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Crossoverless Speakers - Ultimate Solution ?

I have a pair of speakers which have NO crossover, except for a rather large Mundorf capacitor on the ribbon tweeter. The speaker up until last week contained a resister, but even that was removed by the manufacturer. Now the sound on this two-way horn loaded speaker with a custom made 8" woofer it really great. The speaker has a tremendous amount of detail, with NO hint of harshness what so ever.

The efficiency is around 96 dB with a minimum impedance of around 8 ohms (average is around 10 to 12 ohms).

In light of my current findings, is it possible for a conventional loudspeaker with crossovers, regardless of cost to have as much detail and air as what I'm finding.

I must say I've yet to hear a speaker retrieve as much detail without glare or the dreaded forward or treble emphasized tweeter tricking you into thinking there is more detail.

The down side to all this is obviously the lack of a good bottom end to help balance the speaker. A matching active sub-woofer would no doubt help in this regard.

Any thoughts ?
clipsal
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Small 6-7 inch woofers roll off somewhere near 2000 Hz, so why bother with an inductor. Just use a capacitor to pick up the tweeter where the woofer dies.

Lousy idea, except for real cheap speakers. The woofer doesn't die peacefully at 2000 Hz. At this frequency and above it exhibits wild peaks and valleys as the cone breakup happens. The purpose of the inductor is to shut the woofer up before it starts misbehaving,
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gawdbless's avatar
gawdbless
1,165 posts
 
'The main driver is a custom-built 8" unit of our own design mated to the Neo ribbon. At 43" x 11" x 14" HxWxD, the dimensions are deliberately living-room friendly while the combination of piano-gloss lacquer on the sides, real black leather on top and front and exotic red Jarrah wood for the scoop will appeal to even jaded interior decorators.'

WOW- those speakers are $19,000?
Are they the most expensive crossover less speaker in the World? I've seen lots of those sort of speakers for sale, but none near the lofty heights of yours. Were they made by Viscount Linley?
I've not heard them so cannot pass comment on their sound quality.
macrojack
1,292 posts
 
The best crossover being no crossover is indeed a good theory. And I have a pair of speakers that prove the theory has become fact. So I can believe what Clipsal is saying.
Whenever a big advance comes along there are always "experts" on hand to explain in lofty and technical terminology why it cannot possibly work.
If eventually the "experts" are forced to relax their objections to a novel speaker technology, someone else will appear to lament that they are not available in Peruvian Feathered Scrub Oak veneer, or that they don't stand on the optimum number of spikes, or the binding posts aren't thick enough or they are too thick. Or the speakers aren't tri-ampable because they are a two-way. There's always a problem if you aren't a Recommended Component.

eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Macrojack...Let's not argue about how your speakers sound, but a speaker lacking a crossover is hardly novel technology. Once upon a time they were all that way.
macrojack
1,292 posts
 
Eldartford - Right you are. Crossoverless design was the original approach. Originally speakers were used for speech and did not require much bandwidth. Later when music reproduction inevitably emerged as a goal, greater frequency extension was sought and multiple driver designs were attempted. The crossover (deal with the devil) was invented to assign frequency ranges to specialized drivers called woofers and tweeters.
In recent years successful wide bandwidth drivers have become available enabling certain progressive manufacturers to eliminate crossovers or move them to the extremes of the frequency range.
While this works very well in some cases, it has been rejected out of hand by many audiophiles. Go figure.
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