True high-end Speakers need a midrange


To be clear, I don’t mean expensive, I mean high performing.

I recently built a new center speaker for my home theater and as I was comparing/contrasting design alternatives between a variety of designs, everything from expensive DIY designs to Wilson, Legacy, ATC and Focal and others the thing that stood out the most was this:

  • You can’t get high output AND low distortion without a midrange driver.

I say this as a person who has had pretty good success with 2-way speakers and really admire 2-ways from Fritz and others, but when push came to shove, there was no way to make a 2-way with very high output AND low distortion AND excellent off-axis performance without a midrange driver.

You can push many tweeters down to 2kHz or even a tad below but it is very hard to find a tweeter that will do so with low distortion at high volume. On the other hand there are many 1" domes which will perform excellently when crossed over at 3 kHz or higher even when driven hard, things you don’t see from a frequency response plot, or really any measurements from Stereophile which never plots dynamic range charts. It’s not just about the frequency response and imaging, sometimes it is about doing all of that under pressure that matters.

Similar, complementary issues are true for the woofer in a 2-way design.  First, good mid-woofers with good frequency responses through 2-4kHz are expensive, but as you push the crossover up 7" drivers and larger have to beam, right in the middle of the midrange.  Instead of a wide open sound stage you can hear anywhere they restrict where you can sit.

In a large, full range speaker you can push your design for high output even further by going with a 5" midrange for instance.  Not quite as wide as the 4" counterparts but lots of power handling and plenty of overlap with the tweeter and woofers. 

erik_squires

Perlisten audio has created a excellent design that is accurate, musical and can play very loud if need be ,and very unique the wave guide has a tweeter, but also 2 opposing 1 inch drivers that do midrange duties a very well thought out design 

far more accurate and precision then speakers ,i won5 T mention the  brand -S for example That throws a bunch of drivers around . Inside I helped rebuilt  one ,their top beryllium was the-only one that 

measured decent if you have not heard the Perlisten line you absolutely should 

this includes the smoother R line , the S line is their most accurate per se.

I may buy their R7  and as I always do with most every speaker  mod the Xover to even higher quality parts . I Donot know them, but have spoken with engineers ,just see their waterfall plots very good ,even more so then many speakers 2-3x their cost.

Centre channel is for dialogue more than anything else. To me that spells ESL. I use a Quad 2905, and it is excellent.

impulse at various SPL will tell you what you need to know. The german laser scanner of the cone will tell you why. This of course, if the definition of true high end = accurate to the input signal.

The mid range will make come speakers play louder for sure. Horns are another way to push down the tweeter to under 1000hz effectively without limiting volume as the driver moves a lot less.