But WHY multi-way ?

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In my opinion it depends on the type of music you listen to. For music with few instruments, acoustic instruments, limited percussions, drums and listening at moderate output-levels, a good full range speaker can be sufficient or even prefered to a multi-way speaker.

A number of people have been very surprised at how well the Frugel-Horn Lites (with Alpair 5.2 or FF85wk 3” drivers) do at reproducing the drums in “Rahman: Dacoit Dual, Matt DUnkley: Czech Film Orchestra”. Granted they are not reproducing the fundemental but it is amazing what you perceive when the 1st harmonic is well reproduced, but you don’t know that is the case unless you listen to something like the FHXL which will produce the fundementals. And at levels that are quite surprising… that little cone is moving!

dave
 
As a person who's had a number of single driver setups dating back to when... we called them single drivers... (and this is completely unscientific). I think they're swell. In a small room. With a solitary chair. Like ear speakers with cabinets. In this most delicate setting they can sound really... wow.. intimate.

But I eventually went back to conventional multi-way, and mostly just due to simple perception. They sound bigger. They get really wide. They fill a room, a house.. not a niche. Did I mention they sound bigger?
 
As a person who's had a number of single driver setups dating back to when... we called them single drivers... (and this is completely unscientific). I think they're swell. In a small room. With a solitary chair. Like ear speakers with cabinets. In this most delicate setting they can sound really... wow.. intimate.

But I eventually went back to conventional multi-way, and mostly just due to simple perception. They sound bigger. They get really wide. They fill a room, a house.. not a niche. Did I mention they sound bigger?

That comment pretty much sums it up.
 
This forum is about the reproduction of music. But what about recording? If one consider music (analogue waves), from recording to reproduction, then full range makes a lot more sense. The most music by far is still recorded using microphones – which are really full range devices. Music instruments that generate very high or low frequency signals electronically causes problems for the full range drivers to reproduce.

A microphone converts sound into tiny amounts of current. The conversion efficiency of a dynamic microphone is very low, or in the case of a condenser microphone, it's nothing more than a very small change in capacitance. The amplifier is doing all the work.

This gives an advantage to a small diaphragm ... a 1" diaphragm is considered "large" for a microphone. The moving mass is kept as low as possible.

The closest analogy to a loudspeaker would be a supertweeter, and the old STC/Coles supertweeter was a modified dynamic microphone. But power-handling of any supertweeter is very low, unless there is a serious high-pass filter set to a high frequency (7 kHz or above). You're not going to get much bass out of a 1" diaphragm, although the smartphone manufacturers keep trying with clever dynamic equalization.

If you really want to hear how bad loudspeaker drivers are, try using them as microphones. You won't like what you hear.
 
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It's a little more than just the room itself. There's a certain relationship of work that seems most reasonable in regards to home stereo. High to low pressure. Like an air conditioning system (that's organic, no?) I'd rather flog little mosfets and jfets unmercifully in class A and let that energy diffuse to systems that work less hard. To me, that sounds effortless. The part closest to me shouldn't work too hard, otherwise it's uncomfortable. Like an A/C vent that blows too hard.
 
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