Crossovers

Actually, I would have no intentions of altering a speaker's crossover, or even basing speaker choice on the crossover type. Ultimately, I'm asking more out of general curiosity, given that there's so many different setups out there.

In the end, I'm going to buy whatever sounds the best to me. But, I like to have SOME understanding of how things work.

OK, good.

Generally, high-order filters are used to increase power handling at the expense of phase coherency.

Another thing I like to relay in layman's terms is that the order of the crossover more or less correlates to how much power one will need to drive the speaker.

Think of them as hurdles on a runner's track. The more obstacles one has to hurdle, the more difficult it is to get to the finish line. All things being equal, first order crossovers are the easiest to drive, and things become progressively more difficult as one moves upward.

The fly in the ointment are brands like Theil (first order) and Dynaudio (second order) who throw all sorts of networks in the crossover to flatten this or that, and end up with first order crossovers with 71 parts and loads that are just as difficult for an amplifier to drive as a higher order crossover.

So again, "it depends," right? At least now I have a little better understand of what's going on, which is really all that I wanted. I guess no one's going to come down definitively on one side or the order? It seems as if the complication of the crossover doesn't really translate into a speaker sounding "better or "worse," and what's really important is the execution.

Facts:

1. For the same SPL excursion quadruples for each octave you drop in frequency.

2. IM distortion is a function of excursion.

3. The cross-over type determines the axis along which peak output occurs.

4. Steeper cross-over slopes reduce the effects of changing driver response beyond the pass-bind.

5. Higher order cross-overs have more ringing in the impulse response.

Opinions:

From 1+2 you need at least a third order slope so that excursion is decreasing below the cross-over point resulting in low IM distortion.

Adding 3 you need a 4th order Linkwitz-Riley XO that has its peak on-axis because this leads to the most natural sound.

4 means that the higher-order cross-over is an enabling technology that allows using stiff materials (magnesium) that are very pistonic in their passband (for low distortion) but ring like bells at higher frequencies.

5 means that you don't want to go beyond LR4.

Phase coherence doesn't matter. Time alignment at the cross-over frequency does as a tool to aim the peak response at the listening axis.

Other people have different opinions and subjectively excellent sounding speakers have been produced with all sorts of technologies.

Of course, the most important thing is what you find pleasing. If it floats your boat buy it or build it.