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Rosefinch The Rosefinch is based on the Peerless NE180W-08 midwoofer. I’ve never worked nor heard this woofer before but I do have the bigger brother, the NE265W-04. That 10″ woofer has the best bass I’ve ever heard. Very dynamic, tight and full of details. I’m hoping that this 6-1/2″ version will exhibit the same bass character.
Fig 1 is the RAW response of the Peerless NE180W-08. It looks similar to the datasheet. At 1.5kHz, it starts to slope downwards. At 3kHz, the cone breaks up.
The Blue plot in Fig 2 is the NE180W with a 2nd order low pass filter. The break-up peak at 3.5kHz is lowered now by -13dB.
The Red plot in Fig 3 is the Peerless XT25TG35-04 with a 2nd order filter. The two drivers are crossing at about 1.9kHz.
The summing of the NE180W and the XT25TG30-04 looks good. No cancellations are observed in the crossover passband (Black plot in Fig 4).
The Rosefinch final frequency response is in Fig 5. It is relatively flat within +/- 2.5dB. Due to limitations of my room, the measurements below 500Hz are in Nearfield.
The Null Response in Fig 6 doesn’t show a deep notch in the crossover. If I hear phasing issues during auditioning, I will have to work further on the crossover. Meanwhile, I shall leave it as it is. Sometimes, one has to sacrifice technical perfection for the sake of sound quality.
The plots in 7,8 and 9 do not do not show anything out of the ordinary. The Spectrogram in Fig 10 recorded some excess energy at 1kHz and 1.3kHz but they dissipate by 6 msec.
The Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) is about -50dB below the fundamental. The 2nd and 3rd harmonics reside lower at -55dB. It’s encouraging to see the 2nd harmonics (Red plot) dominates the 3rd (Violet plot). Sound of RosefinchThe Rosefinch is one of the best 6-1/2″ 2-ways I have. The bass is incredible. Fast, dynamic and full of detail. The challenge with the Rosefinch is in the voicing and tonality. Too much bass and it overwhelms the mids and highs. Too much mids and the bass is lost. It took me a while to find the right balance but once I got it, it’s bliss all the way. As is customary when I’m testing out bass, I played UFO (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones). The bass in Magic Fingers is fast and I can clearly make out the texture in the bass notes. This kind of bass is very difficult to get. I know of only two drivers that can do this, the Peerless NE265W-04 and the Scanspeak 15WU. If you’re looking for something better than the Cardinal-XT2, this Rosefinch is the one. Highly recommended. Unless otherwise stated, all measurements were made with the mic at 36 ins, tweeter axis. Impulse Window=5ms. No smoothing applied. |
December 4, 2020HIFI DRIVERS, Projects
Fig 1 – Peerless NE180W-08 RAW Response • Baffle Width=8-1/2″
Fig 2 – Peerless NE180W-08 with Low Pass Filter (LPF)
Fig 3 – Blue plot=Peerless NE180W-08 with LPF • Peerless XT25TG30-04 with HPF
Fig 6 – Rosefinch Null Response
Fig 7 – Rosefinch Step Response
Fig 8 – Rosefinch Waterfall
Fig 9 – Rosefinch Toneburst Energy Storage
Fig 10 – Rosefinch Spectrogram
Fig 11 – Rosefinch Harmonic Distortion