Single way or multiway

Who is right, and who is wrong?

I disagree with your leading premise that there is a “right vs wrong”.

Perhaps if a single driver can do the speed of treble down to bass that can move enough air would be ideal, but doesn’t exist.  Therefore tradeoffs are inevitable- there is no perfect speaker design.

Also, there’s “higher efficiency” that’s seems to be ignored when comparing Guader offerings to high efficiency Voxative and Zu, the latter which can run on very low powered amplifiers down to SET tubes Sonics.

I’m a fan of Gauder’s products indicating excellent engineering, but I do not reach farther in declaring them “the” global spokesman for what is best/right/wrong.  

The issue with single driver speakers is covering  the entire freq spectrum humans are capable of hearing. I've owned Omega and Jordan single drivers, both were unsatisfactory in this regard. I suppose one could add subs and super tweeters, but I'd expect major problems with integrating them, and you've lost the principle of simplicity. 

There’s no free lunch with speakers.  There are many choices to be made, and every one of them has advantages and disadvantages.  It’s up to the designer to define the objectives and find the best path forward to meet it, but there will always be compromises.  Most companies only market the advantages, and don't bother to mention the downside of their offering.  A talented designer will try to maximize the benefits and minimize the impact of the cons.  

I had a pair of Omega and while they did sound very good they struggled with certain genres of music .   

After about a year I realized what I was missing, the sparkle and air of a dedicated tweeter.  Midrange was their magic, vocals and imaging really were their strengths 

I bought a really nice sealed acoustic 3 way and never looked back.  

@bache wrote:

@Phusis     Respect you opinion , but looks like you disagree  with Dr. Gauder or did not read above post, you can see more at https://gauderakustik.com/

Basically I'm not in a disagreement with Mr. Gauder - certainly not what he points to about the essentials behind going multiway, which is fairly straightforward and common knowledge in speaker design btw., and something that shouldn't need his doctoriel status to get through. 

What I attempted to elucidate was that of seeing the strengths from using a crossover-less widebander, mainly that it's a single point source per channel (but also and not least, which I didn't get into earlier, that there's no passive XO parts between the amp and driver), as an inspiration or important reminder in designing a multi-way speaker. Using multiple drivers dedicated to different frequency bands is typically a design necessity, but by its nature also a design challenge; you don't, or rather you shouldn't want a multiway speaker to sound like distinct, different driver elements nor that it is spatially inhibited compared to what a widebander/single point source is capable of. By the same token using what's usually a passive crossover is a design necessity to facilitate the frequency divisions, but it's far from desirably placed between the amp and drivers where it messes with the interfacing between them, not to mention its inherent sonic "contributions" and limitations. Then there's the choice of crossover points and where to place them, the choice of driver type (dynamic, ESL, direct radiating, acoustic transformer/horn, etc.) and what it affords in crossover point positioning (if any with ESL's), the size of the speaker design, etc.

I'm not as much interested in a wideband driver as the fact that it's a single point source, with all that entails. I'm not as much interested in a crossover-less speaker design as the fact that there's no passive crossover between the amp and driver. I'm not as much interested in large, multiway high efficiency horns than the fact they provide better, effortless dynamics, dispersion control, etc. And so on. Get it? Take a fittingly large Synergy Horn design with multiple, frequency divided drivers loading their shared horn flare actively configured, and now you have a single point source per channel that isn't frequency nor SPL limited and that has no crossover - between the amp and drivers, that is. Take a 4-way horn-loaded speaker design like the one I use that only has a single crossover point in a some 7 octave span and that has a uniform dispersion pattern at this crossover point - actively configured. There are ways to minimize the negative impact of going multiway, while conversely taking advantage of what it can provide with different, frequency divided driver elements. That's what I was trying to get across.