Chris Brown
Super Member
For me it really depends on the design. Often with a 2-way, you can tell just from looking at the specs that one or both of the drivers are being used a bit outside of their comfortable frequency range. On my JBL L100T (3-way) speakers, the 035Ti tweeter is crossed over at 4500hz. In the L60T (2-way), that same tweeter is crossed over at 2500hz. Asking a 1" dome tweeter to cover frequencies 2000hz lower than it was likely intended to seems like a bit of a stretch... and unsurprisingly, the L60T is by far the least popular speaker from that entire series.
The best 2-ways that I've heard are often the smaller bookshelves, like the JBL L20T. In those cases, it's almost more like a mid and a tweeter than a woofer and a tweeter, and the tweeter is usually not asked to go as low. Add in a subwoofer and you'd have yourself quite a system - though at that point you've basically re-created a 3-way system.
Another factor is that I like to play my music loud, and woofers/mids/tweeters just seem to perform better in that situation when they aren't asked to cover beyond their ideal frequency range.
But in the end, I'm not above simply listening to something and seeing how it sounds, even if it seems like something that should be a disaster on paper.
The best 2-ways that I've heard are often the smaller bookshelves, like the JBL L20T. In those cases, it's almost more like a mid and a tweeter than a woofer and a tweeter, and the tweeter is usually not asked to go as low. Add in a subwoofer and you'd have yourself quite a system - though at that point you've basically re-created a 3-way system.
Another factor is that I like to play my music loud, and woofers/mids/tweeters just seem to perform better in that situation when they aren't asked to cover beyond their ideal frequency range.
But in the end, I'm not above simply listening to something and seeing how it sounds, even if it seems like something that should be a disaster on paper.
