The point I was trying to make was that when spending large sums of money on speakers there is no need to accept the compromised performance that comes with a 2 way design. A competent £5k 2 way may well have a bit better technical performance than a competent £1k 2 way but it will be outperformed by a competent £5k 3 or 4 way.I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it does look like you are saying there is no reason to go up a fair few (2 way) speaker lines. The examples I used before rarely cost less than a grand, so are you saying technically there is little or no difference?
Up to a point, it's simple economics.
A fairly simply two-way ported standmount is possibly seven pieces of MDF, some BAF wadding, two drive units, a simple crossover, a few pence worth of wire, terminal blocks, and some vinyl wrapping. The most expensive thing in the box is the box itself.
Simply swap a pair of cheap drivers for top Scanspeak Illuminators and Revelators and even if by some chance you didn't have to change any other component in the design, you've just gone from a loudspeaker with a Bill of Materials of less than £50 to a loudspeaker with a BOM of more than £800 unless you are buying in significant number. If you changed them to Accutons, you could easily double or treble that figure. Increase the size and complexity of the enclosure, or change materials, increase the sophistication and component roll-out in the crossover, the quality of the finish, and the inevitable demands for high-performance cable, and you can increase the costs still further.
A loudspeaker that replaces 10kg of medite with 100kg of Corian or aluminium as a cabinet is also probably more likely to require crating instead of boxing, which means packing and shipping costs escalate. This automatically limits the number of people who would buy such a loudspeaker, so there are no economies of scale.
When you get to something like the Marten Coltrane Supreme 2, the BOM is huge, and the costs of shipping six large flight cases containing 600kg of loudspeaker mount up too. Then there's the need for piano movers to ship the boxes to the client and the day or two build-up and fine tuning in the home to factor. All that and R&D time and all the other overheads involved to be paid for.
I'm not sure these costs alone justify the price tag, but I think if you had 600kg of custom made kitchen appliances freighted to you in flight cases, the price tags would be pretty extreme. Maybe not 390,000 extreme, but fairly frightening.
Ah I see. So 3 ways really do outperform 2 ways then? I'd mostly heard the opposite to be true. I thought they were more suited to filling bigger rooms.
The reason I used two ways as examples was really to simplify the question though
Ah I see. So 3 ways really do outperform 2 ways then?
ATC spend a lot of time and money on R&D, then build products to a spec not price.
All hand made and sourced in the UK
I had the opportunity to hear many expensive speakers yesterday at the Kuala Lumpur HiFi show. Generally most rooms were avoiding playing music with vocals, too much instrumental Jazz and Chinese percussion.No, not necessarily, we've been here before many times but TAD Exclusive, Tannoy DC, JBL M2, Meyer X10 all say otherwise.
I think you mean "badly designed crossovers are to be avoided".Crossovers are bad and to be avoided.
I think ATC uses Seas tweeters? Those are made in Norway. Damn fine tweeters too.Hand made in the UK? Yes
A lot of money spent on R&D? Not really sorry.
I agree some are worse than others, but no-one ever puts in a crossover because they want to, rather because not putting it in creates a bigger problem.I think you mean "badly designed crossovers are to be avoided".
I agree SEAS make good tweeters. ATC now use their in-house tweeter (allegedly better than the SEAS it replaced in terms of FR, distortion and dispersion).I think ATC uses Seas tweeters? Those are made in Norway. Damn fine tweeters too.
That's only because a proper full range driver has not yet been invented.I agree some are worse than others, but no-one ever puts in a crossover because they want to, rather because not putting it in creates a bigger problem.
3 way has the better potential.
The typical model of crossing a 5-8" bass-mid to a 1" dome, or worse 3/4" dome carries a number of problems.
At the crossover point appropriate for these design to work acceptably, the dispersion characteristics between the two drivers are markedly different at the crossover frequency. You are stuck with this compromise since lowering the crossover point places too much stress on the tweeter. Using a smaller mid-bass helps with the crossover issue but you then have limited SPL capability and the possibility of higher intermodulation distortion if the driver used for mid reproduction is dancing around trying to produce bass fundamentals. But that's the best compromise is you want high quality and can accept the SPL restriction imposed - clean and fairly quiet, or loud and messy!
A dedicated mid driver largely avoids these problems.
That's only because a proper full range driver has not yet been invented.
It has sufficient SPL for musical peaks, plays loud and deep enough for bass, has a smoothly varying directivity, the low frequencies don't modulate the high frequencies, etc...?Jordan Eikona 11 is a proper full range driver made by Scanspeak
I don't think so, not even allowing for the rather generous +/- 6dB tolerance.Jordan Eikona 11 is a proper full range driver made by Scanspeak
For a rich person I think the answer is likely to be yes. For the rest of us it is probably going to depend on the level of enthusiasm for the hobby.The more important question: Is an expensive speaker actually worth the asking?