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You may have remembered I was considering the 240 Esotar set, but I just couldn't accomodate that one. Faceplate of the tweeter is as big as a 5" mid.

ah ok maybe that was it. it's been a while. my memory is lousy for stuff like that anyway. I'm lucky if I remember everything I have in my basement in storage.. lol
I go through boxes and surprise myself now and then.. it's like Christmas in July.

"Join the Alzheimers Club! Meet the same new friend every week!"

Jonathan wrote:On the other hand, Aurasound has some attractive wideband units if you can get over the horrible inefficiency of them

http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/index. ... 3615.13836

Those little 1" and 2" units are kind of cute if you were wanting to do a line array project in a car.

The spec sheet of that 3 inch mid looks pretty interesting, though, clean to around 200hz has an enormous bandwidth. Eff of 80db 1W/1M, it's definately a line array type of driver. Doesn't look like it has any bad cone resonances to have to tame either. The 4" is similar with more efficiency and a narrower bandwidth, from 200hz up to around 5-6khz looks like.

*EDIT* Just saw videos on realm of excursion:
http://www.realmofexcursion.com/brands/aurasound.htm
You have to admit- that little 2" looks pretty beastly playing a 20 hz test tone It looks like a scaled down W7 or something

I did audition those "Cougars", along with a handful of HiVi drivers, Tang Band drivers, and some other set... I forget now.

Ultimately, I settled on a 3" Tang Band set that is currently on sale at Madisound.com (sale page).
I really truthfully abandoned my pursuit of a 2" "full range" driver.

On the other hand, I'm using that 3" guy without tweeters, and even in that capacity, I've got response up to 18K that is at least as good as you'd expect from a standard silk-dome tweeter in a component set- decently impressive.

I've lived with them longer than I thought I would that way - the long-term plan (if I ever get around to it ) is to extend my passive crossover to add a "real" tweeter in my A-pillars (factory location, just for extra ambiance), just to pick up at 10K... one octave, no more. Just for detail touches.

Is 2" a mandatory?

You talking about the Tang Band W3-871? I've heard good things about it.

I just saw that Zaph did a test on a lot of widerange drivers:

http://www.zaphaudio.com/minitest/

The LPG 26NA tweeter is a good one, fantastic top end performance and off axis response. It's on Madisound and doesn't cost terribly too much for the performance you get. It'd be perfect for your application.

I think Aura must OEM the Cougars on a lot of computer speakers, I swear I've seen some that look like they use those drivers. The 2" is the mediocre performer of them, more efficient than the 1" or 3", but higher distortion down low.

geolemon wrote:Is 2" a mandatory?

IDK if I'm going to try it or not. I'd like to experiment with the Cougar if I could get it in a car, just think about having about ten of those stacked up in a line array, the off axis would be horrible (doesn't sound like a good thing, does it? ). You could even stack them up in pillars or horizontally across the dashboard and see which would help imaging more, or even try stacking them vertically and horizontally to try and kill off axis both ways. It'd be a fun experiment, anyway.

How'd the Cougar sound (at low levels anyway, if I used any there would be quite a few of them)? Was it even half decent? I'm guessing.....probably not , but maybe they'll surprise you. NPDang on DIYMA tested the 3" Aura and was impressed as far as midrange detail and clarity, and did well from around 200hz all the way up top.

Yes, that's the TangBand 3" I used.

And I DID do a line-array in my Pathfinder... an extension of this old project I did in an old Nissan pickup I used to own:
http://www.betteraudio.com/geolemon/Lin ... source.htm

With my Pathfinder, I'm using those same 5.25" drivers for midbass (since I still owned them), and instead wanted to try a line array of "fullrange" drivers, since the winder the range of frequencies I can accurately get phase-aligned, the greater the benefit.

So, I have two midbass drivers (which unfortunately end up a bit too far back on the door - right at the leading edge of my seat), and three of the TB W3-871's - both sets of drivers on phase-aligned arcs such as I did with the old Nissan Mini project I had experimented with here.

I wanted to use small drivers, because I could get a line of three of them farther forward on my door...
If you look at my very last picture on that page, where my two Peerless tweeters are on that door panel, is about where I have my three 3" fullrange speakers in a line, and my 5.25"s are about where those ones are, but lower down to the bottom of the door.

I'm currently running the W3-871's without any tweeters whatsoever, if that says anything about their abilities, and clarity.
They simply blew all the 2" speakers I tested right out of the water.

But of the 2" speakers, the Aura ones were the best of those, that size - just a bit tricky to mount, with their tiny little flanges... you'll be using sealant, like I did (rope caulk to the rescue! ).

(just as an FYI - sub from 70hz down, 5.25's from 80hz to 250hz, 3's from 250hz all the way up to 18Khz! If I get time, I may be adding tweeters in my factory locations, just to catch from 10khz up, see if I can crisp it up a little. Oh yeah, it's all on a 2 channel amp via a custom passive Xover - and I'd have to add another component to add tweets, hence my hesitation... )

Cool. Thanks for the info.