Which sounds better 2 way or 3 way speaker design

I’ve owned many 2-way monitors (totem model 1’s, totem mani II’s, totem arro’s, usher mini dancer II’s, to name a few) and they all had their drawbacks. Every one of them I used a pair of subwoofers (Rel) and there were drawbacks to this too, Rel recommends running the main speakers full range which puts a lot of strain on the smaller woofer. In case of the mani II’s, with the isobaric woofers inside, the speaker was so inefficient I was running them with 1000 watt monoblocks part of the time. So with subs, the sound was more full but at a cost.

With 3-way speakers, you normally have the right size tweeter with the appropriate size midrange spec’d together while designing the crossover to send the lower octaves to the woofers. These will play louder with less breakup/distortion. I know you can buy a 2-way/2.5-way with larger drivers but I’ve never liked anything over 6”/7” for the midrange, and some of the smaller 5” midrange in the Ushers sound fantastic.

I purchased a pair of the ESS speakers with the Heil AMT in them in the late 70’s.  If it wasn’t for the patent on them, you would have seen ma y more of them during the last 4 decades. 1 hell of a driver.

The 4435 is a true two and half way speaker, it does not use a crossover point between the two woofers.

’’For uses where even greater low frequency output capability with an attendant reduction in distortion is required, a double woofer system has been designed (model 4435], Directional characteristics have been left intact by bringing the second woofer in below 100Hz only, The maximum output before thermal or excursion limiting has been raised by 4 dB and extended on the low end by half an octave. This is shown in Figure 15, Note that this is not a response curve but is instead a curve of maximum reverberant field SPL generated at the excursion limit or long term power limit of the two systems in typical monitoring conditions. In the very low-frequency range of 20 to 30 Hz a stereo pair of the dual woofer systems can generate some 115 to 120 dB SPL under these conditions.

Both Iow-frequency drivers in the double system are identical to the driver in the single system except for lightened cones, which yield a 3 dB increase in mid band sensitivity.’’

See full article here

See here review of JBL 4435 monitors.

Mike

Coax drivers for mid and high range help in a better two way design and the sound is perhaps more coherent in such two way and even more coherent in a one way design than in a three way speakers. 

Don't dismiss 4 ways. 

Some excellent info here from the people who know and some really dumb info from the people who have no idea what they are talking about.

That being said, none of the speakers you are looking at would be on my short list especially for $18K!  But that is me.  Go listen to the Revival and new PMC speakers for comparison.

We have modified speakers for 25 years for customers.  What I can advise you is that drivers and cross-overs are important.  We placed Accton drivers in an old Infinity Kappa speaker and built external X-overs and that dumb experiment would beat most people's speakers they have heard or own.  GO figure.

We also prefer Field Cold speaker designs for comparison.

Happy Listening.