About those Lii drivers. I own 2 pair. The F-15 and the Silver 6. I have not had the Silver 6s for long and at the moment I have really only had time to break them in. Not enough time to critically evaluate them. The F-15s, on the other hand, I have been working with for quite a while. Tried several open baffles. As large as Steve Dekert’s biggest with little success IMO. Never could get decent base response. Good for someone who listens to ‘wall of sound’ music but not for me. Then came some hybrid boxes and a tuned port mockup. All with limited success. On to the Acoustic suspension, which pictures of have been shown here. Fantastic soundstage, good punch but little rumble in the lower registers. Dennis and Straitwire punched a hole in his pair and a bass reflex was born, not as large as the drawings on Lii’s website. Heard those at the shop a couple weeks ago. Bass is through the floor, snappy and will rumble appropriately. Finally a cabinet that seems to bring the most out of this very unique driver. I have not had a chance to cut a hole in mine yet. Ports are on back order. So back to the driver. Like all full range single driver speakers I have heard, the point source presentation and soundstaging are not matched by most multi driver speakers. An exception is a coaxial design like the Altec 604 series which also does these well. Where the Altec and any crossovered speaker falls short in is phasing issues. Crossovers inherently delay signal which throws off the perfect phase alignment of a full range speaker driver. The good of the crossover is the flat response achieved which is where the rub comes in on the Lii drivers. Personal experience is that the drivers are not as flat as I would like. They are too articulate at certain mid-high frequencies and I find them fatiguing. A simple contour network (at least one with a capacitor) solves this but with a minor out of phase issue mentioned above. Dennis is following the line of the purist (no CN) single driver design but is currently struggling with the fatigue issue. I have a lower limit on sharpness incorporate a CN more readily than he. In the end the Lii F-15 is a pretty amazing driver. It makes no sense that a 15 driver without a flexible surround (paper cone is glued directly to the basket), and therefore no measurable cone displacement, can be as fast, articulate and offer bass response. [emoji848] I find this driver very engaging. I often cycle through several speakers in a weekend listening session and, depending on the genre, I most often end with the F-15 and a week long engagement with my system.
P.s. at 1/5 the price of a decent pair of 604s it is hard to compare on even footing. In the end I would like to have both but for now the F-15 is plenty fun and constantly has me in awe of my Inspire gear.
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