have been pretty mediocre. The M2 is probably the best, but even the M2 has design flaws that show up in the measurements and the spins. When you look at the design of something like the VTX you can see other design flaws that are probably the product of cost cutting measures.
Look at the horn mouth. It has a sharp edge that will cause diffraction and is just mounted onto the baffle instead of being flush mounted. The edges of the baffle are also sharp. A horn like this best approximates the hyperbolic horn loading that is ideal for impedence matching and maximum efficiency. That makes it loud. But that efficiency sacrifices directivity control. It is well known in horn design that the most efficient horns aren’t the best for directivity. That is why the horn in the JBL looks completely different. It is a constant directivity design that maintains a smooth frequency response all the way out to 90 degrees. The M2 was designed to be placed in a room where the listener will be listening critically, paying attention to imaging, soundstage, tonal balance, etc. The VTX was designed to be placed outside where diffraction isn’t a big deal because all of the lateral energy is just lost instead of reflected. When it is placed inside it is designed to get loud and please listeners who don’t care about soundstage, imaging, tonal balance, etc. They just need to hear the music from across the room.
The VTX is probably loaded with resonances that aren’t that important for the intended application.
For your application, the best speaker would be something like the JBL M2 or something smaller like the 708p.
I just don’t buy that a speaker that was very well-engineered to fit certain performance criteria important for live sound and audiences of 100’s of people in huge spaces will just happen to be the best engineered speaker for home audio. Good speaker design is good speaker design to a large extent, but there are still important differences relevant to the intended application. If you don’t need 135dB at home, then buy a speaker with a horn or waveguide optimized for directivity and a woofer that is optimized for linearitt instead of output.
i only saw independent measurements for SRX 835 and they were quite bad, but reassuringly they had the same fatal flaw in them that JBL’s own posted frequency response also shows - namely the huge dip at 600 hz. it is reassuring because it means JBL is not faking these measurements. of course the top end breakup of the titanium dome is massively smoothed on JBL’s own measurements while unsmoothed measurements show basically a nightmare above 9 khz.
here is the thing though - most headphones have even worse breakup above 10 khz and few people even notice it. i notice it but it isn’t really that important. what counts is the midrange. the midrange in SRX 835 has a huge problem and that’s why i am sort of passing on it even though it has unbelievably high spec components for the price point. at $1,999 the SRX 835 is higher spec than the $2,699 RCF NX 985-A … but that midrange horror sort of makes it all irrelevant.
the M2 has a newer, better tweeter than SRX 835 as JBL has been moving from titanium domes to dual annular ring tweeters. the VTX F35 has a similar type tweeter as M2, as it’s a higher-end speaker than either SRX 835 or the Cinema Screen Array speakers. This should really help with that breakup above 9 khz that plagues the 3" titanium dome and the better DSP tuning should help with the midrange dip … so i expect the VTX F35 to be fairly decent measuring while also having much higher spec drivers than NX 985-A
not really. it’s literally perfect. not being sarcastic.
that is irrelevant as there is no room to put a real chamfer there anyway. if you want a real radius on that horn edge get the Cinema Screen Array - but keep in mind the Cinema speaker is designed to be flush mounted into a plywood baffle, which would then completely eliminate any edge diffraction. If you can swing such a baffle ( say you’re building a custom home theater in the basement ) you would have very good price / performance ratio with the Cinema Screen Array.
well as i said before such trapezoidal shaped speakers are designed for clusters of multiple units, so basically two speakers side by side, in which case their horns combine into one larger horn and the baffle edge is eliminated.
but also as i mentioned this is a touring speaker so compact size is a top priority as it lives on the truck. horn performance was compromised to achieve smaller cabinet dimensions. if you need larger horn - look at the Cinema Screen Array - they have many models.
not really … when you have 10,000 people in a stadium every possible angle is going to hit somebody in the crowd.
instead the VTX F35 is simply designed to have more “throw” to have tighter control over the pattern, and it’s offered in two directivity options, namely 90x50 degrees and 60x40 degrees.
directivity is MORE important in prosound than in studio because in a studio the speakers can be aimed at the engineer, while in a stadium or rock concert there isn’t any one location where the sound has to be right. it has to be right EVERYWHERE. but on the flip side in a stadium or rock concert MUTLIPLE speakers are used to achieve coverage, thus each speaker can have narrower more focused beam pattern and if you need wider coverage you add extra speakers.
in a studio you just need flat response on-axis and then make sure the spill is fairly even.
well i will concede that in live sound reinforcement there is no such thing as imaging. because frankly imaging is bullshit. you need to ask yourself why is imaging such a big deal when live sound is the reference and doesn’t have any. maybe imaging simply doesn’t matter ( hint: it doesn’t )
as for tonal balance … well you can do room acoustical treatment, you can do EQ and frankly as i said before the VTX has much better directivity than 99% of audiophile speakers, second maybe only to the M2 and Genelec.
i would venture that they aren’t important period. you also could probably add some extra damping material in the speaker though it will already have decent amount from the factory as well as good bracing.
i prefer speakers that are explicitly designed to mate to a subwoofer, such as both VTX F35 and NX 985-A. floor standing speakers are for old people who don’t know what subwoofers are or what electronic dance music is.
i literally do not take floor standing speakers seriously just as i don’t take bookshelves seriously.
speakers should either sit on a desk / console ( near field monitors ) or on top of subwoofers ( PA ).
check out this demo:
this is 3-way 15" Yamaha DZR 315 crossed to subs at 60 hz. this is how it’s meant to be. i think the RCF NX 985 is better than this Yamaha but both are modern, active 3-way 15" PA speakers and are quite comparable except that RCF is more premium, especially in the midrange where it really counts …
RCF makes the most expensive bucket midrange drivers in prosound whereas Yamaha is using some bargain basement midrange - probably stamped back Eminence …
regardless this is what i have in mind - 3-way 15" box on top of 18" Subs.
the M2 being a 2-way floorstander is too old school for me. its a speaker for Boomers. any real bass will modulate the midrange too much. basslines must be isolated to the sub and kick harmonics to the woofer. midrange should only have to handle vocals. otherwise it will sound good until you crank it and then it will all turn into mush.
i know i am contradicting what i said earlier about 3-ways being for old people well - there are different ways of looking at this. the devil is in the details. a bad 3-way is worse than a good 2-way but i am not considering any bad 3-ways. this Yamaha is actually a bad 3-way, as its woofer to mid actually crosses higher ( 700 hz ) than RCF TT 5-A crosses to compression driver ( 650 hz ). but i’m not considering this Yamaha just using it as an example of a setup that fills the room nicely by handing off to the subs at 60 hz …
certainly not.
you just need to understand that nobody will ever properly engineer a speaker for home audio because audiophiles don’t deserve anything good. i am not being sarcastic - this is the reality.
i was still a kid when i started to wonder why there aren’t any 2-way full-size headphones ? most headphones have horrible breakup above 10 khz easily solvable with 2-way design, yet even $1,000 headphones are still only full-range.
took me decades to realize that audiophiles are simply laughingstock and nobody actually tries to make anything good for them. they exist just to get ripped off.
nobody will ever make anything good for audiophiles ever. not gonna happen. just forget it.
if you want something good you will have to accept using something designed for either Studio or Prosound.
yes in a perfect world the greatest minds would be toiling to make you happy. in the real world they are trying to kill you. wouldn’t it be nice if the technology in VTX line was used to make home speakers ? wouldn’t it be nice if Wuhan lab was looking for a cure for cancer instead of trying to kill us all with viruses and vaccines ? well you can keep dreaming but it’s not going to happen. in the real world people aren’t driven by the desire to do good, but by desire to profit. you profit by not over-estimating the intelligence of people. the reason prosound and studio speakers are good is because the customers are audio engineers who demand quality. the reason home audio speakers are trash is because the customers are deaf old guys who can’t hear the difference between compact disc and AM radio and if they could they wouldn’t care because they just need to let everybody know how expensive their cables are.
this 135 db is achieved is with larger radiating surface which is also how you get lower distortion, so it’s not a tradeoff but the opposite - higher output capacity brings with it lower distortion at normal output levels.
directivity is a function of horn size, which means that bigger speakers can potentially control directivity better. PA speakers are bigger than home speakers and have better directivity.
you say the M2 has better horn than VTX F35 … that isn’t really true. you failed to consider that the tweeter in VTX crosses over at 2.5 times the frequency … you also failed to consider that dual slots optimize vertical and horizontal coverage …
to me the VTX has the better directivity as it is more controlled whereas M2 is simply wide, which is not good at all considering that it is designed for just a single listener in the middle … it just spills sound all over the room for no benefit instead of projecting it forward like VTX F35 does.
the VTX F35 ( 95 ) publishes directivity specs:
so does RCF NX 985-A
there is NOT A SINGLE speaker designed for audiophiles that publishes this data at all.
again you got it backwards.
they are the same thing !
output is linearity. linearity is output.
a woofer that is extremely nonlinear at 135 db will be extremely linear at 95 db.
and vice versa a woofer that is very linear at 80 db will be very nonlinear at 100 db.
simply by getting a speaker capable of extreme SPL you are virtually guaranteeing low distortion at normal SPL.
whereas getting a speaker that is only capable of normal SPL you are virtually guaranteeing high distortion at anything above modest SPL.
this is only true of speakers. it isn’t true of amplifiers. amplifiers have different distortion mechanisms than speakers do. amplifiers can actually have higher distortion at lower levels, but speakers can’t.
speaker distortion always rises with output and it rises exponentially. the way to reduce distortion in a speaker isn’t to improve the speaker but simply to over-size it for the job.
of course when you over-size the speaker now you have different issues like frequency response, so nobody goes this route unless they have no choice - because they actually need the extra output.
so you basically will always have lower distortion with PA speakers than home speakers because home speakers will always use the smallest drivers possible while PA speakers are simply not able to use such small drivers.
and if you do buy home speakers with large drivers you will be spending insane amounts of money.
for $1,000 you can get the same cone area ( and thus comparable distortion ) in a PA speaker as in a $20,000 audiophile speaker.
why doesn’t everybody use PA speakers at home then ? well people who actually work in the industry do. Audiophiles don’t. Because Audiophiles buy mahogany finish and brand name, not sound.
Audiophiles simply do not know anything about sound. That is the sad truth. Professionals in the recording and sound reinforcement industry know a few things and anybody who plans to sell to them has to deliver the goods.