Use of 1st order crossovers means that the vertical axis of the speaker is very narrow - the speaker will sound entirely different when you sit down or stand up! This means that the signal propagated into the room is uneven, so the natural reverberation of the listening area is not excited evenly at all frequencies. Higher order crossovers are better in this respect, but cause their own problems. Relatively poor transient response is always claimed,
but in reality, a great many high end manufacturers are using 24 dB /octave filters, especially with electronic crossovers, and achieve extraordinary results.
My own system loudspeakers are triamped using my version of the Linkwitz-Riley 24 dB crossover, and they sound very good indeed. They are not time aligned, but based on the results of my work on this article, I would expect that when (not if) I rebuild the boxes (or just make a new system altogether) they can sound even better.
Reproduction of a square wave is something of a myth. I have received a very passable square wave response from a pair of small hi-fi boxes I use in my workshop. All I have to do is select a good position for the measuring microphone. How many sites have you visited in your quest for "the ultimate loudspeaker", where they claim (or show) the square wave response? How many admitted that the positioning of the measurement mic has a very great bearing on whether a square wave is reproduced or not? From what I have seen, no-one has ever claimed that a square wave is received perfectly regardless of mic position, nor have they disclosed the actual measurement setup that was used - is this at the listening position in a "typical" room, or 300 mm in front of the speaker in an anechoic chamber? We shall never know.
Indeed, the room itself is still the greatest offender - even a coffee table that is in the acoustic path of the loudspeaker will have a profound effect on the overall response. Very few rooms are acoustically dead enough (IMO), and I have seen a great many photos of people's systems set up on polished marble (or whatever) floors in relatively bare rooms, with almost no acoustic deadening materials to be seen.
Human hearing is very adept at picking the original sound from the reverberant field, provided the early reflections are not so early (or are sufficiently loud compared to the direct sound) that they influence the direct sound. Given the highly reverberant listening rooms of some people
http://sound.westhost.com/ptd.htm
Use of 1st order crossovers means that the vertical axis of the speaker is very narrow - the speaker will sound entirely different when you sit down or stand up! This means that the signal propagated into the room is uneven, so the natural reverberation of the listening area is not excited evenly at all frequencies. Higher order crossovers are better in this respect, but cause their own problems. Relatively poor transient response is always claimed,
but in reality, a great many high end manufacturers are using 24 dB /octave filters, especially with electronic crossovers, and achieve extraordinary results.
My own system loudspeakers are triamped using my version of the Linkwitz-Riley 24 dB crossover, and they sound very good indeed. They are not time aligned, but based on the results of my work on this article, I would expect that when (not if) I rebuild the boxes (or just make a new system altogether) they can sound even better.
Reproduction of a square wave is something of a myth. I have received a very passable square wave response from a pair of small hi-fi boxes I use in my workshop. All I have to do is select a good position for the measuring microphone. How many sites have you visited in your quest for "the ultimate loudspeaker", where they claim (or show) the square wave response? How many admitted that the positioning of the measurement mic has a very great bearing on whether a square wave is reproduced or not? From what I have seen, no-one has ever claimed that a square wave is received perfectly regardless of mic position, nor have they disclosed the actual measurement setup that was used - is this at the listening position in a "typical" room, or 300 mm in front of the speaker in an anechoic chamber? We shall never know.
Indeed, the room itself is still the greatest offender - even a coffee table that is in the acoustic path of the loudspeaker will have a profound effect on the overall response. Very few rooms are acoustically dead enough (IMO), and I have seen a great many photos of people's systems set up on polished marble (or whatever) floors in relatively bare rooms, with almost no acoustic deadening materials to be seen.
Human hearing is very adept at picking the original sound from the reverberant field, provided the early reflections are not so early (or are sufficiently loud compared to the direct sound) that they influence the direct sound. Given the highly reverberant listening rooms of some people