Crossover-less Speakers

Thanks for responding, Macrojack, and fully disclosing your affiliation with Zu. I was pretty rough on you there, but now I can see that there are two sides to it.

In my opinion the readers have a right to judge for themselves whether or not an affiliation matters, or is merely theoretical. Some will misjudge you out of an innate prejudice against anyone who believes in a product enough to be officially affiliated with it, but methinks it best to err on the side of disclosure. Of course, memakes not the rules.

To answer your first question, yes - a field-coil driver uses an electromagnet rather than a permanent magnet, typically connected to a battery or a power supply. I've been told the theoretical advantage is that a battery or power supply's voltage is more constant than is the flux of a permanent magnet (even an Alnico one) under dynamic conditions, but don't know whether that's really true. One very cool thing about an electromagnet is that you can vary the strength of the magnet (and thereby the Qes, and thereby the frequency response) by adjusting the voltage applied to the field coil. You can tailor the driver's characteristics to the enclosure, to a certain extent.

To answer your second question - I think you did great!

Duke

Duke, Macrojack wih all due respect, if one knowingly has the potential to profit from a recomendation (sales pitch?) no matter how remote the possibilty, I believe the integrity of this forum, demands disclosure. I post this not to point fingers, but to hopefully maintain the high standards Audiogoner's have come to expect.

I didn't disclose anything because I didn't have anything to disclose. Try to get beyond the theoretical and read the actual facts.

1.- I do not actively pursue business.

2.- I do not have any inventory investment to recover.

3.- I do not have the ability to broker a deal.

4.- I am not given referrals by the manufacturer.

5.- I am clearly not trying to conceal anything or deceive
anyone.
6.- I have made NO MONEY from Zu.

7.- Nothing I have written here has invited or encouraged
anyone to do business with me without disclosure.

8.- I promote Zu because I am very impressed with the
company and its products and because I know that many of
you would benefit from trying them.

I migrated from two systems using crossover-based dynamic speakers to crossoverless and won't be going back. Since that transition, the reduced tonal, spatial and transient coherence, along with the truncated dynamics proximate to the crossover frequencies, are too distracting and intolerable. My crossoverless speakers are Zu Druid and Zu Definition. Both cover the range from 38Hz - 12.5kHz with a full range driver that acoustically rolls off at both ends. The Zu supertweeter is not in the signal path of the FRD, and is rolled in on a simple high-pass filter at 12kHz. In the Definition, the sub-bass active array is rolled in on a simple low-pass filter at ~40Hz.

Once you hear a speaker that addresses the discontinuities of multi-driver design by eliminating crossovers and avoiding any sonic transitions in the heartland frequencies of the music sound spectrum, you *may* still elect a mild crossover speaker such as a Sonus Faber, but it's quite likely you'll not again want to be without the holistic music representation of a well-balanced, well-sorted FRD-based speaker.

Phil

All,
I listened to some Omegas over the weekend and was very, very impressed. And these were not the new hemp drivers. I don't recall the models but one was a paper cone drive. It was very impressive but the lack of bass was not for me. I listened to a second pair that did not have the paper cone and the bass was fantastic. It was less efficient than the paper coned system but I was pleased with the sound. Both systems had the 4.5" driver. Seems I will be joining the ranks of the crossover-less spkr systems. I haven't decided on the Omegas yet. I want to hear at least a couple more brands before I decide. Does anyone have experience with Decware loudspeakers?