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Tweeter Height of Floorstanders

posvibes

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I have been almost exclusively using bookshelf 2-way speakers for years and years, and I have liked all of them and preference for one or the other is easily satisfied by swapping them in and out. I quite enjoy the initial change, I find it refreshing and rotation is done regularly until I find something lacking in the performance that I can't really name and I change the speaker pair for another pair. They all lack a certain something but only in comparison between speaker sets.

My most recent purchase has been the JBL305p's which never fail to astound me.

But every now and then I drag a pair of ELAC speakers (EL-100's) 3 way floorstanders that I bought and have lugged around the world almost 40 years ago. Apart from some cosmetic bumps and scratches they still perform to my ears as they did when I first bought them.

As you can see they are not very tall and from memory when I bought them I compared them to Linn/Quadral/Canton speakers and the ELAC's won hands down in my preference but they were all of the same size roughly. I have added a photo of the speaker (not from me) and the specs below.

My question is from the listening position the tweeters are way below ear level, they always have been but I hear no detriment to the highs because of that. On many forums we are advised to get the tweeters to ear height.

How come the tweeter still works effectively at their height which I roughly measured to be around 55-56cm from the floor?



Producer: Elac
Model: EL 100
Year: 09/1989 - 08/1992


Measurements: 750 x 235 x 285 mm (H x W x D)
Gewicht: 15,5 kg
Price ca.: 698,- DM (UVP/Stück)


Technical Data

Type: 3-Way Bass reflex Floorstander
Chassis:
Woofers: 2x 165 mm Cone
Mid driver: 1x 25 mm Kalotte
Tweeter: 1x 19 mm Kalotte
Belastbarkeit (Nenn-/Musikb.): 100 / 130 Watt
Efficiency: 91 dB/2,83V/1m
Frequency Range: 38 - 22.000 Hz
Crossover: 900 / 3.200 Hz
Impedanz: 4 Ohm

elac el-100.jpg
 

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dougi

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56cm from floor may not create too much of an off-axis angle. for 80cm seated height, 3m away it is around 5 degrees off-axis. Most twetters should be ok there. Also a factor is the likely crossover design which may take it into account at the mid/tweeter and phase it to lift it up a bit.
 

jonfitch

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3/4" tweeters have much wider dispersion than 1" tweeters so tweeter height is less important.
 
OP
posvibes

posvibes

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You think that you have height issues with your tweeters ?

It is amazing how forgiving speaker design is. Is the overriding determinant enclosure volume? My speakers are relatively squat in comparison to the taller thinner towers available today, somewhere height, width or depth has to give way to the other two dimensions. That said and despite their bad reputation I can understand the attraction of soundbars (although the compromise there is the requirement for a separate subwoofer),

There muse be a lot of intense engineering going into single speakers to achieve sonic superiority over two speakers and I wonder how far they are from achieving that if at all?
 

Senior NEET Engineer

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Difference in height is mainly just a shift in the tonality. If the speaker is designed to be floorstanding, then I would assume it is voiced properly to be used in that way. A good tweeter will be wide enough dispersion.
 

valerianf

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My center speaker is placed under the TV and the tweeter is at 65 cm from the floor.
It is lower that my ears that are at 90 cm from the floor.
There is not issue as I tilded a little up the center speaker.
And this center speaker has a very powerful co-axial tweeter.

Regarding the floor standing speakers R and L, in my case the tweeter has the same configuration than for the Elac EL 100 but with a
82 cm height.
There is no issue of dispersion, i just need to replace the tweeter with a more performant model.
Work is in progress tuning my floorstanding speakers.
 

Loathecliff

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You could try tilting the speakers back a few degrees.
 
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posvibes

posvibes

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The Elac's offer to my ears a really nice listening experience. The tweeters if you look carefully have magnetically attached "kalloten" to me they look like fine meshed sieves which I think provide (added?) dispersion.
 
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