What is a fullrange loudspeaker (an explanation)?

[planet10]

Zu Audio Unions at the Sydney Audio and AV show recently. They have a full range driver, but they intentionally cut it off at 12kHz and use a tweeter in a coax configuration to cover 12kHz to 22kHz. There is apparently no crossover to get in the way

This would be considered a FR + helper tweeter. Don't beleive them when they say no XO, there is at least a cap on the tweeter. The is no cut-off on the wide-range, that is just where it rolls off naturally (and i'd guess struggles to get that high. A diy version of this would be an eminence 12LTA with a coaxially mounted Fostex FT17.

dave

[Cal Weldon]

Originally Posted by blizzardbuffalo

There is apparently no crossover to get in the way.

Taken from their site:
"The tweeter’s high-pass is, by design, a simple, single component network, a single polypro’ capacitor."

Quite common when crossing over that high.

despite it technically using 2 drivers, I would still consider them to be a full range speaker.

It's a fullrange with a helper tweeter, often called a supertweeter.

Perhaps it would be better to say that it is a speaker that projects music from a single point?

Yes, it's called point source, one of the advantages of FR and coax systems

[tuxedocivic]

Originally Posted by blizzardbuffalo

There is apparently no crossover to get in the way.

Although you can find hundreds of arguments about whether inductors, resistors, and caps are audible, there is virtually no debate that the acoustic problems created by a cross over far exceed any problems created by the components.

In other words, that's all nice and dandy that they've avoided any parts in the signal save for a single cap, but they're not immune to the greater issue of what a cross over does.

Lucky for them, it's so high it's likely inaudible and it is coaxed.

[Pano]

Originally Posted by Wavebourn

It simply means that thee are no division between drivers in frequency ranges that they reproduce.

Yeah, I like that definition.

[RK1]

One transducer, covering the widest possible bandwidth 20Hz to 20kHz.

There are currently no covering the full bandwidth transducer.
Frequency is complemented from the top (tweeter) or bottom (woofer).
Have a nice day

[Wavebourn]

Originally Posted by RK1

One transducer, covering the widest possible bandwidth 20Hz to 20kHz.

There are currently no covering the full bandwidth transducer.
Frequency is complemented from the top (tweeter) or bottom (woofer).
Have a nice day

Still, it can't cover the full bandwidth from say 0 Hz to 500 KHz.

[Soundtrackmixer]

If I were to take the definition of full range from the audio engineering profession, that would be a speaker that could reproduce 40-20khz with high output and low distortion. A limited range speaker would span from 80-20khz with high output and low distortion, and a extended range speaker would be from 20-20khz with high output and low distortion.

This is how the audio engineering community makes its distinctions.

[Melo theory]

If we are talking about a crossoverless loudspeaker, the only true full range loudspeaker will be one that uses multiple drivers. A full range line array. That is 20Hz to 20kHz.

[sofaspud]

Please let me re-repeat...

FULL SPECIFIED frequency range by a SINGLE driver.

I don't understand what is so troublesome about that concept. I find a mandatory 20-20k Hz spec much more unrealistic*.

*That's "unrealistic" in an applications context, not a hi-fi context.

[Melo theory]

The thread is titled loudspeaker. Not driver.