Below is a measurement of my previous Scan Speak Illuminator 12MU8731T00

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That was… and still is, Scan Speak’s top offering for pure mid-range duty. As of May 2018, the newer Ellipticor series only offers mid-bass and only comes in 18cm and bigger. Maybe in few years, an Ellipticor 12cm version will be released.

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Have a glance at the datasheet. It’s quite good. That model was my favorite mid-range by far, until I blew one up. (and it had stiff competition to get on top position, I've had the SBA Satori and the infamous Yamaha NS100's  3" berylium dome in comparison)

Mind you, I haven't tried it against the Accuton ceramic offering and before I blew the 12MU8731, buying a set of Accuton was in the plans.

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Here’s the manufacturer’s datasheet:

http://www.scan-speak.dk/datasheet/pdf/12mu-8731t00.pdf

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If you spend some time on my website, you’ll know that I blew up one illuminator and never ordered a replacement.

This hiccup made me do a 180 shift in my philosophy and made me vow to the high efficiency. 

I then sold my second, still good unit. Pictures of the blown one and internal assembly are elsewhere on my site, see: "Blown stuff"

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Despite being quite advanced in design and spectacular sounding, its only 12cm diameter and can only move so much air. Therefore, the unit has a very finite maximum SPL at which it can safely play at. Its only 87 dB efficient so it needs lot of power. I exceeded this power limit quite frequently, so the inevitable was doomed to happen and I burned a voice coil.

 

I blew one unit pushing up to 4 times the rated RMS power. After more calculations, I've realized that I’d need four 12cm mid-ranges per side and would still be "borderline" as of not much headroom. Going bigger than a 12cm mid-range would help, but bring other compromises and adding an "MTM" or "MMTMM" combination wasn't exactly in the plans.

 

I've explored alternate solutions (namely horns) to suit my difficult needs. Once I jumped on the horn bandwagon, there was no turning back. As good as the 12MU8731 was, quality compression drivers mounted on big modern horns flare were just superior, by an immense margin to the Scan Speak... Sorry if I burst your bubble, I prefer honesty over flattery.

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• The measurement below was done about 5" away from the dust cap to eliminate room acoustics as much as possible.​     

• No EQ was  added, and I ran the test full range to show the most of the driver.

• It was mounted into my infinite baffle system. ("U" shaped enclosure)

• Not a true open baffle though, as the unit was mounted inside a 22 pound cinder block (see picture) which created a small 6" U shaped of 7" x  7"  internal dimension. I stuffed loose fiberglass inside this cavity to avoid resonance.

• I'm fairly certain this cavity wasn't causing measurement artifacts, so keep this in mind when interpreting the data.