Size of Midrange Drivers


Why, in this day of super materials, do designers still use
mini midrange drivers?
Can we expect realistic dynamics from a five inch speaker?
My former Audio Artistry Dvorak's used dual eight-inch
midranges (D'Appolito config, paper cone) and sounded fine.
I'm thinking great dynamics = lots of air moved quickly.
I'd like to hear dual eight inch diamond coated berilium with 1000 watts behind them!
I think when we're at the point where the wave launch gives you a skin peel,
we'll be close to proper dynamics.
128x128dweller
As well as bombaywalla tried to explain it, I think dweller is still confused.

Shakey
Have a loudspeaker that I'm working on with 14ft long horn 43x62in bell 4in compression driver used as a mid range.
Johnk..... I betcha that wherever that baby beams it smacks you in the head.
Really though, we're off of the ops topic, but what we have been discussing about cone drivers is the where the driver starts losing dispersion characteristics. I kinda eluted to that in my snide question. Once the width of dispersion starts decreasing, we hear the beaming effect... Yes, I'm sure that is known, but just wanted to clarify for others.
There are ways around the beaming effect.. Ohm fires off the back side of their cone... Bose uses direct reflecting technology... both have their own issues. Mainly, any decent designer will properly work around the individual drivers problems do a fair degree. There are trade off on any speaker... period. Frequency extention capabilities, driver peaks or dips, excursion limits, Impedance/phase dips, etc, etc, etc.
Lewinskih01, I have no idea. Hyperion went bankrupt (poor marketing,
poor dealer base) without any parts sale. I'm not sure why they decided
upon such large midrange driver but I suspect they wanted to reduce
membrane excursion making it more linear. 3kHz xover was probably
selected to stay away from the tweeter's resonance that is around 1.5kHz.
If this xover is single pole 6dB per octave then tweeter helps keeping
dispersion around 2.5-3kHz, as Johnyb53 stated. It is possible to
improve linearity at large excursions by using underhung, instead of
common overhang motor. It is rare, likely because of the increased cost
(large magnet). I've seen this only in Acoustic Zen woofers or Morel
Supreme tweeters. In underhung motor coil is very narrow while
magnetic gap is very wide. Coil is all the time inside opposite to
overhang design where coil is long being mostly outside of very narrow
magnetic gap.
Kijanki, yes larger diameter voice coils are definitely desirable from a thermal standpoint, all else being equal. Ferrofluid helps as well, assuming it's a good heat conductor, which it probably is. On the other hand I don't recall seeing any prosound company using ferrofluid, so it may have downsides when subjected to high temperatures over time.

I can't comment on the unorthodox suspension system of the cone drivers in the Hyperion; I don't know enough about suspension systems.

Duke