Are first order crossovers best?

Unsound, I agree with you wholeheartly my friend. I also favor 1st order crossovers or none at all. This cable thing has me scratching my head too.I've never heard of matching cables to a certain crossover design.

1st order is 6db, 2nd order 12db, 3rd order is 18db, correct?
A lot from what I gather here is the ability of the manufacturers to blend the drivers well. Some companies use steeper crossovers (18db will cut off the signal much more sharply than 6db) to prevent overlap.
So, no matter what slope is being used, a lot matters with the driver selection and boxes.
I wouldn't buy a speaker based on crossover design unless I was looking at NO crossover. However, a 4th order crossover is much harder to make and more expensive. So, you have to factor in the quality of components used if you look at 2 equally priced speakers with similar drivers-who is cutting corners to allow for crossover components?

I don't think many speaker designers would use the same drivers for a 1st order cross-over as they would for a 4th order cross-over. The very reason for using a 4th order would probably be to avoid that much over lap and to maximize particular drivers strengths. On paper a 1st order-cross over appears to be the simplest and cheapest. What not may be immeadeately obvious is that most manufacturers who choose 1st order crossovers go to great lengths to use first order cross overs towards a final goal. That goal being a time and phase coherence at the listening position. Thiel even goes further to present the amp with a steady load. These cross overs are far from simple. They compensate for driver irregularites, box resonances, etc. First order cross overs are only 1 step towards a final goal, these cross overs are tweaked along with many other designer considerations. The cabinets are time aligned which can add greatly to manufacturing costs. The drivers themsleves usually need to be capable of greater range. To suggest that first order cross-overs are a cost cutting decision is short sighted. Unless one is designing their own speaker, judging by isolated compenents to determine the value of a speaker is fraught with problems.

So from your description Unsound, Theil uses a Zobel network in conjunction with the cross-overs in their speakers? Similar to that of the GMA Europa.

Gmood1, While I'm not sure that Thiel uses a Zoebel, I think that he does. What I'm suggesting goes beyond that though. Thiel loads the cross overs so that they present a fairly constant impedance.