Cross over less speakers

[OldenEars]

Apologies if wrong forum or too trivial but...

Is this a thing for music rather than home cinema?

I've read good reviews on here of amps with crossover control.

I've loved the idea of active speakers since linn (which I fear measur badly) but can crossover less speakers be readily bought?

 

[FrankW]

can crossover less speakers be readily bought?

I have some in the form of clock radios that sound really bad and in the form of headphones that sound really good. The problem is when you take those crossover less drivers out of the headphones shells and try to get room filling music and cinema sound, they sound like the clock radios.
So I went with 2.5 way Revels, problem solved!

 

[rentaclaus]

Lowther is a famous manufactuer for crossoverless spaekers

Speakers for Audiophiles | Lowther Loudspeakers

Speakers for audiophiles since 1932. 90 years of passion, perfectionism and pure audio goes into every Lowther speaker, so you can enjoy flawless sound reproduction.

www.lowtherloudspeakers.com

Also Manger

Manger — Präzision in Schall

Manger Audio - Präzision im Schall - Unsere Systeme werden alle in Deutschland handgefertigt, wobei der einzigartige Manger-Schallwandler das Herzstück aller Modelle ist.

mangeraudio.com

I'm sure ther are more ...

never heard any of these so I can't tell how they sound.

 

[gene_stl]

"Full range , single driver speaker systems" are an audiophile fantasy that generally violates the laws of physics.

The more ways you have , generally the better up to four five or six way. Active systems even better.

I have heard lots of these and they don't sound bad. But they can't play loud and the bass is missing and they have to point towards the main listening position in order to get any highs which come straight out like a laser beam with little dispersion.

 

[DVDdoug]

I've read good reviews on here of amps with crossover control.

I don't think you'll find any multi-way "home speakers" without crossovers but there some speakers with separate high & low input connections so you can bi-amplify (or bi-wire*). Most of these don't actually bypass the internal crossover so you'd usually have an external active crossover plus an internal passive crossover.

In some large "concert-type" PA systems there are separate subs, mids, and highs, without passive crossovers, all driven by separate amplifiers. If you are looking at high-power pro amplifiers, that's what those are for. If the crossover isn't built-into the amps you need a separate (line level) active crossover that goes between the source and the amplifier input.

I have a tri-amped setup in one of my vehicles. The drivers are separate and there is no passive crossover. I used to have an active crossover and 3 stereo amps but I had some reliability issues and I replaced it with a 5-channel amp that has active crossovers built-in.





* Bi-wiring is silly "audiophile nonsense"... I guess it's supposed to be "poor man's bi-amplification". It's the same amplification and the same wiring except with the high & low connections back at the amplifier instead of at the speaker-input or inside the speaker.

P.S.
A "standard" home theater setup has regular passive main & surround speakers driven by the AVR or amplifier(s). But the AVR only has a line-level output and the subwoofer is normally active or it needs it's own amplifier. The subwoofer might have a low-pass filter built-in (half of a crossover) or it might not. The 'point one" LFE (low frequency effects) channel goes to the sub. Since the LFE only contains low frequencies no crossover is needed inside the sub. AVRs also have a built-in active crossover (called "bass management") that can optionally re-route ALL of the bass away from the other speakers, mix it with the LFE, and send it to the sub. (It doesn't normally work the other way around... It can't send the LFE to the other speakers... They can get the "regular bass" but without a subwoofer you lose the LFE channel.)

 

[rentaclaus]

"Full range , single driver speaker systems" are an audiophile fantasy that generally violates the laws of physics.

From what I've read the Ohm F did the trick

Ohm F

The Ohm F was the most popular of the first generation Walsh speakers. It used a 12'' inverted omnidirectional driver operating from 35 - 17,000 Hz. Some of the…

ohmspeaker.com

Here a test from a serious magazine (sorry german only)

hifimuseum.de - Sie sind im Bereich : OHM F Test 1974 (de)

 

[amadeuswus]

Loosely speaking, Quad ESL63 and its direct successors are both "full"-range and crossoverless (so far as I know). And the bigger Soundlab electrostatic speakers too. But maybe the OP didn't have panel speakers in mind.

 

[TimW]

ve read good reviews on here of amps with crossover control.

I've loved the idea of active speakers since linn (which I fear measur badly) but can crossover less speakers be readily bought?

The JBL M2 is designed to be used with an external active crossover. Similarly, the JBL 708i is designed to be used with external equalization to linearize its response further than the basic internal passive crossover can.

I think I've seen this sort of approach with small boutique brands but I can't recall their names.

 

[TimW]

Ah I forgot about the GGNTKT M1 which comes with an external amplifier with DSP crossover:

There has already been a thread about this btw.

 

[OldenEars]

I have some in the form of clock radios that sound really bad and in the form of headphones that sound really good. The problem is when you take those crossover less drivers out of the headphones shells and try to get room filling music and cinema sound, they sound like the clock radios.
So I went with 2.5 way Revels, problem solved!

Hey not looking at DIY speaker building, I have a feeling professionals might do a better job

Maybe I can get an old pair of active(? They don't have amps and the crossovers were boards inside the amps, I think) Linn's and make my own crossovers via one or more of those amps amir kindly reviewed?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Loosely speaking, Quad ESL63 and its direct successors are both "full"-range and crossoverless (so far as I know). And the bigger Soundlab electrostatic speakers too. But maybe the OP didn't have panel speakers in mind.

Yes, and no. Both of the ones you mention aren't quite truly pure full range with no crossover. I can go into more detail if you wish or you may already know.

 

[Zapper]

By "crossoverless" do you mean one or more of the same size driver trying to cover the full frequency range, or a speaker unit with different frequency ranges with each driver connected to separate binding posts, so that the crossover (passive or active) is provided externally?

If you mean the latter, it would be easy to create from any multi-driver passive speaker. Just open it up, disconnect the crossover, add one or more additional pair of binding posts, wire it up.

 

[mhardy6647]

So... many years ago (early 1970s), a young Johns Hopkins University graduate, Matthew Polk, and a couple of his buddies set out to build some Bose 901 clones (known as the "Bozos") for fun and profit. Bose Corp. -- rather predictably -- suggested none too gently that they'd prefer Polk et al. to consider other avenues. Faced with a fairly large quantity of CTS 4-1/2 inch "fullrange" (extended range) drivers, and a yen to make money umm, I mean, loudspeakers -- and being smart guys (JHU grads ), our intrepid heroes set out do design a domestic loudspeaker product!

For whatever reason, they decided to go with a crossoverless design, still somewhat Bose-esque, but with a different approact than that employed by the folks on The Mountain in Framingham, MA to improve HF and LF extention. Bose used electronic EQ. Polk et al. used a passive radiator (rather than the then fashionable acoustic suspension alignment) and a piezoelectric tweeter. The former, of course, is "just" a different way of implementing a Helmholtz resonator (bass reflex alignment), and the latter, which is essentially a capacitor that vibrates a paper diaphragm, essentially serves as its own crossover (ca. 4 kHz). Oh, and they went with a dipole (or is it bipole? I don't know...) design to use as many of those CTS drivers as possible (four per loudspeaker). Thus was born Polk Audio's first commercial product -- the Model Nine.

Polk's literature of the time touted the "crossoverless design" and high sensitivity of the Model Nine.


You can find the complete original brochure at:

https://polksda.com/pdfs/ModelNineManual.pdf

I can tell you empirically that a pair were installed at the student pub (the drinking age for beer & wine in Maryland in those days was eighteen) at JHU when I matriculated there (1976), and they served gamely for at least several years in the mid to late '70s, providing background music at times when there was no live band.

They were... pretty terrible.

Polk & co. then developed the Model 7 and went on to a not-inconsiderable amount of success.

Postscript: At some point, Polk actually improved the Model Nine by adding a proper tweeter (Audax silk dome) and crossover, re-christening them the Monitor Series Model 9A. I actually have a pair of 9As, and they're not bad at all.


(front)

(rear)

 

[Blumlein 88]

EWWWWWW! Piezo's and the worst implementation without crossovers. Interesting lack of binding posts in that last picture.

 

[kemmler3D]

Not many commercial examples with external crossovers, but doing your own 2, 3 or 4-way with that 8-channel amp and a MiniDSP Flex is pretty achievable at moderate cost. Speaker building is still pretty tricky even if you don't have to worry about the crossover, but the crossover is commonly considered the hardest part if you're doing passives.

 

[fpitas]

EWWWWWW! Piezo's and the worst implementation without crossovers. Interesting lack of binding posts in that last picture.

Piezos can sound very good indeed. But yeah, it takes a real crossover and notch filtering.

 

[mhardy6647]

EWWWWWW! Piezo's and the worst implementation without crossovers. Interesting lack of binding posts in that last picture.

Binding posts are underneath. (EDIT: actually a barrier terminal strip)

... and, yes, of course, you're dead right on the piezo implementation. Runnin' 'em unbridled is how they got their sssssssssssspitty reputation.

I will add that those CTS drivers were - and still are - pretty pleasant sounding when used responsibly.
Even the 9A is not a bad sounding loudspeaker -- although it is held in as low regard as its forebear in the Polk pantheon by the faithful.

EDIT: PS note in my 9A photos above that the cabinetry was crafted of the then nigh-on ubiquitous particleboard ("fallaparticleboard", as a series of ads for a discount window company in the Boston area likes to call it).

 

[mhardy6647]

Now, if you (i.e., the OP, @OldenEars) want to talk about ahem "fullrange" drivers of the classical kind (e.g., found in low-end console hifis and better televisions for several decades) -- I have some perspectives on those, too.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Now, if you (i.e., the OP, @OldenEars) want to talk about ahem "fullrange" drivers of the classical kind (e.g., found in low-end console hifis and better televisions for several decades) -- I have some perspectives on those, too.

Whizzer cones yeah!

 

[fpitas]

Now, if you (i.e., the OP, @OldenEars) want to talk about ahem "fullrange" drivers of the classical kind (e.g., found in low-end console hifis and better televisions for several decades) -- I have some perspectives on those, too.

Wait...is that some incarnation of a 604?