8 inch replacement drivers, high quality

[Tomm Williams]

Anybody know if 8 inch mid-range drivers are available from any of the upper-scale companies such as EAW,Community,Danley. Something that represents a clear step up from Eminence. I know JBL has a higher line of stuff most of us "mere mortals" never see. anybody have any info?

[agedhorse]

What exactly is your application. Eminence has some products that are very difficult to beat depending on the application.

 

EAW, Community and Danley are not in the business of selling drivers, they sell complete systems.

[Tomm Williams]

Am currently using 2 pairs of Carvin trx153n 3-way cabs. As an option to selling and upgrading, was curious what 8 inch drivers might show a sound improvement. I may be one of the few people who actually like these cabs. Iv'e had them for awhile and always get positive comments on the sound.

anyways, always wondering how things can be improved.

[agedhorse]

IMO, you would be best served by replacing them with the original part. It's a good part for the application.

 

Different drivers, no matter how expensive, might not be an upgrade at all.

[boomerweps]

Do a search on TRX153 at the LAB on ProSoundWeb. The initial thoughts were that they were extremely great speakers for the price. THEN Evan started blowing up the mids. The mids didn't keep up with the top and bottom. The Carvin replacements 8" are now a different ohmage, don't know about any crossover changes. Anyways, other replacements are discussed, too.

 

Boomerweps

[allexcosta]

http://www.eighteensound.com/index.aspx?mainMenu=view_product&pid=229

[agedhorse]

Maybe another question is why Evan kept blowing up mids?

 

Was it a power-bandwidth issue, was it a sensitivity (or lack of) issue? There are so many variables that relate to the failure of a driver that without real analysis, it's just a bunch of wild assed guesses.

 

I designed a commercial speaker about 15 years ago in that similar format, it was a biamped or triamped model and what I discovered was that there were some really significant advantages to an active 24dB crossover on the mid driver's high pass filter and also, I determined that the required bandwidth was optimally just a little over an octave wide to achieve what I needed. That allowed me to use a lower powered but higher sensitivity driver that was choosen based on a better sound quality for my application. that driver was very similar to the Eminence driver in your cabinets, and I had a very low failure rate. In fact, there's a loal company with 16 of those boxes and he's still quite happy with them, though they are showing their age cosmetically. They probably have 1000 shows on them by now.

 

Do you know the crossover parameters being used for the mid band? Without these, or a willingness to change the cabinet, any driver substitution is a shot in the dark IMO.

 

Also, is the driver in it's own sub-enclosure or is it a sealed back unit? That will make a hugh difference, it must be acoustically isolated from the LF section one way or another.

[Unalaska]

What andy said, it may need to be a sealed back driver to work. Carvin may have needed this too but it's hard to say. It isn't about power handling but many factors.