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Crossoverless Speakers - Ultimate Solution ?

I have a pair of speakers which have NO crossover, except for a rather large Mundorf capacitor on the ribbon tweeter. The speaker up until last week contained a resister, but even that was removed by the manufacturer. Now the sound on this two-way horn loaded speaker with a custom made 8" woofer it really great. The speaker has a tremendous amount of detail, with NO hint of harshness what so ever.

The efficiency is around 96 dB with a minimum impedance of around 8 ohms (average is around 10 to 12 ohms).

In light of my current findings, is it possible for a conventional loudspeaker with crossovers, regardless of cost to have as much detail and air as what I'm finding.

I must say I've yet to hear a speaker retrieve as much detail without glare or the dreaded forward or treble emphasized tweeter tricking you into thinking there is more detail.

The down side to all this is obviously the lack of a good bottom end to help balance the speaker. A matching active sub-woofer would no doubt help in this regard.

Any thoughts ?
clipsal

Showing 3 responses by macrojack

macrojack
1,303 posts
 
The best crossover being no crossover is indeed a good theory. And I have a pair of speakers that prove the theory has become fact. So I can believe what Clipsal is saying.
Whenever a big advance comes along there are always "experts" on hand to explain in lofty and technical terminology why it cannot possibly work.
If eventually the "experts" are forced to relax their objections to a novel speaker technology, someone else will appear to lament that they are not available in Peruvian Feathered Scrub Oak veneer, or that they don't stand on the optimum number of spikes, or the binding posts aren't thick enough or they are too thick. Or the speakers aren't tri-ampable because they are a two-way. There's always a problem if you aren't a Recommended Component.

macrojack
1,303 posts
 
Eldartford - Right you are. Crossoverless design was the original approach. Originally speakers were used for speech and did not require much bandwidth. Later when music reproduction inevitably emerged as a goal, greater frequency extension was sought and multiple driver designs were attempted. The crossover (deal with the devil) was invented to assign frequency ranges to specialized drivers called woofers and tweeters.
In recent years successful wide bandwidth drivers have become available enabling certain progressive manufacturers to eliminate crossovers or move them to the extremes of the frequency range.
While this works very well in some cases, it has been rejected out of hand by many audiophiles. Go figure.
macrojack
1,303 posts
 
Clipsal - It seems that you already have your answer. Buy that sub and cross it over as low as you can.
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