Impious

It's possible to use different tweeters, but not just any tweeter will work. You would need to find out the crossover point and slope as well as what impedance tweeter the crossover was designed to work with. Also if it has a tweeter attenuation circuit, it may not be as accurate depending on different factors. Those tweeters may have been OEM'd for them by another company. You may try to ask Diamond and see if they were based on any particular model from one of the main buildhouses.

Right now I have a Blaupunkt VA-2200 bridged to each channel, which is rated 600w RMS @ 4ohm. So I have 600w per channel to them at the moment. When I switch to active I'll use these for the mids, so I'll have 600w per midwoofer. I also have a Blaupunkt VA-2100 which when running active will be used to power the tweeters, that is 100w x 2 @ 4ohm. So when running active, I have an available 1400w+ on my frontstage I don't know for certain where the factory crossover points are. I'm probably going to shoot an email off to Bravox to see if they'll release some information on the tweeter (Fs, etc) and the xover point of the passives and use it as a starting point.

Yes, if (or when) I install them more permanently I would run them active.

Well, I don't have a schematic and haven't tried to trace the components on the board, but my rudimentary understanding of passive crossovers would lead me to believe the following: The large cap and large inductor are a 2nd order lowpass (12db/oct electric slope) for the midwoofer. [outlined in red] The small cap and small inductor are a 2nd order highpass (12db/oct electric slope) for the tweeter. [outlined in black] The two resistors are probably for the tweeter attenuation circuit. [outlined in green] The two polyswitches are tweeter protection [the arrow] I don't have the ability to measure the inductance of either inductor so I don't have a means by which to nail down the crossover point.

I have to say, I'm on about day 5 with the speakers installed. I'm past the critical listening stage, just listening for the sake of enjoying my favorite music while I'm on the road now. As I cycle through my music collection, I'm still noticing nuances in the music I hadn't noticed before. I had originally sort of attributed some of this to simply listening more closely to the music than I had before....but even now, when I'm just listening to rock out and not evaluate, these details are still catching my attention. I really hadn't expected I would enjoy these speakers as much as I have. LOL.....Cool beans.

I would skip the idea of trying to run a 3" widebander for your goals. It's just not going to work for your objective. If you are just looking for loud, the cheapest and most effective route is probably the 3-way w/ large midbass, 6 - 8" midrange and bullet tweeters. It will have it's fair share of acoustic problems, but if those aren't your primary concern then it may be a fair trade-off for your goals. You could do a 2-way or 3-way with a HLCD, get the type of sound you are after and possibly still salvage some semblance of decent imaging and in-car sound, but it'd likely be more expensive. The commonly used bullet tweeters usually run $25-$50 each new, car specific HLCD usually go for $250-$500 used depending on model. It'd be easier to run 2-way as you could cross the horns as low as 900hz - 1khz. You could run 2-way with this setup with 8's or 10's, but running 3-way could gain you some more flexibility in driver selection and probably better overall sound at the cost of real estate, tuning and cost. And with the car audio specific HLCD's being mounted under-dash, you wouldn't have to piss with your A-pillars.

They are based on the Dayton Reference HO which has a long standing reputation for it's good distortion performance and overall sound quality at an affordable price. Steve at Daber has said there are some suspension differences between the HO and the Daber line, but I wouldn't expect the differences to materially affect it's attributes based on the T/S similarities. So, in short, you shouldn't be disappointed with it's performance They have a good pedigree.

Anywhere from $150-400 new, each. What exactly are you trying to accomplish here? More dynamic sound but with good accurate reproduction and proper imaging? Or just trying to be heard from a half mile away? Really hard to give any suggestions without knowing your actual goals. Too many people equate pro audio with "who cares how it sounds as long as it's loud!" (and many of the users require only this level performance out of their own systems using these speakers), so when someone asks for recommendations on high sensitivity drivers the suggestions pay little attention to the actual quality of the sound produced or goals for the system. Most of those "loud" pro audio car setups don't follow the best acoustic practices either. The reality however is that there are lower-average quality products that have lower-average performance and higher quality products that are very well behaved in terms of distortion, linearity and response. Knowing your goal will determine which product range fits your needs. Also, knowing your goals as far as imaging will help provide a realistic expectation as speaker placement and as a result, size constraints. I will say that you are not going to find a high sensitivity 3" or 4" driver. Sensitivity is partially a function of cone area, and as cone area goes down and motor size decreases, you begin to limit the driver's ability to maintain a high sensitivity. So matching a low sensitivity 3" full range driver with a high sensitivity midbass and midrange is going to require you reduce the level of the midbass and midrange to properly level-match the drivers......which sort of defeats the purpose (unless you are purchasing the high sensitivity driver for it's other traits, such as distortion performance. But that doesn't sound like your objective). Also, most super-tweeters or bullet tweeters need highpassed in the 3khz - 5khz range. A 6" driver is going to begin beaming well below that point as well as probably run into some potential issues with things like cone breakup modes/etc. Now, not all beaming is bad as it can serve as pattern control, but it's also not always good or useful and can create another layer of complications to the installation/tuning if good sound and imaging is your goal. Horns in generally are not newb-friendly. That's not a knock at you as I have no idea of your abilities, but if your tuning skills are on the newer end of the spectrum expect to spend considerable time tuning the system before it sounds (atleast until you get that MS-8 listed in your sig which will take care of most of the hard work for you). However, for other reasons such as better pattern control and horn loading as well as available bandwidth (and overall performance in general) they are a much better option than bullet tweeters. So, after a bit of rambling......what exactly are you trying to accomplish?

Actually I covered that all the way back on PAGE 2 of this thread.

I probably should have mentioned when I suggested a modeling program, to model them in your airspace and not look at the "recommended" enclosure alignments for this reason. The physics are the same, so it will "model" the low end response in any alignment accurately but the programs suggested alignments will be biased to ported as sandt point out.

I have JBL 2118H's, but for a partially different reason. If you are looking to purchase quality performing pro audio, the B&C are generally good. Off hand 18sound and JBL also produce well performing higher sensitivity drivers. They can get spendy though.

Yeah, for that budget you would probably need to look at all-in-one amp and processing. You could grab a used H701 for $300 or so, but that might press your amplifier budget a little too tight. Though if you poke your head around, there's usually some good amplifier deals to be found. Db-r has a b-stock Sundown SAE-1200D for $160. That'd give you 1200w @ 1ohm for $160+shipping. Hard to beat that. http://www.db-r.com/sell/store2/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65_67_69_82&products_id=236

I haven't ran the numbers myself, but using an accurate modeling is a good idea. It helps to visualize the differences. Building some test boxes to see what you think of the differences would also help you along.

ID CD2Neo horns, midbass would either be CSS Trio8 or JBL 2218H (have them both). It's still up in the air, still trying to decide. I love the dynamics of horns, but they can be a bear to tune properly. If I kept the Bravox in the car, I would run them active since I have that option and it allows for more control and fine tuning. Much simpler setup than the horns with better results much quicker and likely much less required tuning, and after using them I know I'll be more than satisfied with the results if I go this route as well.

Thanks for the kind words and taking the time read the review guys Much appreciated.

It does not allow a lowpass higher than 150hz, not really suitable for midrange or midbass. Looks like it was mainly intended to be used with subwoofers.

Updated the 2nd post with install and listening. It's late & I didn't proof read very much, so hope everything makes sense If, and that's IF, I get time this week I might try to figure out how to take measurements with my Dayton mic and HOLMImpulse to see if I can manage any kind of useful response graph. EDIT: Damn, just realized that got kinda wordy Sorry if it's a long read.

Installation Installation was pretty straight forward. A few trials and tribulations along the way, however; The manual does not list a cut-out diameter for either the mid or tweeter. It's easily enough measured, but really....just list in the manual for pete sake.The female connectors that were supposed to be used for the mid are the wrong size. They are too small. The pair that is supposed to be for the positive only fit the negative, and the pair that is supposed to be for the negative doesn't fit either of them. Looking at other pictures, I think they use different sized terminals for different speaker sets and these terminals would fit some of those other sets....just not these.The little blue ridge just in front of the terminals on the crossover is a hair taller than the bottom of the terminals themselves. In order to get the spade connectors to seat correctly in the crossover terminals, I had to bend the connector just past the crimped section at a 30 - 45 degree angle. Not a big deal, just one of those common sense attention to detail things.The angle mounts that I used for the tweeter snap onto the rear of the tweeter housing. It takes a little skill to accomplish this, and I don't have that skill. I probably spent 10 minutes trying to get the first mount snapped into place, the second one only took a couple minutes but I think that was just dumb luck. I mounted the mids in my stock speaker location at the lower front portion of my doors and started out with tweeters on the A-pillars, but I am just not a fan of A-pillar tweeters in a 2-way setup, so they were relocated down to the kickpanel area. Now, understand this type of setup is not entirely fair to the speaker as performance is then subjected to effects of the environment. The environment will introduce anomalies into the response and the like. But, since this is car audio, my initial goal was to see what type of performance the average user could expect with a normal car installation. So I'm not listening just to the speakers, I'm listening to the speakers in this particular installation in my automobile. I figured if worse came to worse and results were substandard, I could always fab up some enclosures and try them in the house (although that has it's own set of problems, not least of which is finding time to listen to them when the kids aren't running through the house screaming like psycho's). But first, I wanted to hear what the average user in an average installation would hear and go from there. The only processing used is a highpass filter at 63hz with a -24db/oct slope, and time alignment due to the mounting locations. No equalization or other filters were applied. With the tweeters in the kickpanels I left the tweeter attentuation at 0db. They are connected to an available 600w RMS per channel (yeah, you read that right Listening Impressions I've spent about half of my listening time with the subwoofer off and the other half with the subwoofer integrated into the system. I started out my listening with a repertoire of "sound quality" discs (those doughnut shaped things we all used to use, in case you don't remember). I started with my IASCA disc, then went on to Michael Jackson (RIP), Eagles, Eric Clapton, Yanni Live (don't laugh) and a few other assorted tracks. From there I moved on to my daily music selection of mainly rock; bands such as Slipknot, TOOL, APC, Mushroomhead, Audioslave, NIN, Disturbed and the like. Here is a brief outline of my subjective comments on some of the albums/tracks: IASCA disc I listened to several tracks on this album, which were all chosen to be on the disc due to their high quality of recording. The tracks are mainly instrumental-type tracks with a wide range of instruments used. All of the instruments sounded natural and "as they should" with little to no coloration from the speakers themselves. There was good separation in sound of the instruments, all could be heard clearly and distinctly with no smearing or masking of tones or sounds. Great presence in the midrange and treble. Michael Jackson On Billie Jean, the midbass was strong and full. Michael's vocals came through very clean and accurate. Again, great tonality in the music. Listening to Bad, which I've probably listened a few dozen times in my car, I heard a digital beat (I guess you would call it?) in the background that I honestly had never noticed before. I'm not sure if it's because I had never listened as critically to it before, or if these speakers simply revealed it better. On Want to Be Starting Something, the drum beats at the beginning of the track were tight and strong. Listening to Smooth Criminal I notice the tonality was off just a bit in Micheal's vocals, but this very well could be an effect induced by the environment. Overall, great tonality, great dynamics, great separation of tones and instruments, very lively reproduction. Eagles Listening to Hotel California, very good detail. The wood block at the beginning of the song was very natural sounding. Hearing the fingers slide down the string of the guitar in the right channel at the beginning of the song was easily identifiable. The guitar at the left side sounded like there was just a little bit of exaggeration/emphasis, but again I can't eliminate the effects of the installation as being the cause. Yanni Live Wide variety of instruments used on this CD, everything from harps to upright bass. The upright bass in track #10 was the most accurate reproduction I've had of that song in my car yet. I could hear the bow sliding across the strings. The highs were very precise and defined, horn and string instruments sounded very accurate. Again, very good separation and definition of the instruments when there were multiple instruments being played at once. Very dynamic reproduction. A Perfect Circle I listened to Over (last track on Mer De Noms) for the xylophone. Great tonality and the decay was excellent. The speakers did not cut off the resonances early and did not blend them into a continuous tone; there was a well defined "ring" after each strike. On rock music such as Slipknot, the speakers were very listenable. the music is harsh by nature, but on some systems it comes through so harsh that it's almost ear splitting. On these it came through just as it should; harsh as intended but not so harsh that you couldn't stand it. Overall these speakers are wonderfully detailed. Tonally they are very good and just allow the music to come through. They don't impart their own coloration to the music. All of the instruments are very natural sounding. The midrange is very clean. Midbass is full and robust and as good as you can expect from a driver of this displacement capabilities. Treble is not shrill and harsh or light and airy, just detailed, crisp and natural sounding. Transient response, both attack and decay, was very well behaved and accurate. They are very dynamic and lively as well. Speakers this size usually fare pretty well at normal listening levels but fall apart at high levels. Amazingly, these speakers maintained their composure throughout the entire range of listening levels. Great linearity in their ability to sound just as fantastic at both lower listening levels as well as higher listening levels. And trust me, with 600w available per side there was no shortage of power. I pushed the speakers to the edge of tolerability and they did not back down and retained their composure. Ofcourse, nothing in life is perfect, and I don't want to make it sound as though these speakers are. One minor problem I did have is that 0db for the tweeter setting seemed a bit too hot and -3db seemed a bit too mellow. I left it at 0db but would have preferred something in between. Also, as I noted above there were a few spots in the music where I felt there was just a hint of over-emphasis or shift in tonality, but I can't entirely blame the speakers as it very well could simply be a response issue related to the installation. Lastly, a few tracks seemed to lack just a tad bit of sparkle on the upper end. But given a choice between overly harsh and a little subdued, I'll choose the latter any day of the week. Conclusion So really, how do I feel about these speakers? Well, I'll put it this way. I had originally purchased the Bravox with the sole intent of reviewing them and then selling them with the hopes of atleast recouping my costs. After the past 2 days, my stereo may have just had an unexpected change of plans. The kickpanels I was working on are only half built and were originally intended to house some midbass to go with my horns......they may soon be the new home of this 6.5" component set instead. For the past 2 days I have been taking every excuse I could find to have to drive somewhere, anywhere. And I find myself driving slower as well....I want to get one more song in before I arrive home. If I have enjoyed the speakers this much in a pretty average install with no tuning, I can only imagine how great they'll sound in an optimized and well tuned install. They don't do everything perfect, but they do it all well enough and without glaring deficiencies that they are an amazingly easy set of speakers to enjoy. These speakers just performed great no matter what I threw at them with music selection or output levels. If you are in the market for a mid priced component set, I would definitely suggest you give the CS60CF set serious consideration.

Introduction http://www.soundsolu...Components.html http://bravoxaudio.com/ Bravox is a newer name to SSA, being recently just added to the store a few months back, so some of you may be relatively unfamiliar with the brand. According to the website, Bravox is a Brazilian company that was founded in 1953. From everything I could find they perform the full range of services in house, from engineering and design to driver construction. In this day and age of same-product different-name electronics, it's nice to see a company that still completely designs and produces their own unique products. A few weeks back I purchased the Bravox CS60-CF component set, linked above, from the SSA store. At $445 I would consider these speakers to be in the middle of the price range.....more expensive than entry level products but not ultra-high end pricing either. The speakers arrived on my doorstep from the SSA store right at about a week after ordering, and as always the communication was great from the website and SSA staff. Equipment The CS60CF component set consists of 6.5" mids and 1" tweeters, and the packaging includes installation hardware, speaker wire and grills. The mids are true 6.5" drivers, measuring exactly 6.5" from edge to edge. They feature a carbon fiber cone, butyl rubber surround and a sturdy cast frame with venting under the spider, which is a nice feature to see on a midwoofer as it aids in voice coil cooling and provides an additional escape path for air. The mids also feature a phase plug, which can serve dual purposes; it can aid in extending and smoothing the high frequency response by reducing cancellation and, when constructed of a heat-conducting metal, they can improve the driver's heat dissipation capabilities. The phase plug is coated so I can't tell the exact material, but it does have the feel of being a solid metal. Terminals are gold plated spade and the tinsel leads are fairly thick for being a midwoofer. The mid does not have a pole vent, and it's worth noting it also does not have a gasket. I'm guessing the lack of gasket is because of the grill-mounting ring that is to be installed behind the speaker. It's also nice that the company provides T/S parameters for the midwoofer, as it's fairly rare for a company in car audio to provide those. With it's high Qts and moderate Vas it's apparent these 6.5" speakers were designed with the car environment in mind as results will be very close to optimal in a car door, which functions closely to an infinite baffle alignment. The tweeters are 1" silk domes with ferrofluid cooling. The housing is plastic and there is about 6" of lead wires attached for direct connection to the speaker wire rather than any type of terminal. The packaging includes angle mount and flush mount options. Crossovers are reasonably sized and feature blue polycarbonate plastic cases with venting on each side, a 0db and -3db switch and gold plated terminals. The manual states this component sets uses a 4th order acoustical crossover slope. Interesting to note their description of the crossover there. They state it's an acoustic slope, not an electric slope. The difference normally being the acoustic slope is the sum of the driver's response and the crossover, whereas an electric slope is the effect of the crossover only. The acoustic slope is actually a little more useful to know as it tells you what the response of the actual driver will be with the crossover, and not just what the crossover is doing to the signal. When most people are designing a passive crossover, they are aiming for a certain acoustic slope not a certain electrical slope. The electrical slope is essentially just a means to an end, not the end itself. The manual does not list a crossover frequency, but "LHP 3.5" is molded into the crossover. I'm wondering if maybe that means the low and high pass frequency is 3.5khz. The installation materials included with the set is just about everything you would need to install the speakers; speaker wire, eight screws, four butt connectors for the tweeters, twelve spade terminals for connecting wires to the crossovers, and four female terminals that are supposed to be for connecting to the midwoofer. The manual is semi-informative. The same manual is used for all but 1 of the component sets and gives a brief introduction to Bravox, some bullet points about the features of the products, T/S parameters for the different sets and a quick wiring tutorial. I would like to see it include a little more detail and possibly some suggestions on proper setup techniques and installation considerations for informational/educational purposes, but maybe that's just me. Pictures Who doesn't like pictures?

Don't let them roll off on the low end. You'll end up damaging them due to over-excursion or make them much less ineffective as a result of distortion/excursion limitations on the low end. You could look into Zed's amplifier lineup. Both of his amplifiers feature bandpassable crossovers. You could use the 2-channel to power the midbass, or for only $200 more you could get the 6-channel to power all of your speakers and sell your current amp(s) to coup some costs. They are also small'ish in footprint, might fit under your seat like you want.

If you are talking about using the subwoofer channel for the midbass, I wouldn't. The lowpass crossover range is probably not going to be wide enough to be useful.

I was just thinking the same thing. PAP recone for an XXX......would have me worried

Class D aren't an issue anymore. A couple decades ago when the designs were poor they posed a bit of a problem, but that's been solved for a while now. No difference in sound between a class A/B and a class D. I've heard good things about the Kenwoods, not used one myself. The DSP appears decent...doesn't appear as detailed as some outboard processors or the Zapco DC's, but definitely an improvement over having none and the features are definitely useful. They are a little less powerful output wise than I prefer to use. What's your budget for amps/processing?

Honestly, I would have to say the old crappy Lanzar Vibe. Can't remember the model # anymore, just remember it was a 4-channel that I used to power a pair of 12" Kicker Comps (back when all of Kicker's subs were circular). Why? Nostalgia mainly. I was a n00b, it was a much simpler time. Lanzar was "higher end" to me. It was the first time I felt I was buying a "real" amplifier (ha!). No worrying about all of the physics and acoustics involved; you just tossed a sub in whatever prefab enclosure you had, set the gain and bass boost as high as it would go without kicking the amplifier into protect, sat in your driveway watching your rearview mirror vibrate, then drove as fast as you could across town to your buddy's house to hit the strip and cruise town showing off. That amplifier was completely wrong for my setup, but I had no idea. Believe it or not, I beat the shit out of that amp and it never once gave up the ghost. I even ran it for a few weeks with two channels bridged into a 2ohm load.....it would only play for a couple minutes before going into protect (and I was too ignorant to know why), but man did that thing beat when it played. First time I turned it on wired like that, it knocked a speaker and some tools off the wall in my dad's garage about 15' away. I about jizzed myself. It was magical to me at the time.

I've not used the Q or LMS-R, really I haven't heard anything about the LMS-R. The Q seems to be well liked by most as a good sounding driver with good output capabilities. It's a standard overhung driver. I know some SQ guys were using them, and Scott Buwalda had a custom Q built that he had intended to use in his car. Other drivers within your budget I would consider are the AE AV12, SSA Icon, JBL W12Gti, JL 12w6v2 (may be within your budget). The IA Flatlyne has had some good reviews as well, it's an underhung driver. There are some other options as well, depending on how strong you want/need the output to be. They don't have quite the excursion of the drivers I've listed, but are also less expensive. As for TC, Thilo bought back some of his patents at the bankruptcy liquidation sale and is back to producing drivers under the TC name.