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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Getting to a wideband driver that can cleanly do upper frequencies (above approx 3k to maybe 10k) is an art that few driver designers can meet.

It's very tough to do, with regard to being capable in all directions required. Generally...the more wideband a driver is... the more restricted it is in some vital areas.

Some/most are very aurally sensitive to the distortions created in these drivers that attempt such wideband behaviour, and this is why you don't see many of them out there.

For example, the crossovers in white van speakers generally run the midrange drivers wide open on the top. You don't see anyone crowing about how good they sound.

It's a complex subject, but the point remains that wide band drivers with all the requisite capacities are exceedingly rare, and pretty well all have shortcomings of some sort..