Bass-ackwards way to design a system. Work out the speaker first as it and the room are 90% of the final sound unless you have some distortion / fixed tone control box like a SET.
Nope. Pro drivers. Been designing and building with them for years, and many are extremely good.
Not especially. I could probably easily equal, and exceed performance with other drivers.
This is just the typical noob confusion about what the "Watts" rating on a speaker means. Seen this many times.
A speaker is a device that accepts power. The Watts rating is how much power can be sent to the speaker (from an amplifier) before it might overheat, melt, or catch fire. There are standard tests for this rating that manufacturers follow, and that is where this number comes from.
An amplifier, on the other hand, is a device that delivers power (to speakers in the case of audio). The Watts rating of an amplifier tells you how much power it can deliver. This will depend on the impedance (resistance) of the speakers connected to the amplifier.
Back to your original question: making a 4-way system with full range drivers and driving it with a low powered amplifier. I would not advise that. Full range drivers are usually small and have low power ratings (the Watts number) AND have low sensitivity. What is sensitivity? It is a measure of how loud the speaker will be for a given (e.g. 1W) power input. Combining a low sensitivity speaker (or driver(s)) with a low powered amp will be very low output capability. If you will listen to the speakers from 1 foot away it will be OK, but not for putting sound out into a real room.
If you want to use low powered amplifiers look for high efficiency speakers. Check out threads using the keyword "econowave" for example.
not totally true take the Visaton BG 20 - 8 inch diameter, 92 db sensitivity 70 watts power handling and in the right box can produce good bottom end, many happy users, and at 32 bucks a pop at PE a good value!
not to mention no need for multi way x-over's and all the phase and timing issues that come with it...
Sorry, I do NOT call any 8" driver a "full range" and frankly I find the large majority of the "happy full range users" you cite to be self-delusional. IMHO the large majority of single driver systems I have ever heard (of course it was not all of them) sound like crap. Sorry, Mark Audio fans and so on.
I mean just look at the Visaton BG 20 frequency response curve (at PE) and that is ON AXIS! Bottom end - maybe, but top end? Fuggetaboutit.
No memo, but you seemed to have missed the "IMHO"... sorry to offend your feelings. I was speaking honestly and from my personal viewpoint.
Sure, but can say that I have heard a Bose wave radio that didn't sound "bad". A cell phone doesn't sound "bad" to many people. Lots of crap doesn't sound "bad". But it's amazing how bad something has to sound before someone will call it out as such. Good, on the other hand, should meet some kind of threshold... and I don't find many if any full range systems really cutting it for me, whether or not the driver costs $20 or $2000. IMHO of course.
I take exception tooI love my Jordan Eikona VTLs, although sometimes I cheat
Well, as much as I like/support 'FR' speaker systems for certain apps, I've no delusions that AFAIK there's only one that actually meets the 20-20 kHz requirement [Babb Lorelei prototype] at the modest SPLs quoted by many folks that own and/or prefer such systems, so while 'we' may use them 'full range' 'we' don't have true 'full range' capability, much preferring using 'wide range' or 'single driver' systems to describe them.
GM
I agree. A full range system just is what it is, warts and all. I really just do not like them (or a large majority of them). But I also don't like the sound of many traditional multiway boxed loudspeakers, too. Maybe I am just hyper critical about it all?
Anyway, on paper at least FR has many flaws unless you are using a small driver in a small box (please, not a tiny FR in a horn!) and listening on axis and close up. Then heck they can sound "good", but that is really carving out a small niche, like for computer desktop speakers or bookshelf speakers for very small apartments, etc. Larger and more capable (output wise) drivers like the 8" Visaton have too many dispersion problems and that whizzer cone is really not a good solution for the high end. It is surprising to me that turk 182 uses the argument that a full ranger eliminates the (quoting here) "need for multi way x-over's and all the phase and timing issues that come with it". Honestly, the issues with a cheap FR driver far outweigh and "phase and timing issues" of a multiway system.
Heck I have used a small (2"-3") full range driver as a tweeter crossed low (700Hz) in an MTM system and it was overall pretty darn good sounding. The system had some flaws, but none of these were "phase" or "timing" issues. So in the right application a small FR driver has its proper place, it just cannot do it all (as GM notes). So when I see single driver FR "systems" they are screaming at me "NO!" and I can't help myself from sharing my position on the issue. I definitely do keep out of the full range forum. I don't intend to bother someone when they are in church, so to speak.
- An 8" FR plus a small tweeter crossed at 3-5kHz? Yeah, that might work well!
- A 3" FR plus a woofer to handle 500Hz and below? Sure, done that. Works well.
- Single driver full range system? No thanks. You can have your high end, or your low end, but not both.
I think you misunderstood.
What I meant was that I want to have a 4 way speaker system with the SPL and transient capability of a good speaker system without requiring the high power of those systems.
Meaning I would need to use very efficient drivers. But I don't want to do it if the results will be inferior.
Ah, sorry about that.
I think one of the econowave variants is a great solution for you. I have heard one made by Zilch (back a few years now) and it really sounded good, with great transients and impact.