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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?
128x128cellcbern

Showing 2 responses by timlub

timlub
2,039 posts
 
Hi guys, I've been out of pocket for about a week, just saw this. 
@cellcbern  up front, I need to say that I've never heard your speaker... But, I have played with this 3 inch Tang Band and it is very good indeed. 
I agree completely with Erik about the 2K crossover point. In fact, might even argue that the 535 hz crossover quoted above could be harder to negotiate because it is clearly in the middle of the male and female vocals both.  In the end,  it is really up to the designer to be able to seamlessly integrate the drivers being used and as you have eluded to,  many cannot make that integration. 
timlub
2,039 posts
 
I don't remember it all perfectly, but I recall that the 3 inch or the 4 inch Tang Bands either one needed to be crossed around 200 on bottom and their  maximum usable frequency to keep within very tight tolerances was about 5k.... again on either 3 or 4 inch full range bamboo driver.  I guess that I could have played with other models, but at the time, there wasn't a lot of choices,  but from 200 to 5k, they were fabulous, easy enough to build a world class speaker. 
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