Are first order crossovers best?

For the people that haven't seen it.Here's a nice little walk through by Pat McGinty on Time Coherence and how to read a step response of a loudspeaker..The Step Response Reveals All.Of course time coherence is just one part as speaker design is quite complicated atleast for me.

I am a fan of first order crossovers and Thiel, Vandersteen and Meadowlark designs. But to get back to the basis of this thread I feel it is simply hogwash and marketing hype for any cable manufacturer or dealer to say that certain cables are/are not appropriate specifically for first order designs. The electrons couldn't give a rat's ass about phase effects in the wire; that is simply silly snake oil mumbo jumbo. While I am convinced from first hand experience that cables do make a difference in sonic quality, this imparting of anthropomorphic behavior to electrons is complete horse hockey. Go with the cables that sound best, not those which some cable marketeer tells you is compatible with the electronic bahvior imparted by the freakin' crossover design. Man, it really gets my goat when good people on agon get messages like this from industry jerks with nothing more than $$$ signs in their eyes.

Blindjim, you are a good man, don't fall victim to this nonsense. Would you care to share those particular manufacturers with us?

The complexity of the X-over will effect amps differently,as the back EMF will have different phase angles.Simple 6db/oct reduces this effect and is more agreeable to small set amps.
The order of x-ver is generally determined by the drivers used,their frequency response and resonances outside their operating spectrum.Many manufacturers will take a great tweeter and run it as low as possible using 3rd and 4th order x-overs.When using these crossovers the mids or woofer are wired out-of-phase to bring them back into phase.
I believe simplier is better,but when designing a 6db/oct system,sometimes it is best to use a L-pad on the tweeter.This prevents the x-over from changing as the impedance of the driver changes over its' range.Having just built a speaker system of this design premise,I understand the difficulty involved.Frequency respomse abnormalities,over excursion of drivers and phase coherency are all balls to be kept up-in the-air during the juggling routine.

However, a 4th order crossover is much harder to make and more expensive.

This is the opposite of what I have been told; first order done right is not an easy task.

Also, and correct me if wrong, the advatage of lower order cross overs is less parts in the signal path, therefore less to degrade the signal.

Brian, on the surface a 1st order crossover would seem to be simpler, having less parts in the signal path. How ever when in practice it depends on the designer's priorities. A Meadowlark cross over might look very different than a Thiel cross over. There are good arguments for both approaches.