All speakers have a little EQ built in


It may come as a shock to audio purists but part of the work of a crossover is level matching as well as tonal adjustments of individual drivers.  Ahem.  That's what we call equalization. 

This is true whether the speaker uses active or passive crossover, and may be in place just to adjust phase matching in the crossover range.

Also, curiously, while companies may brag about the number of parts in their crossovers, more parts does not indicate more quality.  It may just indicate more equalization had to be done to the drivers to get them to match. 

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by james633

Yes for sure. 
 

I tend to think drivers that need a lot of smoothing through crossover parts get robbed of some of their sensitivity which results in heat build up and loss of dynamics. Good drivers are super important, far more important than fancy box materials and crossover parts (all things matter though). 
 

As for target curves I am on board with Harman’s studies of about 5db in room slope from 200khz-20khz. That seems to work well in my room. Oddly I think Harman’s headphone curve is crap and far too bass heavy.