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First Order Crossovers: Pros and Cons

I wonder if some folks might share their expertise on the question of crossover design. I'm coming around to the view that this is perhaps the most significant element of speaker design yet I really know very little about it and don't really understand the basic principles. Several of the speakers I have heard in my quest for full range floorstanders are "first order" designs. I have really enjoyed their sound but do not know if this is attributable primarily to the crossover design or to a combination of other factors as well. In addition, I have heard that, for example, because of the use of this crossover configuration on the Vandersteen 5 one has to sit at least 10 feet away from the speakers in order for the drivers to properly mesh. Is this really true and if so why? Another brand also in contention is the Fried Studio 7 which also uses a first order design. Same issue? Could someone share in laymans terms the basic principles of crossover design and indicate the advantages and disadvantages of each. Also, what designers are making intelligent choices in trying to work around the problems associated with crossover design? Thanks for your input.
dodgealum
trelja
3,215 posts
 
Darn, Marty, apart from the humor you so graciously provide to us all, you've conferred a tremendous amount of good information in this thread.

Not much I can add beyond saying that the more complex the crossover becomes, the more oomph an amp must have to push the music through these parts.
mds's avatar
mds
119 posts
 
Richard Hardesty is a big advocate for 1st order crossover speakers. You can visit the www.audioperfectionist.com to read more. Like Viridian was saying above it appears to take about 8' to 10' for first order speakers to intergrate.
drubin
3,240 posts
 
6moons did a piece on the Green Mountan Continuum last November, which is rich with discussion of these issues. One of the best audio articles I've read. Read it here.
viridian's avatar
viridian
4,184 posts
 
Great article, interesting that he ascribes the changes he hears to time alignment, rather than simply altering the interference patterns of the wave launch between the drivers, resulting in constructive and destructive interference. If you throw two stones in a pond at exactly the same time, the waves that are produced will be in phase. But where the two waves meet, you will see this interference.
dodgealum's avatar
dodgealum OP
976 posts
 
Songwriter, thanks for alerting me to the earlier forum discussion. I see now that this is really much deeper than I had anticipated. We have a full throated ideological struggle going on relative to this topic. Though I learned much from the discussion I still feel ignorant of some of the basic concepts and terminology. For example, Jeff Joseph's contributions on the benefits of steep slope crossovers seem pretty compelling--why would you want a driver to operate outside the frequency band it is best suited to reproduce? It seems that phase coherency is the primary benefit of a 6db per octave design but I cannot determine the value of this since I'm not really sure what "phase coherency" means. Can anyone enlighten me and discuss why this is so important?
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