Why Aren't More Speaker Designers Building Augmented Widebanders?


Over the years I've owned a number of different speakers - KLH, Cerwin Vega, Polk, Opera Audio, Ars Aures, and Merlin VSM. One thing they all had in common was a crossover point in the 2000 hz (+ or -) range. I've read reviews of speakers where the reviewer claimed to be able to hear the crossover point, manifested as some sort of discontinuity. I've never heard that. My Merlin VSM's for example sounded completely seamless. Yet my new Bache Audio Metro 001 speakers, with a single wideband driver covering the range of 400 hz to 10,000 hz, augmented by a woofer and a super tweeter, sounds different from all of these other speakers. The midrange of the Bache 001's is cleaner, more coherent, more natural than I have heard before. Music flows from the speakers in a more relaxed manner, and subjectively dynamic range is greater, with no etch or brightness, and no loss of resolution compared with the Merlins. I have to conclude that Bache's design has an inherent advantage over more traditional designs with a crossover point or points in the midrange frequencies. I wonder why more speaker designers haven't tried this approach?
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Showing 1 response by lonemountain

ATC has been hand building a very wide band device for a long time, the 3 inch mid dome. 380 to 3500Hz. I believe its the widest band mid device of its kind and gets around some of the typical midrange narrowing issues by using a dome instead of a cone. A clever piece of well thought out engineering. The incredibly powerful motor and dual suspension avoid some of the "deal killer" issues of earlier wide domes.

There is a very good engineering reason to get the crossover points away from the 750-2500 area where so much is happening musically. Wherever there are two drivers in different locations producing the same sound at the same level you have an measurable/audible artifact in level (the dip at crossover) and dispersion (the narrowing at crossover). Polars always reveal these artifacts while audible issues with "sweet spot narrowing" are typically traced to this same issue. Having these artifacts show up at 1K or 1500 is a significant problem.  Speaker designs with 5 or 10 drivers in one speaker doing the same thing is a dispersion disaster; the live industry (where multiple drivers are required to meet SPL demands) have been working on this very issue for a long time.  Its logical that some of this digital steering and pattern control they have been applying over the last 10 years will make it's way into consumer at some point.    

A wide band discussion cant be had without mentioning the Manger driver, probably the best known wide band driver. I’ve heard one only a few times, and it didn’t compete sonically with a properly executed multiway loudspeaker in my experience.  But there are many who love it so there is something there.  It sure is interesting and one has the feeling that additional drivers operating at the extremes of the Manger could be a fun test to do.

Brad