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Originally Posted by James63 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
sorry not true at all...... a single driver has fare more limitations than several drivers. Look at the top of the line speakers or better yet listen to them
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Don't roll your eyes. Obviously you don't know about acoustic engineering or speaker dynamics. Any professional acoustic engineer will tell you that the ideal set-up would be to use one superb speaker driver. There are several speaker companies devoted to making single speaker floorstanding units. Their only drawback is the bottom of the low frequencies, which they use a small subwoofer to compensate for, if you require. Using one driver for the speaker, which is usually an 8" or 9" cone, frequencies are reproduced from 40Hz - 20kHz. A subwoofer can be purchased optional to fill in the range from 20Hz - 60Hz where the frequencies are really rolled off, if preferred by the customer. When I have time, I will dig up some of these companies on the internet and post them here.
Keep in mind, you aren't using a speaker with a heavy magnet. You need the speaker to move fluidly, allow for fast transients, and reproduce all the frequencies as evenly as possible, just like a good headphone driver. More work is done on the cabinet itself to provide the acoustic properties necessary for the speaker to sound and perform well.
Yes, most companies use multiple drivers to seperate the frequency bands. The better your speakers and crossover matrix are, the less crossover bloat you will notice. But even in minute quantities, it is still measurable. This is because crossovers don't cut off at an exact frequency. They have a roll off. It could be a 20db per octave roll off. But you will still have those frequencies overlapping even if they are extremely quiet.
And think about this... we don't need 3 eardrums, do we? We pick up all audible frequencies with just one eardrum. Imagine how funny it would be if we had one eardrum for bass, one for mids, and one for highs? Well, we don't. If we can perceive all vibrations with a single eardrum, we should be able to generate those vibrations with a single speaker. And so a philosophy was built upon, and now many companies believe their single driver speakers sound better than most of the multiple driver speakers today. I heard one pair. They were pretty amazing.
Edit: Hi-Fi Single Driver Speaker companies & Info:
Beauhorn
Brines Acoustics
http://singledriver.blogspot.com/
Magnepan Planar/Magnetic/Ribbon Speakers Ribbon driver speakers, these have crossover points though, but still arguably better than loudspeakers with crossover points
Omega TS2 review
Fullrangedriver.com This site shows many DIY projects. The link here goes to the gallery.