are there 2-ways that go down flat to around 40?

The Thiel 1.6 is flat to about 40 in my room, then falls off a cliff. The ProAc 2.5 has usable bass to the mid-20's in my room.

Troublesome topic. The ProAc 2.0 and 2.5 seem to. The Totem Mani 2 also.

But, so does the $300 AE Aegis One, and there's the problem. Most small speakers that give a robust response at 40 hz, or below, are not putting out a true 40 hz signal. The spl meter will react to what comes out and show a strong response, but the sound reproduced by the speaker includes a lot of distortion and doubling and the net effect is usually something closer to 60hz. Almost all speakers have a lot of distortion in the bass. Go to Soundstage.com and look at the measurements accompanying the archived reviews of loudspeakers to see what I mean. Many highly regarded speakers have distortion and noise a mere 30-40 db below a 90 db signal.

What's the value of 40hz anyway? I'd rather have the perfectly accurate and undistorted 50hz reproduced by my Harbeths (down maybe 6db at 40).

40hz is not that tough to get +/- 3db to. 30hz is significantly harder. There are quite a few two way speakers that will go down flat to 40hz. The real trick is to have the electronics that will drive the speaker well down in the lower frequencies to be accurate in addition to flat at 40hz.

What do you have in your present system?

KF

I agree with Paul. Most small two ways are vented. They do this in order to obtain better measurable results at the expense of sonics. The problem with this is that bass distortion goes WAY up once you get below woofer resonance. The fall-off rate below port resonance is very drastic and it is possible to damage the driver by feeding it high level signals below that point. As such, the extension that you pick up with a vent is typically at a much higher distortion level, quality suffers and safety factors are reduce. It all boils down to the old "quantity vs quality" routine.

If one goes to a larger mid-woofer to pick up extension, this is typically done at the expense of midrange speed and detail. As such, you're back to the "quantity vs quality" dilemma.

Having said all of that, the little Legend two way sounds very nice. I typically am not a fan of vented designs but this is an exception. The only problem is that it is VERY expensive for the parts that it consists of. I have a hard time paying $4K for a small box with about $250 ( retail, so even cheaper wholesale ) worth of drivers in it. Sean
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I forgot to mention the Merlin VSM and the Talon Raven both are great performing 2 ways that go pretty darn low- the merlin is to the mid 30's and the talon goes into the high 20's!