More important to match mids or tweeters? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Hine]

Hey guys,

I'm just curious on your opinion on whether or not it is ok to match just the tweeter or just the woofers in a speaker system. Obviously it's better to match both but if you could only have one, which would you prefer. The reason I ask is because I'm looking to get a matching center for my Polk mains. A guy I spoke with said I could use the lower model since they use the same tweeter and would match well.

I would think that matching the mids would be more important as that is the driver that seems to carry more of the vocals and sound effects and produce the tonal characteristics of the speaker. Your thoughts?


Dan

 

[John Garcia]

If you are talking about physical size of driver, ideally you would want to match the drivers, but the differences between a 6-1/2 model and a 5-1/4 model in the same family of speaker will be negligible, if even noticable. The tweeter on the other hand, is where it is far more obvious when they are mismatched. The character of the tweeter is usually the first thing I notice about a speaker. Other subtle factors would be cabinet construction and crossover design, but if they are from the same manufacturer and family of speaker, I don't think you have much to worry about.