What are the specs of a full range speaker?

I have to agree with Mdhoover and some others who are arguing against the "greater frequency reposnse is necessarily better" viewpoint.

Quality reproduction in the 80 to to 12Khz range is more desirable than a speaker that is "flat" from 20 to 20 Khz but suffers from significantly more harmonic and IMD distortion.

Furthermore, an SPL meter and a test CD will give practically everyone who owns a speaker with a flat reponse from 20 to 20 KHZ a surprise....as most rooms have between 10 and 20 DB response fluctuations (peak to trough) below 80 HZ. This is unavoidable and is caused by standing waves....room treatments can help some but fundamentally some fairly big bumps will remain unless they are equalized out, and then, even equalized, the reverberation problem remains and any EQ'd flat response is limited to a small sweet spot.

A further problem of a speaker with flat extended LF response (no roll off) is that LF frequencies radiate in ALL directions...therefore they reflect off the rear wall and will boost by +6db at some frequencies and will cancel out a quarter wavelength from the wall (producing more frequency response bumps in addition to room modes)

Which all goes to show that flat frequency response down to 20 Hz may not necessarly be a good thing in a speaker.

My experience with with sub 30 Hz in music is limited to just two audio systems, and our piano. When my wife is pounding out Grieg there is a lot more surfaces involved than the vibration of coiled wires.

I have a friend who is a conductor. I helped her find a house in Sacramento years ago. She had two requests. The house had to have a room big enough for her baby grand, and it had to have a wood floor.

If you want to hold a grand piano concert in your house, then you better have the real thing or speakers that can put out the power, and range of that piano.

Muralman1, I agree, and then some.

The real thing is the only thing! No audio system will ever come close, not by a great margin, to ever reproducing the dynamics and power of a grand piano. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been listening to much live piano music, in the home or concert halls. And it ain't just the sub 30's either. JMHO of course. :-)

DC to daylight.

Newbee, Don't be so sure. I have both. It was an Apogee Scintilla in a large stiff listening room that fooled me into believing I was listening to a pianist playing a grand. It did appear to be somewhere in the distance, as down the hall. I was awestruck. My present system takes my Scintillas to far beyond what was possible when they were made. It may be lunacy, but my goal is to duplicate the piano.

I wouldn't be the first. An Apogee enthusiast conductor use to give Mozart lectures at the Smithsonian's display containing the composer's piano. For fun, he would run a blind test on the audience. Alternating between the real deal and an Apogee Diva system. He asked the audience which they thought was real.

The Scintilla is even more convincing with the piano.