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Speaker of the Century Award Goes To ....

The 2.5 way speaker.


You guys probably thought I was going to fanboy over a brand, and I'm not. I'm going to fanboy over a speaker design. IMHO the 2.5 way speaker is THE ideal high end speaker for the majority of enthusiasts.


First, what is a 2.5 way? It is a speaker with 3 drivers, but the mid range lacks a high pass filter, so  it shares output with the woofer.  It has a number of advantages over smaller and larger speakers:
  • Similar footprint to stand mounted 2-way speakers
  • Ideal bass output for apartments and modest homes
  • Easier to integrate than big speakers
  • No subwoofer
  • High sensitivity compared to a 2-way using similar drivers
  • Reasonably priced


A number of brands have taken this approach including:
  • Focal
  • Joseph
  • Monitor Audio
  • DIY kits like the Klang Ton Ophelia, and Zaph Audio

So for the average enthusiast who is not a San Francisco billionaire I argue here (for the sake of an argument) that the 2.5 way speaker should be considered one of the great technical innovations in terms of users and results.
erik_squires

Showing 1 response by beetlemania

beetlemania
834 posts
 
IMHO the 2.5 way speaker is THE ideal high end speaker for the majority of enthusiasts.
Interesting take but I can think of some "affordable" 3-way designs that check most of your boxes. Years ago, the Joseph 2.5 way was on my short list and I briefly considered Avalon, Focal and Monitor. Pretty much everything on my more recent short lists have been 3-ways.

I'm now running the Thiel CS2.4 which is a "3-way" but has single high- and low-pass filters. The tweeter and midrange are coaxially mounted and use a *mechanical* crossover. To my knowledge, Thiel was the only manufacturer of such a design. Similar coax drivers were in the CS6 and CS7 but those designs added mid-bass *and* bass drivers, each with its own filter. The coax in the CS2.7 and CS3.7 used separate filters for the tweeter and midrange. According to Tom Thiel, Jim Thiel planned to return to a mechanical crossover for his uber CS7.3 which was never completed.
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