Are coaxial cabs better, and why..?

rednebb

Inspired
I've noticed that both FBT Verve 12 MA (and 8MA), which previously were widely considered the best FRFR active cabs for the Axe-Fx here on the forum, and the current new favourite RCF NX 12-SMA, are coaxial. Is this just a coincidence, or do coaxial speakers for some reason work better with the Axe-Fx, and why? And are there also any decent low budget coaxial active speakers out there, for those of us who can't afford the RCF's quite yet..?
 
It's not a matter of working better with the Axe-Fx, they have less directivity, and thus more even response over a wider area.
 
Yeah, as my buddy said shortly after I got my first 12ma, "That thing is EVERYWHERE, man!"
The spread is amazing, it's not "beamy" at all, and it pretty much sounds the same no matter where you stand until you start to get physically behind it.
 
The Verve has 90x90 degrees, the NX 60x60, but coaxials sound the same wherever you are within that range.
And they have no phase issues caused by time delays that (badly designed) "normal" multiway speakers have.
 
For perspective, coaxial cabs tend to be less efficient, all else being equal. This is probably one of the big reasons you see multi-speaker cabs more often in sound reinforcement applications.

Terry.
 
Ketil,

I live in Norway too and just ordered the RCF from Thomann in Germany. 943 Euros plus MVA, far better than the almost 3K Euro the Norwegian distributor would like to rip from you.

Dan
 
For perspective, coaxial cabs tend to be less efficient, all else being equal. This is probably one of the big reasons you see multi-speaker cabs more often in sound reinforcement applications.
Terry.

What do you mean by "less efficient" exactly?
I was wondering about that: if coaxial speakers are that good, why are there so few of them on the market..?
Interestingly enough, after searching the internet for more info on coaxial speakers in general I found this; "As a general rule, component speaker systems are of better quality, although some coaxial speakers can be quite good. People use coaxial speakers because they tend to be less expensive"
Hm.. This doesn't quite fit the Verves and the RCFs, now, does it..?

Hey Ketil... couldn't you just sell one of your 8,000 guitars! :)

No.. I haven't sold a guitar for over 20 years, and after that I promised myself to never sell one again ;-)
(Btw, I only have around 30..;-)

Ketil,

I live in Norway too and just ordered the RCF from Thomann in Germany. 943 Euros plus MVA, far better than the almost 3K Euro the Norwegian distributor would like to rip from you.

Dan

Yeah, I've seen them on Thomann, but they're still way over my budget at the moment..
 
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What do you mean by "less efficient" exactly?
I was wondering about that: if coaxial speakers are that good, why are there so few of them on the market..?
My comment was about the sound pressure level they can produce. For example, Tannoy PowerV8 and PowerV12 wedges are rated at lower SPL's than other comparable product. That said, the RCF NX12-SMA seems to be in there with the rest.

Terry.
 
rednebb, the last paragraph in this post may be of interest to you . . .

http://forum.fractalaudio.com/amps-...-guitar-sound-over-real-sound.html#post345222

Terry.

Ok, so according to this (if I understood this correctly), coaxial speakers are the only way to go with the Axe-FX then? (quote from Jay Mitchell's post) :
"Now, here's the key issue: the greatest obstacle to "amp in the room" sound from an Axe-Fx is the accuracy and uniformity of response from the monitor. Any monitor that will get loud enough without being overdriven has more dynamic range than the guitar. See the definition of "dynamic range" above. In order to achieve suitable uniformity of response, a two way speaker must be coaxial. There is no escaping this result of the laws of physics. While the coaxial configuration is no guarantee of uniformity, it must be present for that to even be possible"
If this is the case, I wonder why doesn't the Atomic Reactor FR, which previously was the "official" Axe-Fx amp/cab, have a coaxial speaker? (for the record, I tried out two FRatomics for a while, but I wasn't quite happy with them..)
 
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If this is the case, I wonder why doesn't the Atomic Reactor FR, which previously was the "official" Axe-Fx amp/cab, have a coaxial speaker? (for the record, I tried out two FRatomics for a while, but I wasn't quite happy with them..)

My guess to this would be price... I asked Tom quite a wile ago why he didn't chose to go with a coaxial speaker and he just said that they are not the only way to git the job done. If I had the extra time and money I would love to gut the speakers out of a Reactor and install a coax just to hear what it would sound like.
 
The biggest advantage of coaxial speakers is the fact that they come close to the theoretical ideal of having all sound radiate from a single point in space. With the usual side-by-side or over/under configuration, the highs are coming from one place, and the lows are coming from another. And in the crossover part of the spectrum, the same signal is coming from two places at once. You get partial phase cancellations and variations in timing that mess up the frequency response, and the phase cancellations are different at different points in the room.

The reason you don't see many coaxial designs is that it's more expensive to manufacture a good coaxial driver; they're more mechanically complex.
 
My guess to this would be price... I asked Tom quite a wile ago why he didn't chose to go with a coaxial speaker and he just said that they are not the only way to git the job done. If I had the extra time and money I would love to gut the speakers out of a Reactor and install a coax just to hear what it would sound like.

The reason you don't see many coaxial designs is that it's more expensive to manufacture a good coaxial driver; they're more mechanically complex.

Ok, this is a bit confusing to me, since I recently read on the internet about coaxial speakers in general that (quote): "As a general rule, component speaker systems are of better quality, although some coaxial speakers can be quite good. People use coaxial speakers because they tend to be less expensive"..??
 
Ok, this is a bit confusing to me, since I recently read on the internet about coaxial speakers in general that (quote): "As a general rule, component speaker systems are of better quality, although some coaxial speakers can be quite good. People use coaxial speakers because they tend to be less expensive"..??

Could you maybe link to where you read that?

Jens
 
I found the article. Here is a partial quote:

"Coaxial speakers are speakers which include a woofer with a tweeter suspended over the woofer...Coaxial speakers are commonly seen in car audio systems..."​

The author is talking about inexpensive coaxial speakers intended for use in an automobile. They don't work very well as Axe-FX monitors. :)

They're just an HF driver and an LF driver stacked on top of each other. A good coaxial speaker has the tweeter mounted inside the woofer's voice coil so you don't have one speaker obscuring the other one. That's a more difficult engineering feat.


By the way, Ketil, your YouTube videos are one of the reasons I first bought an Axe-FX. Lovely work, covering a huge range of styles.
 
I found the article. Here is a partial quote:

"Coaxial speakers are speakers which include a woofer with a tweeter suspended over the woofer...Coaxial speakers are commonly seen in car audio systems..."​

The author is talking about inexpensive coaxial speakers intended for use in an automobile. They don't work very well as Axe-FX monitors. :)

They're just an HF driver and an LF driver stacked on top of each other. A good coaxial speaker has the tweeter mounted inside the woofer's voice coil so you don't have one speaker obscuring the other one. That's a more difficult engineering feat.


By the way, Ketil, your YouTube videos are one of the reasons I first bought an Axe-FX. Lovely work, covering a huge range of styles.


Thanks!
Yes, I know the article I quoted wasn't specifically referring to the kind of active cabs we're talking about here on this forum, but I thought coaxial speakers were coaxial speakers, and that this could be said about them in general. But apparently it's not that easy.. ;-)
 
It's never that easy. :) If it were, I'd be a superb guitarist after two months of practice, comfortably retired after two months of well-paid concerts.
 
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