Okay, I have a stupid question...

[ptwining]

I have been listening to raw drivers in boxes (uncrossed over but in appropriate volumes). The Dayton 10" woofers RS270S-8 when run full range sound great.

Here's the question - when Dayton says they reproduce 30-1000Hz or so what happens when you feed them a fuller range??

Are they capable of producing more than that? I mean if they are designed NOT to reproduce more than 1000 Hz do they actually produce nasty noise over that range or simply do nothing (or little enough that it doesn't matter)?

They seem to sound better full range than crossed over!

What's the downside of just letting them blast away?

Stupid question?

Regards,
Tom

[angsuman]

Well not really a stupid question, but pretty simple. Just look at the frequency response graphs on www.partsexpress.com. From looking at it the response does extend close to 20khz. But this is the break-up nodes after the optimal frequency. I played my Dayton RS225 full range just to see what it sounds like and it wasnt nearly as bad as I thought. I'm not sure what the downsides are but i believe operating a metal coned woofer through its break-up is just various distortion components. (Not sure)

[nunayafb]

I'm not sure what the downsides are but i believe operating a metal coned woofer through its break-up is just various distortion components. (Not sure)

Downside: very jagged frequency response(very high linear distortion) due to phase cancelation occuring from different portions of cone moving in different directions. (search for break up modes:radial, concentric, ?nodal?)
Actually any cone material not properly damped/designed will exhibit this problem.

Should you do it? This depends on how hi-fi you want to get, using a full range 10" driver you will have severe beaming and a resulting narrow sweet spot. Pretty much any speaker will play 20-20khz, it just wont be even close to flat. If it sounds good to you then have fun, but you would need to have pretty low standards to like those speakers at full range I say that because I have the rs225s-8 and they are woofers, and nothing more.

They seem to sound better full range than crossed over!

Probably due to the crossover eliminating most of the music spectrum leaving only bass/midbass, it "always" sounds better to have distorted full range than only the low end.

[ptwining]

I looked at the graphs again as angsuman suggested and see what you mean, the response is really messy after 1K.

I'm supposed to cross this thing over at 700 or so but it looks nice until 1K or so.

If I cross it over right at 1K could I expect the 6 or 12db slope to attenuate the messy stuff past 1K enough to keep it flat enough to stay clean and hi-fi or would the rest of that attenuated slope still screw me up?

I guess the lower crossover point (500-700) is designed to bury the tail end of the slope around 1K?

Regards,
Tom

[nunayafb]

Big dips above the xover frequency are ok, but the peaks after that will show up as peaks in the response. The crossover does not shut off the high frequency signal to the speaker, it attenuates it at some dB/oct rate so you will hear some of the high freq. breakup if you cross too high.

[owdi]

You need it to look good until 1k in order to cross over at 700hz. Your crossover rolls off response, it does not stop it completely.

Dan