Sonic Differences Between 2-Way and 3-Way Speakers

HI Drubin,
My last four speakers have been two-ways and my last one I have really enjoyed. From what I hear a two -way is easier to design and get right . You are only crossing over to one driver and the crossover is less complex. Also you do not have to worry about another driver and its problems. The real magic and brains come into play with the designer and his knowledge of speaker building, you can mess up both designs or make a two or three way sound great. If the speaker you have chosen makes you happy than you have not been missing anything.

I'm no engineer, but when additional drivers are are utilized, my understanding is that crossovers become more numerous and complex. The whole trick to speaker design is to ultimately fool us into believing that only one driver is being used. I think single point source is the term that they use. That seamless transition from diver to driver is extremely difficult. If a single driver could be used to cover all frequencies as well as two or three(bass,midrange,tweeter)do, then life would be simple. Different materials reproduce various sound waves better than others and drivers are designed to optimize the reproduction of specific frequencies. Usually 2-way speakers lack a woofer per se and can suffer from the lack of low frequency extension. It really depends on how well that mid/bass extends into the lower frequencies because some well designed 2-way systems actually sound better and appear to go deeper than some 3-ways. Others on this site can probably give some better technical direction, but at least you've gotten my 2 cents worth.

I think in most people's price range a 2 way speaker makes more sense, it is better to have fewer high quality components.

That being said often people have a subwoofer to flesh out the bottom end, so in a sense a sub satellite system is 3 way anyway.

It is always the old compromise, do you want a better quality midrange or a full range system? I know I can not afford both.

I believe the closer you can get to "The One-Way way" the better off you are. Nothing is perfect.

My current speakers are one way. Acoustat 2+2s. All panels run full range with no crossover. Excellent sound. I have also owned Dahlquist DQ-10s, a five way speaker. Also excellent. Depends on who engineers them. Jim Strickland (Acoustat) and Jon Dahquist are both terrific speaker designers. Don