Dr .Gauder say (Why do we build multi-way loudspeakers?
The human hearing ranges from 16 Hz to around 16,000 Hz (at a young age), i.e. over 10 octaves - an enormous range when you consider that the eye can only see one octave. Accordingly, it is difficult for a single loudspeaker to reproduce this wide range of frequencies.
In the bass range we need large, heavy cones with small magnets, in the mid-range we need light, much smaller cones with a strong drive and in the treble range we need very small, extremely light cones with the strongest possible drive. All of this follows from the laws of mechanics, strength of materials and, last but not least, acoustics.
As you can see, it is impossible to reconcile all these requirements. It is essential to make compromises here. A first compromise is to divide the 10 octaves between two loudspeaker drive-units. Such designs are correspondingly diverse, as the proportions of the individual chassis can vary greatly. In the classic three-way speaker, three specialists share the 10 octaves, which can bring a significant improvement. The same applies to four-way loudspeakers. Five-way loudspeakers are extremely rare and then hardly offer any more advantages.)
Single way or multiway
The founder and builder of the highly respected high-end speaker company Gauder Akustik, Dr. Gauder, says that using a full-range driver is very bad. He uses 3- to 4-way speakers with extremely complex 10th-order crossovers consisting of 58–60 components.
In contrast, some other well-known and equally respected speaker companies — such as Voxativ, Zu, Cube Audio, and Totem — use crossoverless designs.
Who is right, and who is wrong?
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- 53 posts total
Thinking "I want my cake and eat it too" can be good practice, and so what on the surface of things are mutually exclusive design features or properties can occasionally be overcome or partially alleviated with smart engineering or a sound, pragmatic approach to acoustic design. Simplicity and maintaining a single point source per channel has its merits and is a core element to strive for, and yet a widebander will be frequency extreme challenged for obvious reasons, among other things. However Tom Danley came up with the synergy horn that sums the output of several, closely mounted drivers from tweeter to woofer within a single horn flare, thereby acting as a single point source over a fairly wide frequency range while, practically speaking, not being SPL limited. There's a degree of complexity, yes, but it all serves a purpose to what sums into a single point source - which in itself is a very desirable trait. More typically spaced drivers in a multi-way design (i.e.: that therefore don't emulate a point single source) can be made to behave less acoustically divided when also paying attention to dispersive behavior and matching directivity patterns over crossover points between driver sections and maintaining good power response. My own speaker setup is a 4-way design, but there's only a single crossover point between ~80 to 11.5kHz and so, essentially, it's an augmented 2-way design (that's capable of +125dB SPL). Being also the speakers maintain uniformity of dispersion pattern at the vital crossover frequency at just over 600Hz, it helps to aid the impression of listening to what's a "widebander on steroids." The aspect of simplicity, or at least that of maintaining a single point (or line) source per channel should, ultimately, be approximated with every speaker design, I find. Oftentimes I think of a smaller, simple quality 2-way speaker setup with an integrated amp and a turntable to be the core qualities I seek to achieve and f*ck up as little as possible in my current setup, but "beefed up" to have the combination of a coherent, full-range, resolved, tonally accurate, analogue sounding and dynamically uninhibited presentation with, in my case, a digital source only. So, to me it's about merging one and the other, simplicity/purity of approach with complexity, and achieving (or trying to maintain) in a sense the former via the means of the latter, and built upon it. Sort of like having your cake and eat it too.. |
@Phusis Respect you opinion , but looks like you disagree with Dr. Gauder or did not read above post, you can see more at https://gauderakustik.com/ |
Gauder is not doing anything unusual- basically three way designs with near infinite slope crossovers. Joseph Audio also uses infinite slope high order crossover designs. The main reason for this is that certain speaker drivers and driver materials that offer a higher level of clarity also have a limited useable frequency range because of distortion (see the link for the magnesium cone SEAS driver). these SEAS magnesium drivers are super clear sounding but have ultra high breakup distortion after their useable frequency. in other words the output level after the low pass crossover needs to drop off in a hurry so that the breakup is not audible to the user. Many speakers have much less distortion and a wider useable frequency range and therefore do not require steep slopes or complex crossovers in their designs.
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- 53 posts total