What are the Advantages of Full Range?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Jump to Latest
HarryY

HarryY

Member
Joined 2017
#1
I was looking for a set of speakers for my office/den and wound up with a pair
of full range speakers (Alpair 7A in Classic Golden Ratio Cabinets from Planet 10)
Even at low level these sound nice (They are still new so I have not turned them up).

So this is more a question for Head Knowledge than anything else.

What are the Advantages of Full Range?


Thank you
 
#2
No crossover (a FR with a whizzer has a mechanical XO).
All the sound coming from one place, even more so than a co-ax. Particularily a boon near field.
Simple.

Downsides are usually a lack at one or both ends of the spectrum… but most of the music is in the midrange, as you get older your HF accuity drops off, the lowest note on a bass guitar is 42 Hz, so missing the bottom octave is not overly critical in many cases, and as long as the speaker can do the 1st harmonic of a low bass note your brain will fill in the rest (what allows the FH-Lite to give the amazing perception of bass that it does). To get up high a FR runs in a breakup mode at higher frequencies and uncontrolled ones tend to ring at discrete frequencies. A FR usually cannot play as loud as a multiway.

dave
 
#5
If you listen to music at 'modest' levels perhaps below 90db then a full range driver will be more than capable of delivering what you need. It is somewhat of a myth that you need to reproduce all frequencies from 20Hz - 20kHz to fully enjoy music so why bother even trying. Of course it is nice to know that your speakers 'can' achieve this but the vast amount of musical content that we listen to only extends from 30Hz - 15kHz and has been mentioned hearing loss with age reduces the high end even more.
The simplicity of application and resultant purity and point source accuracy of the sound from a full range driver is difficult to beat.....in my opinion and by my limited experience and with the usual caveat that it does depend on the musical content that your are listening too.
 
#7
If you listen to classical music you may want to dig deeper. The lower frequencies also give a foundation to the music and can help with the sense of realism and presence. For the majority of music at modest listening levels, a single driver is hard to beat
 
Last edited:
#8
While I made a few pairs of FR speakers and enjoy them, my main speakers are coaxials. Because I also use them for movies (without extra sub, simply stereo) and frankly you want a more solid bass than what FR drivers usually produce then.
Otherwise they are esp good for diy because less complex to get right than multiway (very difficult to get to say the quality of a Harbeth on your own) and tremendously satisfying musical results, esp for acoustic music and jazz. In general FR is less suited to for example bring Metallica or Rammstein convincingly.
 
#9
scottjoplin said:
If you listen to classical music you may want to dig deeper. The lower frequencies also give a foundation to the music and can help with the sense of realism and presence. For the majority of music at modest listening levels, a single driver is hard to beat
Click to expand...

If my memory serves me correct I noted flat to 26hz is a must on proper piano recordings. Big variation on most classical recordings. Church organs do go deep, but the recordings I have have little output below 30hz. Below 30hz do have a huge impact on sense of space if the recording room was big.
 
#11
I keep coming back to some variant of wide range drivers.

I used open baffle wide rangers for 10 years. I have just completed my first FAST type setup and am enjoying it a lot.

Agree that in the mids there is a certain rightness. And dead simple to build right as there are a lot of folks out there with experience doing so in a variety of enclosures.
 
#13
jerryo said:
If you listen to music at 'modest' levels perhaps below 90db then a full range driver will be more than capable of delivering what you need. It is somewhat of a myth that you need to reproduce all frequencies from 20Hz - 20kHz to fully enjoy music so why bother even trying. Of course it is nice to know that your speakers 'can' achieve this but the vast amount of musical content that we listen to only extends from 30Hz - 15kHz and has been mentioned hearing loss with age reduces the high end even more.
The simplicity of application and resultant purity and point source accuracy of the sound from a full range driver is difficult to beat.....in my opinion and by my limited experience and with the usual caveat that it does depend on the musical content that your are listening too.
Click to expand...




I'm running full range now and they are almost exactly 1 meter
from my ears. So I tend to listen to them at quite a modest level.

I have to agree with if I can't hear it why am I trying to reproduce it.
(and that goes beyond just the amp, but that's for another discussion)

Admittedly I was surprised when I first hooked up these speakers
they for as small as they are they sound quite nice.
 
#14
Near field listening can be very rewarding, I've found it interesting to listen like this late at night when there's very little background noise and keep the volume as low as you can, I've often found I can nudge the volume lower and lower.
 
#15
scottjoplin said:
If you listen to classical music you may want to dig deeper. The lower frequencies also give a foundation to the music and can help with the sense of realism and presence. For the majority of music at modest listening levels, a single driver is hard to beat
Click to expand...


I typically listen to older rock and some classical, for the older rock I would tend to believe (aside from some Pink Floyd) most does not go extremely low.

Very heavy base tends to muddy the music for me (Probably due to older ears).
 
#16
scottjoplin said:
Near field listening can be very rewarding, I've found it interesting to listen like this late at night when there's very little background noise and keep the volume as low as you can, I've often found I can nudge the volume lower and lower.
Click to expand...


That's about how it is for me. I work from home so my home
is very quiet (even the fans in my computer are extra quiet).

I actually find my self turning it down, I can easily talk
over the level they are at now and they still sound nice
 
#17
One of my favourite bands or artists is 'Yello' and their music is known for some very deep bass content and because I don't like listening too loud my full range speakers are producing all but the very deepest parts of their music. I have subwoofers that do add a little extra depth but to be honest they do not add any extra enjoyment to the listening experience. I've also tried adding a ribbon tweeter to see what effect that had above
8-10kHz but again, although a bit of 'air' and maybe a bit of 'sparkle' was heard, nothing was added to the listening experience. This might be due to less than perfect integration of the tweeter but nonetheless it seems to me to be superfluous in application.
My next step will be a low powered Class A amp (ACA) mono blocks and a simple volume control direct from the source. No subwoofer of tweeter or crossover or long speaker cables.
 
#19
Very heavy base tends to muddy the music for me (Probably due to older ears).
Click to expand...
I was going to say, that's one of the downsides to full range drivers which hasn't been mentioned. If you have a driver really chucking out the bass, in many cases moving more than 12mm or more peak to peak, that can have a detrimental effect on the reproduction of the high notes from the same driver. Intermodulation distortion.

It may not be the effect you're describing but it's something else to consider.
 
#20
You're definitely right about "deep / heavy" bass being the Achilles heel of most smaller FR drivers ( i.e. less than 6" effective cone area), and is one of the reasons that low crossover point 2-ways (aka FAST) have become trendy here . Exactly where to roll off, and whether to go active/ bi-amp or spend big bucks on passive components for high signal level filtering is the conundrum.

Then of course, there's always the full length line array approach, of which several very impressively executed examples can be found on these fora, but they're not without their own complexities beyond just the build itself.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom