My Tannoy were build such...
Any "purist" is more ignorant of acoustics necessities than enlightened... 😊
All speakers have a little EQ built in
It may come as a shock to audio purists but part of the work of a crossover is level matching as well as tonal adjustments of individual drivers. Ahem. That's what we call equalization.
This is true whether the speaker uses active or passive crossover, and may be in place just to adjust phase matching in the crossover range.
Also, curiously, while companies may brag about the number of parts in their crossovers, more parts does not indicate more quality. It may just indicate more equalization had to be done to the drivers to get them to match.
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And those calculations/crossover designs are for the speaker when in a large padded cell. 'In the Beginning', speakers came with Level Controls, so they could be adjusted for your listening space, your preferences, your particular hearing including 'typical' age related, progressively reduced ability to hear highs. 'In the Beginning' Preamps/Receivers came with important features i.e. Stereo/Mono/l+r to r; l+r to l; phase; balance; low and high filters, tone controls. These days those controls can be 'in' or 'out', no reason not to have their potential benefit(s) |
Sadly, those speaker level adjustments were often unreliable over time and the cause of much frustration. Modern speakers are not designed for an anechoic chamber, but the measurements may be done that way in order to properly set crossover points and alignment. No competent speaker designer I know of would build a speaker for an anechoic chamber. I do however agree that good tone controls in your preamp are wonderful. I’ve had gear with good and bad tone controls, so I can understand the reluctance of some listeners to use them again, but good ones exist! No one's room and no recording or hearing is perfect. Let's be good to our enjoyment of music and use tone controls! |
Yes for sure. I tend to think drivers that need a lot of smoothing through crossover parts get robbed of some of their sensitivity which results in heat build up and loss of dynamics. Good drivers are super important, far more important than fancy box materials and crossover parts (all things matter though). As for target curves I am on board with Harman’s studies of about 5db in room slope from 200khz-20khz. That seems to work well in my room. Oddly I think Harman’s headphone curve is crap and far too bass heavy. |
@erik_squires I appreciate your enthusiasm for tone controls. Early in my journey I appreciated the option to by-pass tone controls; why, I appreciate simplicity. And in this journey personal preference makes a difference and its wonderful there are so many options. |
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