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True “full range” floorstanding speakers

AudioGMan said:
So a sealed cabinet around 10-12 cubic feet of internal volume with dual 4 ohm 15” woofers wired in series that have an Fs below 20Hz that extend up to 1kHz crossed over at 800Hz at 12dB/octave low pass paired with a compression horn crossed over at 800Hz 12dB/octave high pass wouldn’t work? It can be done. Maybe no one makes them because of the WAF. Fortunately that doesn’t exist at my house. And yes I have a wife.
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I don’t think it is a question of whether or not it is doable and more a question of if it is doable well/well enough for your liking. The more you ask of a driver the more difficult it is for that driver to perform equally well across its full range. My guess is it is a pretty special driver that goes from 20-1000hz and does it well. Of course, having multiple crossover points creates its own challenges.

10 cubic feet of cabinet volume is basically three of your Mach speakers. WAF aside, most people don’t have the realestate for that type of speaker and if they do, they can probably afford a pair of speakers that does what you want with a smaller footprint. It sounds like the question you really want answered is what would it take to build the speakers you want for the least amount of money possible and still get reasonable sound. That is a whole different question than the one you originally composed.
 
z-adamson said:
So......one woofer, one mid, one tweeter, single cabinet, not expensive, 20 to 20k hz response + or - 3db, all passive.

Really?

Drop the "not expensive" and "one woofer, one mid, one tweeter" criteria and this can be done. Drop the "single cabinet" requirement, this can be done.

Think about it, with one woofer and one mid, the woofer often plays up to 800hz or so. How is a woofer that plays up to 800hz supposed to also play flat to 20hz? Ain't gunna happen.

You might as well start looking for a unicorn.
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I think it's kinda ridiculous to ask a woofer tasked with lower double digits frequencies to do much above 400Hz well. There seems to be a trend in some modern speakers to get the mid-range to cover as much as possible and let the woofers pick up around 250Hz. I like that approach.

Tedrick said:
Golden Ear Triton Three+ (21 Hz), Two+ (16 Hz), One R (13 Hz), and Reference (12 Hz) all make the grade, and all are three-way speakers (with passive radiators).
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All those GEs have big class D amps built into them.
 
Can I point out here that there are reasons that not even huge concert PA subs do 20Hz? In fact, their electronics are usually designed to filter that stuff out. If you want sub-25Hz bass, you bring in rotary subs. They're massively more effective and efficient.
 
AudioGMan said:
So a sealed cabinet around 10-12 cubic feet of internal volume with dual 4 ohm 15” woofers wired in series that have an Fs below 20Hz that extend up to 1kHz crossed over at 800Hz at 12dB/octave low pass paired with a compression horn crossed over at 800Hz 12dB/octave high pass wouldn’t work? It can be done. Maybe no one makes them because of the WAF. Fortunately that doesn’t exist at my house. And yes I have a wife.
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First, you said a woofer, a mid and a tweeter. Now you are talking two woofers and an hlcd.

And you were talking about commercially manufactured speakers before, now you are seemingly talking about diy.

So, what exactly are you trying to do?
 
Well I was trying to see what is already available but I think I’m going to have to just build my own. I think it’s doable for around $1K.
 
I was going to suggest the ADS L-1530's but turns out they only make down to 25hz +/- 3db, (18hz +/- 5db):( Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make due until I can find an affordable pair of L-2030's.
 
Mirage m1 (or m1si) hit pretty close to 20 Hz. Not exactly shelf speakers, of course.
 
GordonW said:
Believe it or not- but a tweaked (slight tuning change in the PR to lower the resonant frequency of the PR, and box stuffing added) EPI 200 will get very close to 20Hz in many rooms. I've tested it!


Regards,
Gordon.
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I have a pair of the 1st version of EPI 200's that I started to refurbish. I'd love to eke a bit deeper bass out of them. You couldn't be more specific on about how much mass you added to the passives and how much you stuffed the cabinets? Did you more or less loosely fill them with Dacron pillow stuffing?

Thanks in advance Gordon. I've always had a soft spot for EPI 200's and for passive radiator systems in general.
 
AudioGMan said:
I gave up on powered subwoofers many years ago because the built in amplifiers always eventually fail. I’ve had Polk Audio, Klipsch, and Velodyne servo powered subs and it’s always just a matter of time before the amp goes belly up. I’ve moved on to building passive subs and using a pro amp to power them instead. I always wanted a pair of true full range speakers so I guess I’m just gonna have to build them.
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AudioGMan said:
Well I was trying to see what is already available but I think I’m going to have to just build my own. I think it’s doable for around $1K.
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Even with DIY you are not going to find much for a 3-way 20-20k design. As noted above, it is quite challenging without totally blowing the budget. The "easy" solution is to build a 2-way design with powered subwoofers in the same box (or build as stands)...same idea as many of the commercial offerings above.

Something like one of these....
https://www.diysoundgroup.com/home-...ome-theater-series/home-theater/ht-8-kit.html

Over a pair of budget 12" subs (JBL CS1214 or similar) or a single 15. Power the subs with a pro amp (or subwoofer plate amps in a separate enclosure if you need the high-level speaker inputs). Depending on your upstream electronics and closet of spare gear, a miniDSP 2x4 or Dayton DSP 4x8 may help tie everything together and allow for tuning to the room. Trying to do a passive 3-way crossover from scratch is a fools errand. Let the subwoofer amp or DSP do the work.

You can do that for $1000. Wood veneer might push you over budget unless you already have the amp for the subs and use an AVR for subwoofer management.

Good luck!
 
lab said:
I have a pair of the 1st version of EPI 200's that I started to refurbish. I'd love to eke a bit deeper bass out of them. You couldn't be more specific on about how much mass you added to the passives and how much you stuffed the cabinets? Did you more or less loosely fill them with Dacron pillow stuffing?

Thanks in advance Gordon. I've always had a soft spot for EPI 200's and for passive radiator systems in general.
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IIRC, I added about one ounce to the back of the PR, and loosely filled the bottom half of the cabinet, and the area above the woofer (behind the tweeter- leave the space between the woofer and the PR mostly open) with half-and-half fiberglass and dacron.

Regards,
Gordon.
 
Poultrygeist said:
I often see the term "full range speaker" on this forum. To many of us it means something different than what the OP intended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-range_speaker
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Yes I understand. Had I meant that I would have titled the OP True “full range driver” floorstanding speakers. I never refer to a single driver as a speaker. To me a speaker is a complete system. So in other words a speaker can be one that consists of a single driver but I never refer to a raw driver as a speaker. I’m curious, has anyone built a single driver speaker that is truly full range?
 
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Thiel CS3.5 are 20-20k +/-2dB, although they cheat slightly by using an active equalizer...
The bigger ADS (1530, 2030) are also right down into the mid to lower 20s.

Don't underestimate how much of a difference placement and room size can make; I had a pair of JBL L7 (which are rated as -6dB at 30Hz) and in my small-ish listening room the bass was overwhelming.
 
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