Quote Originally Posted by harley .guy07
Ferrite magnets and neo magnets are both good and have their places, On headphones I would see neo being the way to go for weight reasons. I have been a bass player for quite some time and when the new cabinets came out with neo magnets they were really cool because they offered the same magnetic power as ferrite at a fraction of the weight and were easy to tote around for gigs. When they first came out though they had not found a way to cool these magnet structures down when playing bass cabinets at higher levels and the drivers would fail due to heat so most people went back to Ferrite magnet drivers on there bass cabs. now that they have been out a while they have found a way to heat sink the neo magnets so this does not happen and they are on par with their ferrite magnet counterparts and your typical 4 by 10" driver bass cabinet weighs around 45 to 50 pounds for a neo cab and around 100 pounds for a ferrite driver loaded cab. I think neo is just as good motor structure wise as ferrite now and a whole lot less weight. neo magnets started with car tweeters so they could make a 1" tweeter that would fit in a cars windshield pillars and other places that a ferrite magnet tweeter of the same power would not fit and it became popular for that reason but heat was a problem for them as well so they had to engineer ways to cool them down but it today's speaker world neo is a good magnet material and is quite fine to use for just about any driver out there and for me as a bass player that has toted around heavy ass cabinets for years love the weight difference that these kind of drivers make to this kind of environment so I figured with headphones the difference would be equal.
Very nice response - great perspective.