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.
@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. |
@overthemoon - There are actually bad tone controls. Manufacturers would implement excellent analog stages and then glue on tone controls (or headphone amps) as after-thoughts. So, I can understand that there have been bad examples, there is also gear with consistently good examples. Luxman for instance makes excellent transparent tone controls (but not headphone amps). |
@james633 - That may be true. In most designs the raw sensitivity of the tweeters is higher than the woofers and/or the woofers need EQ to boost the bass by cutting the top of their response down, all of which forces us to lower the tweeter levels considerably. The end result is a speaker which needs considerably more watts than it would otherwise, but we usually compensate for this with monster amps... so... 😂 |
@carlsbad2 I'm not sure all speaker designers share that flat goal. A speaker thatsounds good in a room and will sell may very well be their goal. The term speaker designers use in fitting different drivers together, and matching them to a cabinet is equalization. |
