Electro-Voice DH2T
A two-inch titanium compression driver that working sound companies treated as a building block, not a showpiece.
Overview
The DH2T doesn't get its own display shelf. It is a two-inch titanium-diaphragm high-frequency compression driver, and it earned its reputation by showing up inside Electro-Voice's working loudspeaker systems and doing the hard part without complaint. Collectors who know these drivers mostly know them because they pulled one out of a wedge or a flown array, not because they bought one on its own.
The systems Electro-Voice built around the DH2T show what it is. The T221M biampable two-way floor monitor, which the company introduced as the first floor monitor in its T-Series line, carries the DH2T alongside a cast-frame twelve-inch woofer. The monitor is rated for 400 watts long-term power handling and a frequency response of 100-20,000 Hz (±3 dB), with the woofer rated for 1,600 watts peak. The DH2T handles everything above the crossover. EQ Magazine (December 1997, p.118) reviewed the T221M and noted that its high frequencies are handled by a DH2T compression driver of the type Electro-Voice also uses in its professional front-of-house systems. So the driver was a shared, system-level component, not a one-off.
The Sx500+ is a similar case. That 400-watt, fifteen-inch two-way constant-directivity box pairs a DL15Sx woofer with the DH2T and an asymmetric 75° x 60° high-frequency horn, covering 60 Hz to 16 kHz. So the DH2T turns up in both a low-profile floor wedge and a full-range install box.
Titanium is the headline material. A titanium diaphragm is chosen for stiffness and heat tolerance under sustained high-level use, and the DH2T's two-inch format puts it in the larger-format class of compression drivers. Electro-Voice also kept it in rotation well past the systems above. A later Crown/Electro-Voice specification sheet lists the DH2T as the high-frequency transducer in the Sx600, a 600-watt continuous, 2,400-watt peak two-way with a 65° x 65° constant-directivity waveguide and 105 dB sensitivity. The same document lists the DH2T as the two-inch titanium HF driver in a weather-resistant dual-element line array rated for 139 dB max SPL.
The Sx500+ and the T221M both employ the company's PRO (or PRD) circuitry to guard the compression driver against accidental overload, and both are biampable. That protection circuit is the difference between a driver that survives a bad night and one that does not. The T221M's cabinet is built from curved ¾-inch 12-ply plywood with a textured black finish, a low-profile wedge meant to nearly disappear on stage.
In the documented record, the DH2T is not a standalone consumer product with its own price tag and spec sheet. It appears as a component inside systems. Buyers chasing one today are usually after a replacement or a spare for a T221M, an Sx500+, or another Electro-Voice box that used it, and they should confirm the exact host system before assuming a given DH2T will drop in.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.