Interim Conclusions:
- The Aura scores with wider dispersion but the Peerless has a well controlled and uniform off-axis behavior. It needs to be verified how the dispersion pattern of the Peerless mates with the Seas woofer section of my design approach.
- The Peerless’ >3 dB extra in sensitivity are beneficial.
- The Peerless has better distortion ratings (not visible here). Ref. Hobby Hifi magazine 2/2006 (Aura) and 4/2009 (Peerless). The diagrams there are visually similar but the Aura was measured @80dB sound pressure and the Peerless @90dB.
- The Aura has a greater xmax (+-1.8mm vs. +-1.45mm). But this is no real advantage when operated only 1KHz and up.
- The wider bandwidth of the Peerless is nice from an engineering point of view but is most likely no striking audible advantage over the Aura.
For the folks out there, who would like to build a Pluto but have problems with obtaining the Aura, which is not easily available in all countries: The Peerless is obviously no drop-in replacement for the Aura. It requires different equalization, leveling and mounting. All this is no rocket science but probably needs skills beyond rookie level, especially the equalization. This has to be applied with great care because as you can see, it is only required on axis and theoretically less and less off axis (aka diffraction- / baffle step correction).
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