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Epique E180-HE tested in this month's voice coil
A bit dissapointing, to be frank. The 3rd order distortion is a dealbreaker for me in what's meant to be a premium, state of the art driver.
this is at 94db, 12.1v
Comments
Perhaps there's a reason Dayton label these as subwoofers. As a subwoofer, it actually performs rather well, just too bad that they didn't make them subwoofer sized.
for comparison, a purifi woofer (yes I know its $$$, but Dayton themselves have compared the epique to it)
also 94db, but more efficient, so only needed 7.4v
next the Misco 'Bold North' BWX 6502
94db, 7.54v
finally, the old standby exodus anarchy
also 94db, voltage unstated
to be fair, in the IMD test that Bushmaster/Bushinski fellow on diyaudio and the FB group posted, the Epique appears to generally be second only to the purifis. But I'm surprised the 3rd order is so bad, given the other drivers are all substantially closer to xmax at that level.
Wonder if they got the color legend backwards. Seems all the other drivers have the 2nd following the THD.🤷🏼♂️
Disappointing considering the E150's performance
content://com.android.chrome.FileProvider/images/screenshot/16513490547531073654412.jpg
Often in distortion plots, you can double check their labels my looking at the top end cutoff of the curve. 2nd order will generally stop at about 10K, and 3rd order will generally stop at about 7K. Looks like all these labels are accurate.
My sentiments exactly! I'm not hating on PE or Dayton here at all, in fact I was quite excited when I saw the new issue was out and tested this driver. I had been considering a pair of these as a woofer section comparable to say, a single WO24p or that new Wavecor wf275 they tested a few months ago. That models comparably, but doesn't seem to hit the same performance level, and it seems hard to justify the cost when the Anarchy exists at 1/2 the price. And some of the hype hinted that these could be used like a budget purifi in a SOTA 2-way, 80% of the performance at 30% of the price kind of thing. Doesn't look like that's the case either. Too bad, still a useful & decent value driver, just much less so than I hoped.
My next question would be how often do you listen to your system at 120bB?
What??
Huh??
All those measurements are above 100dB, peaking upwards of 120, no?
Generally AudioXpress / Voice Coil tests at 94dB@1m, which is reasonable general use volume. The charts just aren't SPL adjusted.
FYI an average 6.5" 8 ohm speaker making 120dB@1m would require about 2000W and would certainly self destruct.
They do look that way, which is why I noted the SPL and Voltage. Here's the way they describe the measurement conditions:
Well that's dumb. Why wouldn't the chart of a measurement by a reputable company or person not be correctly headered?🤷🏼♂️
I see now what is meant by having to state it's at 94dB, but is stupid that I can't look at the scale and understand what's being done. Now does that mean the distortion percentage scale is correct? ...or do I have to read somewhere that someone has verification to what I'm looking at is in fact what it's supposed to be?🙄
So let me see if I have this correct. The actual measurements were made at a distance of 10cm, not 1 meter. So the SPL's on the graphs are correct. Entering this into an on-line calculator, 94dB at 1 meter is equal to 114dB at 10cm. Would this be correct?
https://www.sonitron.be/calculation-tools/spl-distance-calculator/
Agreed that VC makes some real head-scratcher decisions when it comes to measuring and presenting the data. I'm not sure how much of the way the graphs come out is their discretion, and how much is the software they use, which I'm not familiar with. My personal pet peeve is that the distortion % graphs often have different scales between driver tests, both X and Y axes, and it makes direct comparisons a bit tough. Wish they would release raw data so someone could normalize them all.
I do appreciate that they state the measurement conditions, and mostly try to keep them constant across like drivers. But the overall impression is, as you say, not what you'd expect from a professional operation. More semi-pro maybe
What were the voltage and dB results for xmax + 15% ? Wonder if it trails the E150 there too.
I believe this is what you're looking for but not 100% sure, these look like modeled, not measured, numbers to me:
Yep. The real downside is that 110-120dB is approaching the limits of most condenser mics, so you can start introducing mic distortion as well. The Listen SCM mic has the following specs:
Max SPL: 134 dB
Distortion: 126 dB SPL peak (<1% THD)
I find the calculators at Sengpielaudio come in handy on many occasions, I use the ones for SPL over distance and distortion dB to percent a lot, because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to do math.
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-distance.htm
Thanks - monsters in terms of voltage and output. Sure seems confined to subwoofer duty due to the distortion though. The E150 is interesting but then you need the PRs and it's suddenly a pricey proposition