What are the advantages of three-way versus two-way? And are there advantages to two-way versus three-way?

Three-way speakers referred to how many crossover points there are between the division of labor, between the lows and the mids and highs. If it's a three-way speaker, there are two dividing points. So there's a highs section, a mid-section, and a lows section. In a two-way speaker, there's one dividing point, which means there's a highs section and a lows section.

The significance of that is when you have a crossover, you have an inherent phase shift that happens with that crossover. So, you have a time offset for modern cutting edge stuff. You can to a certain extent compensate for that time offset with air filters, but ultimately you're shifting everything later, so you effectively increase the delay time to narrow the arrival window.

One way of looking at that is imagining the train arriving in a station. When a train pulls into a station, does it arrive when the front gets there, when the middle gets there, or when the end gets there? Where do you count that arrival time? Because there is a period of time over which this sound will arrive because it's been divided up into these sections and because of the physics of the mass of the different drivers, they don't all arrive at the same time. So, they arrive over a period of time.

When you have a three-way speaker, you have necessarily increased the amount of time, you've increased the length of the train to a certain extent so that it will take more time for the entirety of that signal waveform to process through the speaker and arrive at your ears with a two-way where you have a shorter train, you have the transition. The arrival times of the two sections are truncated, so you don't have as long of a window.

This is the advantage and disadvantages with a two way versus a three-way loudspeaker system. The two-way system will allow you to deliver the sound that the complete waveform of the spectrum of the sounds over a tighter window or arrival window that's better from a point of view of phase smear, which is time smear. So, you have the theory of a more tighter focused image when it comes to imaging and such like, and your perception of the coherence of those signals.

With the advent of air filters, you can, as I said, truncate the window, but you move the window further away. So, in effect, the train gets shorter, but it arrives into the station later. You cannot make it arrive any earlier because you can't shorten it from the back. You have to shorten it from the front and then it will arrive.

So, you to a certain state can solve the problem of that extension of time that's required by the second crossover filter. But you don't solve it by having it arrive sooner. You solve it by having the whole thing arrive later. So that means increased latency for certain applications. It's critical not to have that long latency and it becomes more critical with other aspects of the signal chain that can add to that latency.

So, if you need something that gives you immediate feedback, even you don't want to be extending that latency. When it comes to larger systems, you know, you can have too much, you can have the system be too late behind the performance on stage, it's live. You can have the feedback, or the monitoring be too late when it comes to the action that somebody is taking on stage, the returning information that they're using for reference can be too late. And so, it lags with them, and it can really throw off a performer if that arrival is late. It's like when you have been on the phone with somebody and there's an echo of your own voice.

It's very disconcerting. It slows your speaking way down. It can really mess you up. So, to a lesser extent, you want you don't want that. To a lesser extent. That happens as you add latency. So, these are the advantages, disadvantages to just the nature of the crossover network.

Another thing that comes into play is that these pieces all have different characteristics and they most often, if they're not coaxial, mounted, they have different points in space from which they radiate their sound. So, they're they increase the number of different paths. So, if you have a midrange, a high frequency and a low frequency laid out, when you're off axis to that side, you're going to have the arrival of the high frequency early. The midrange will be possibly behind the low frequency, depending on how far apart they are and so on.

But when you're on the other side, you're going to have the midrange arriving first, low range, getting there basically in between and then the high frequencies arriving later. And again, that shifts when you center on axis and down. So, you have all these different factors that multiple drivers don't necessarily see, solve problems. Multiple ways don't solve problems. They create problems in the solution that they create for other problems.

So, what's the advantage to a three-way loudspeaker versus a two-way loudspeaker? You're dividing the labor. You're giving each device, each transducer, a narrower scope of work. High frequency devices will usually be able to be crossed over a little bit higher, putting less low frequency demand on them. That can reduce the distortion components that they may be producing.

A lot of times it can allow them to be lighter, faster and thereby extend into higher frequencies. Higher operation frequency ranges. The next thing is you. So now you have a dedicated midrange device that doesn't have to be too heavy because it's trying to do low frequency or so light that it needs to do high frequency. So, you have this dedicated device that does midrange, and the argument is, oh yeah, that can be a significant benefit because now your midrange, which is where your ears are most critically sensitive to arrival times and frequency shifts, is coming from a single device.

If that transition to the high frequency device is high enough, then it doesn't interfere. But you get back to another problem, which is depending on the diameter of that device, you can start beaming frequencies. So, the transitions are forced to, within certain ranges, depending on what those devices are. And so, it's not just a simple matter of, yes, three way is better.

You then have your transition to your low frequency device, which, you know, it gives you advantage so that you can theoretically have a three-way loudspeaker that produces more low frequency information because the low frequency devices are not required to make the midrange and vice versa. So, the midrange device isn't moving with so much amplitude that it causes intra modulation distortion. And the distortion factor again is lower. You concentrate the low frequency energy from the low frequency device, the distortion that occurs there doesn't influence the action of the mid frequency device.

Now, the pressure waves and so on is still going to cause in your modulation distortion, but you're not dealing with the same causes of that inner modulation distortion. So again, divide and conquer. But again, you, you end up with compromises. So, you have different issues. One way to minimize the way those compromises are negatively impacted is to create a coaxial midrange and high frequency device. That means that the distance off axis in any given direction is the same from the high frequency centered and the mid frequency center.

So, you have you don't have those multiple arrival issues when you have a coaxial mid and high. If you had a coaxial mid high low, you would again you'd have the ideal, which would be the perfect point source. The perfect point source. On the other hand, if you go to the extreme, it is infinitely small and it radiates in all directions equally with flat response. You know how that fantasy goes. But when you start adding dimension to create those things, then you start introducing other factors.

The number of ways still has the same benefit in the sense that you can divide that labor, that low frequency, mid frequency, high frequency labor up into more component parts. You still get the time smear the additions that those additional crossovers make, but you don't get the physical offset when you have a coaxial mid high section. So, these are the ways that you can build them and mitigate the negative consequences of these different devices.

From the point of view of what you're trying to create, you can narrow down the application to very specific benefits. When it comes to three-way versus two-way. But again, it is specific to the task at hand. Is it better not for everything. So, when you're looking at other things that are high sound pressure level in the midrange, you can create more sound pressure level with more devices.

The problem with that, again, you get multiple rivals. So, it's that two-way simplicity. If you have two people lifting a box, let's say one person, that's one in one person, that's the other end. You can fairly well coordinate that. The two people can work together like the high frequency and the low frequency. They can work together.

If you have three people lift in the same box, there's more to coordinate. They can potentially lift a heavier weight, but there's more to coordinate. And so, you have to make these things all work together. So, the more ways you have, the more ways you have to get, then things go wrong. Then so simple as better.