Frequency range, how important?! (1 Viewer)

[Albert Damico]

Speakers all come with various frequency ranges and its easy to see the change within a brand. For example, one speaker compay shows a bookshelf with a range of 55-20,000 Hz, another with 40-20,000Hz and once you move into towers, the range goes to, 35-20,000 Hz and even to 30-20,000 Hz. So the implication is that as you move up the speaker food chain, (in the same brand) the frequency gets lower on the one end. (sensitivity also goes up) But, when you look at a much more expensive speaker brand, speakers costing many times more actually list frequency ranges that would appear to be much worse! For exampe looking at Infinity's then Paradigms, and then Rockets, I can't see any consitancy with frequency range and price. Can sombody help me out with an explanation of why a speaker with a lets say, range of 60-20,000 Hz can cost 4 times as much as a speaker that has a 30-20,000 Hz rating? Given that impediance and sensitivity are almost the same.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Paul Seyfarth]

Freq response just tells what freq it can produce. It has nothing to do with how good or clear the speaker sounds. usually if you have a speaker that only produces down to 60 or 80Hz, then you will get a sub to go from 80-20Hz.

 

[Adam.Gonsman]

The frequency response of a speaker is only one little peice of its overall sound presentation. There are many other factors relating to driver materials, quality of crossovers, cabinet weight, etc that can play a very big role in how "good" or "natural" a speaker sounds. And all these can effect the cost of producing the speaker. Just because a speaker will play frequancies down to 30hz doesn't mean it plays them accurately. But a speaker that costs 4 times as much is more likely to stay accurate throughout more (or all) of its range, even if that range is slightly smaller.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

As has been stated there are many factors that cause a
speaker to sound great. The crossover has as much effect
on the way it sounds as even the raw driver choice does.

But generaly speaking as long as the companies are not
"fudging" the numbers. A speaker that can play low will
cost you more. It's not easy to get an "all in one" solution
that will do 30Hz with much output and even harder to find
speakers that will do 20Hz without being down -12Db or more.


Reference speakers in the multi thousand dollar range can
usually play true full range (20Hz to 20Khz) and you pay
a Reference price for them.

Most people opt to just buy a very good set of bookshelfs
and integrate them with a very good subwoofer.

(it is usually more affordable that way)