x-over or not to x-over

I've read a lot about full range drivers (Lowther) and how great they sound, but most speakers use multiple drivers. If not having to use crossovers is so much better then why does everybody else do it. I've never heard Lowthers but every thing I read sounds just like what I love. I'm not a bass freak and I don't listen to my music real loud. I do love it when the vocals sound right there. I get it better on some recordings (Nora Jones) than others. I just want MORE of it. Is the full range driver sound different than other speakers. Better, worse or just personal perference.

 

The problem with crossovers is they cause crossover distortion. If you sweep tones through your loudspeakers (assuming that they are aligned in time properly) you can hear the crossover points. The steeper the crossover, the more problems you run into. However, it is a trade off. Full range drivers have problems of their own too. Ideally, in a multi way speaker system, if the drivers are robust, you want a very gradual crossover slope. Something like a 12 dB per octave butterworth, or even better, a 12 dB per octave Bessel crossover. These crossovers are extremely gradual, the drivers have lots of integration, which makes the crossover very smooth, and the speaker very neutral. The problem is, the mids and tweeters need to be very robust, because they still receive a lot of frequencies below the crossover point until it finally falls off 24 dB and two octaves later. Really, the main purpose of crossovers is to protect the drivers. In a perfect world, you would want a multi way speaker with no crossover at all, but of course, we cant design a mid or tweeter that can take it. I have actually experemented, and built a multi way loudspeaker with no crossover. It sounds stunning, but you can't play it too loud, or else you see the magic smoke pour out of the tweeter

 

Most people say that non-crossover speakers, such as the Omega Grande series (www.omegaloudspeakers.com -- I LOVE these speakers) are more like "music", while crossover speakers are more "faithful" at reproducing the information on the disc.

I think that the PSB 5T floorstanders sounded not nearly as good as the Omega Grande 8's -- similar price range, but one is focused on accurate, detailed reproduction, and the other is focused on awesome clarity, naturalness, and richness -- respectively.

I don't know why anybody would NOT chose a non-crossover speaker.. that's only me though