Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems D6K mid range replacement driver.

Hi chaps,

I'm thinking of replacing my mids again on my 3 x D6ks. This time with Scan Speak Illuminators 18WU/8741T00, it's a tight fit, they are horribly expensive but they have amazing voice coil excursion and a underhung neo motor, detail is excellent.

Any body else involved in something similar?
Roger

No, but as usual I feel the need to point out that Meridian performs frequency response correction in DSP. I can't remember though if the mid-range is included in this correction.

I wouldn't touch at all a DSP speaker as you only can make it worser even when you have "better" driver. It's not a simple game here.

What should can a better chassis make here?

When you change a driver, you have no access to adjust parameters correct, you only can make a sound what you "prefer" but you are destroying now a optimized system. You are changing timing, phase, amplitude frequency range and you are expect that that will sound better when you have no "tool" to adjust/correct all that parameters?

When you want more "resolution" or better voices, start with basics like room acoustics, main power distribution, cables better equipment.

Tell me what's "wrong" with your sound, the status of your room your mains, your cables your musical preference and maybe we can help.

Of coarse you can do what you want, but I would be very careful to make things like exchanging a driver.

Robert

I've done it before, with good results.
I Didn't like the Peerless phase plug driver so I went Scan Speak and it was a good match and sounded better imho.

Cables, PSU, don't ring my bell, especially with D6Ks!
Some parameters can be tweaked.

Meridian use surprising cheap drivers in their very expensive loudspeakers.
I would replace the rather soggy woofers for Volts but there are 12 of em! So the mids it will be.

Where is your sense of adventure Robert?

Brits are essentially tweakers, these speakers are 20 years old.
Roger

Roger,

I'd be careful, like others have suggested. The 18W/8741 has a strong resonance at 3-6kHz which most manufacturers would control for in their design. In addition, you're going to be most sensitive at this frequency region to any imbalances in the response.

Saying that, Scanspeak do make outstanding drive units.

Which drivers did you use before as a replacement btw?

Tim

Perhaps that presence peak and excursion of the voice coil is the reason for its detail resolution !
However crossovers with the tweeter are normally below this peak and have v steep 24 dB per octave attenuation.
Roger

Roger,
The crossover is designed for a specific drive unit and it is the combined response of both the driver and the crossover which determines the actual output level. If your new driver is 10dB higher at a certain frequency than your old one, the resulting output will also be 10dB higher.
Tim

I had a conversation with a gentleman who designs loudspeakers for a living, and he basically echoed what you said Roger about Meridian using relatively cheap drivers considering the cost of a DSP speaker. Not a jab at Meridian because the final product is amazing, but something to keep in mind for those who would like to experiment with replacement drivers.

I don't think this is necessarly a good idea. Those drivers have high mass, low sensitivity, high compliance and long excursion - qualities of a small bass driver, not a mid driver.

For what its worth, I don't think bass drivers should be used for the mid, and mid drivers shouldn't be used for bass.

For this application, the design will be compromised by the need for high compliance, so the cone surround won't have good termination properties for high frequencies - witness the low system resonance and the high-frequncy break-up.

I don't think we should assume that Meridian's original design is always beyond reproach, or that drivers will never wear out, but I expect there are better options than this.

Nick

Exactly. You need to find a good match in terms of sensitivity to the original driver before anything else. I'm not of the opinion that M's DSP response correction does all that much (room effects will dominate the FR) but if you put a +/-3dB driver into a DSP you will hear a totally different sonic presentation.

I think it was always a mid/bass driver
Mids are normally 3-5 inch
Xover is 2.6kHz for the tweeter
Bass is 4th order Butterworth ?
Probably below 200 Hz?
There is +/- 1.5 dB tweak on bass and treble
The soggy bass from the 4 drivers might mask the Illuminator improvements,only installation will show.
Roger

Soggy bass is a misnomer, all bass is "soggy", just listen to the woofer on it's own. It is the integration of the woofer with the other drive units that makes bass sound "fast".

-Tim