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So many drivers.....better sound or just more sound?

I am sitting in Seattle cut off from my job by the virus: the world all around me is going nutsy....so naturally my mind drifted to the question....."why so many drivers in some speakers?"  This has bugged me since i first heard the Pipedreams (twenty or so 4 inch drivers all the same in a row.... such a different design principle.  I would think you would want the best driver you could afford for a given application....cover the frequency range as accurately as you can afford and then worry about volume level, air moved etc.  For instance, i heard some McIntosh speakers at a friend's house a few months back.  they had 12 mids and 4 high drivers if i remember.  I guess maybe a bigger sound stage ?  That wan't obvious to me in my listening to them.   Am i missing something obvious?   Legacy speakers use like 11 drivers in a set of speakers.....how can they do that?  I would love to know the cost per driver of various speakers.    Not a deep subject but,  i am addled by rain, boredom and the fear that my 401 k is gone..........
Thanks
sm2727

Showing 2 responses by georgehifi

georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
2 and 1/2 way speakers?  What is the 1/2?

When they say 1/2 it usually means say you have a tweeter and then two identical 6" drivers that both go from low bass 40hz to say 500hz upper bass/lower-mids, then one of those bass drivers rolls off at that 500hz where the other one keep going to service mid range and upper midrange to 2.7khz then the tweeter comes in.

Cheers George  
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
So many drivers.....better sound or just more sound?
Or just BS.
Ask your self this, how can that many, even "expensive" let alone "cheap" mechanical pistonic drivers "operate in perfect unison" with each other, at up to 20,000 in/out movements in a second!!.
Ask this of them without them being perfectly matched to each other, electrically and mechanically and then have to be used in the same controlled environment they were matched in??.

Cheers George
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