I found a weird design speakers from 80s. They were labeled 5-way floor-standing speaker systems. They had 5 drivers per cabinet consisting of a 10” woofer, a 5” midrange and 3 2” cone tweeters. I had opened up the cabinet to see the crossover network and was surprised that it was very minimal. The woofer had no any network while mid and tweeters had only a capacitor on each driver; 10uf on mid, 4.7uf, 3.3uf and 2.2uf on the tweeters, respectively. Yet, they sound not so bad. I’m wondering that should they considered to be 5-way speakers? Were they be low cost speakers design?
By appearance, yes, it looks similar. But the crossover networks of pair I found are more simpler than those monitor B&O.
Simpler, in what way? Is it possible that these were made during a trend, and not for an independent technical reason?
The crossovers are only first-order on all drivers except for the woofer which has no crossover network.
I think so. However, as mentioned earlier, the sound was not bad at all, despite having no any inductors and resistors in the crossover network.
Maybe the question is can I take five well selected drivers and measure them and cross them properly and will they sound better than a two or three way? You would also need to consider their lobing.
I had a friend in the '80s who strongly believed this was the best way to go. He felt that every driver was best in a small band. He felt that asking them to produce a wide frequency range added distortion. In the end they all had to move in small steps from woofer to tweeter for a smooth result. I'd like to catch up with him again and ask what he feels now 😉
I had a friend in the '80s who strongly believed this was the best way to go. He felt that every driver was best in a small band. He felt that asking them to produce a wide frequency range added distortion. In the end they all had to move in small steps from woofer to tweeter for a smooth result. I'd like to catch up with him again and ask what he feels now 😉
Many people did believe that once, including myself, and there's some truth to it IMHO. When you play loose with the acoustic aspect of a crossover, or when you guess at the electrical side of a crossover, higher orders of filter may produce different kinds of bad sound.