So...one speaker, and all 2-ways are bunk? Your argument would imply that the NS-1000 is really the only capable speaker ever made, the way you've phrased it. Imagine a much smaller tweeter than can play into the range of the much larger midrange of the NS-1000, and suddenly your weight argument doesn't make as much sense to me. I'm aware of the NS-1000. It's a fantastic speaker. But it's existence doesn't trump every speaker made then or since. Just look at all the speakers made now using a variation of the Air Motion ribbon tweeter. Or look at a modern two way using a Beryllium tweeter, such as the Usher Be-718. Absolutely coherent through the midrange. You're talking about a transparency thing with the NS-1000...has nothing to do with frequency response from the upper bass on up. It's important, but its not driver coherency. If anything, the speed of the Be midrange could cause a lack of integration with the woofer. Does it? Not to my ears, but its certainly the type of conclusion one could come to give the basic logic you're using for the supremacy of the NS-1000 in the face of all speakers.
I have ESLs. In real world listening the SHL-5 is very similar in presentation though slightly lacking in transparency (and slightly trumping in dynamics, a tradeoff). All through its drivers. Absolutely coherent. Driver integration doesn't solely belong to beryllium.
I'm surprised you liked the Wilsons, only because I can't stand them. I hear an unnatural sounding Focal tweeter fighting with a bunch of other drivers in a fancy hi-fi sounding box on top of another box that sounded completely disconnected to the sound. At least the Watt/Puppy. The Sasha sounded much nicer.
I didn't say I liked the Wilsons. They were being driven by Krell amps and the sound was impressive in scale. I was certainly not able to compare them with anything I was familiar with, as they were in a showroom.
The problems of speaker design are well known. Good, deep, powerful bass requires moving a lot of air. That means a large diaphragm. A large diaphragm cannot move very fast compared to a smaller lighter one. It's a 'division of labour' thing. I owned what is essentially a two-way for 20 years (Rogers Studio 1). Though it was a very good speaker, it does not come close to the NS-1000 in the mid-range. The high end was gorgeous, with two tweeters. It is a two-way in the sense that there is one driver for bass and mid-range. Its successor (the Studio 1a) was a '
true' midway with a single tweeter. The reason that two tweeters were used in the Studio 1 was probably that the range of each driver was not quite sufficient. The Studio 1a did use a single tweeter (a different one), and a slightly different woofer-midrange driver.
The ideal size for a woofer seems to be 12" (300mm). Woofers that are smaller leave a little bit to be desired in terms of power, and larger ones are necessarily a bit slower.
The woofer of the NS-1000 is, I believe, optimised for speed, and thus does not go as deep as some others, including the NS-690, its little brother.
The overall impression of the NS-1000 is very coherent. I am sure that a lot of effort went into integrating all the aspects of crossover slopes and driver characteristics. I have heard lots of speakers, at all kinds of price points, Revels and Spendors included. Aside from the Kenwood Model seven, the NS-1000 wins hands down.
You simply cannot get a single driver to cover the bass and midrange and do it as well as you can with separate drivers, all things being equal; you have to be willing to live with the limitations of volume and bass extension. The LS3/5a is a perfect example. It was intended as a mobile monitor for the BBC, but it ended up being a cult speaker. It sucks, in my opinion, for anything except what it was designed for. It does not fill a room with music, it has an upper bass hump, etc. It is coloured and does not play loud. For guitar pieces or perhaps violin solos, it is a decent speaker. But it is not a full-range speaker like the Studio 1, which uses the same tweeter.
I believe a typical three-way has crossover points of 600Hz and 6KHz. The Rogers Studio 1 runs the woofer-midange up to about 2 or 3 KHz, and the tweeter goes from 2KHz to 13KHz, the supertweeter from 13KHz to 22KHz. I can try to verify these, but this is my recollection.
OK, I did find that the Studio 1a crosses over at 3KHz to the tweeter. I assume the Studio 1 had a similar crossover point.
http://www.vintage-audio.com.ua/en/cat/220/760.html
That is way too high. It might be OK for certain kinds of music (perhaps music without lots of transients), but a 'thickening' of vocals was what finally drove me away from this kind of design.
