The speaker is the soul of a sound system and plays a decisive role in the sound of the system. Many audio beginners will be very confused when choosing speakers, and do not know how to judge the quality of speakers and look at the parameters of speakers. This article hopes to explain the types of speakers on the market as much as possible, as well as their main sound characteristics, hoping to help everyone choose their favorite speakers.

If you have different opinions, welcome to discuss things on the matter, and do not welcome to spray positions based on ideas, thank you!

When it comes to sound systems, what's right for you is the best! No matter how good the speaker is, it will also emit a garbage-like sound without a suitable surrounding area and environment. The sound system is one, and the bottleneck is the key to determining the sound of the system.

In addition, although each speaker form has its own advantages and disadvantages, these advantages and disadvantages are only the usual situation, and exceptions are frequent and cannot be generalized. There is no such thing as a speaker form that the sound quality must be good or poor, and each speaker form is good or bad. Well done, a full-range speaker can also produce wonderful sound; If it is not done well, any form can make a garbage sound. Therefore, the form and sound characteristics can only be used as a reference when choosing. For example, Yao Ming and Guo Jingming are Chinese yellow people, and you can't conclude that Yao Ming is shorter than the average height of European and American people when you hear that the average height of yellow people is shorter than that of European and American people. Or see that Chinese average height is 170cm, and conclude that Guo Jingming also has 170cm.

First, according to the form of frequency division

Speakers can be divided into full-range speakers, coaxial speakers, two-way speakers, three-way and above speakers according to the crossover form.

a. Full-range speakers

As the name suggests, a full-range speaker is a unit responsible for the replay of all frequencies of music. In the past, combination audio and multimedia mostly used this speaker form (many 2.1 system main speakers are also full-range speakers). Its advantages and disadvantages will be very obvious.

The main advantages of full-range speakers are:

Simple structure, easy debugging, low cost, this needless to say. On the other hand, its mid-range vocals are easier to do well and the timbre is relatively uniform. Because it does not have interference from crossovers and crossover points, one unit is responsible for full-band sound, so as long as this horn unit is not too bad, the mid-frequency vocals can do well, and even the mid-high frequency sound can do well.

Near-field sound field positioning is good, because it is a point sound source, and its sound field positioning is easier to do than ordinary crossover speakers. In addition, it is efficient and easy to drive.

But the shortcomings of full-range speakers are also very obvious, its main disadvantage is the difference in extension at both ends, which is because one unit is responsible for the entire full frequency band, and high and low frequencies need to be taken care of. Therefore, usually the high and low frequency extensions of full-range speakers are not as good as the caliber crossover speakers. Especially in the low-frequency response, in order to better high-frequency extension, it is usually more conservative.

The frequency response curve of full-range speakers is not smooth, especially in high frequency bands. Now the high-frequency extension of the full-range speaker is not bad, it is not difficult to achieve 20000Hz, but it is difficult to do it smoothly, the reason here is that in addition to the reasons of the unit itself, the Doppler effect when the unit works will also lead to high-frequency deterioration, so its high frequency band is usually worse than the crossover speaker.

Withstands low power. Needless to say, most 3,5-inch full-range units bear only a few watts of ten-watt power, and it is already very large to reach thirty watts and fifty watts. This makes its sound pressure level unable to meet the needs of medium and large rooms, and is generally only suitable for desktop or small rooms.

In general, full-range speakers, if done well, can also be very musical, especially the vocal performance is excellent. The full range of 4 and 5 inches is used as a desktop, and the full frequency of 6-8 inches in small and medium-sized rooms is not impossible. The picture below is the famous sound technology MC13, built-in good decoding and power amplifier, the total price is only 1500 yuan, the effect of playing music is quite excellent, very hifi feeling.

b. Coaxial speakers

Although the coaxial speaker also uses only one unit, this unit has a tweeter in the center, and it is arranged in a coaxial manner, each with a different magnetic circuit. Therefore, it also has the sound field image performance of full-range speakers, and has some advantages of crossover speakers.

It has the characteristics of better extension at both ends of the crossover speaker, the frequency response curve can be relatively straight, and has the sound field of the full-range speaker, and can also withstand higher power.

However, coaxial speakers also have considerable disadvantages, and its main disadvantages are two, one is that a good coaxial unit is difficult to design and manufacture, and the cost is not low. In addition, it is not possible to dive with a dedicated woofer in low-frequency diving.

Because the structure is similar to full-range speakers, the advantages of sound field and image brought by coaxial speakers are significantly better than crossover speakers. However, because the unit design and manufacturing is difficult, the coaxial speakers on the market are mainly KEF and Tianlang. There are fewer other brands. Due to the good sound field, many high-end speakers now also have coaxial units as mid-high frequency units.

The coaxial speaker is ready, its frequency response extension is similar to crossover, and the sound field junction is similar to full range. It works well as a tabletop or mid-range field, and vocals are especially advantageous. The picture below is Nature's own hifi level NS16 speaker, using a 5-inch high-quality coaxial unit, well-designed crossover and cabinet, frequency response 60-20000hz+/-3db, the effect is quite excellent, very suitable for listening to vocals and small and medium-sized music in a small room on the table, and the cost is also very suitable. Especially considering the matching desktop amplifier and 1794 decoding (see figure) launched by Natural Sound, the cost performance is higher than that of active speakers, and it is equally convenient to use.

c. Two-way bookshelves or small floor speakers

Because two-way speakers are the mainstream form on the market, there are many products and wide applications, so they are proposed separately.

Due to the separate structure of the tweeter and the woofer, the two-way speaker has a better high and low frequency extension, and because its crossover point is usually 2-3000Hz, it is not in the sensitive range of the human ear, so the crossover point has less impact, and its ability to perform various music is good. A good two-way speaker can play almost all forms of music, from single instruments to medium and large arrangements, from vocal pop to classical music to jazz. Moreover, its positioning is easy, the environmental requirements are reasonable, the requirements for the power amplifier are also more suitable, and the price is relatively reasonable. Therefore, it has been widely used.

Of course, it must also be noted that two-way speakers also have their disadvantages, although these disadvantages are almost negligible under their advantages.

The two-way speaker woofer is usually only 6.5 inches (7 inches), and the low frequency can generally only be about 40Hz. Further up, because the crossover point needs to be selected low, and the tweeter usually has insufficient low-frequency extension, especially the current flat unit, the bass extension can only be about 1200Hz, the crossover point must be divided into about 3000Hz, usually the woofer can only use about 5 inches. When replaying large dynamic symphonies and some music with high low-frequency requirements, the low-frequency relaxation is still not as good as that of excellent floor speakers. Of course, there are some special, such as horn speakers, which can achieve high and low frequencies and multi-directional speakers. However, the horn treble also has the problem of horn treble, and the delicate timbre is still not as good as the traditional dome, especially the soft dome tweeter.

The picture below is the natural sound flagship two-way bookshelf speaker NS17, using self-developed sandwich solid wood diaphragm 6.5-inch woofer, linear stroke up to 13mm, low-frequency dive 40hz; the tweeter adopts self-developed 1-inch silk dome tweeter, extending 40000hz. The overall frequency response reaches 40-40000hz+/-3db and 70-20000Hz+/-2db levels. With Hi-end level quality and sound performance, it can play well for large dynamic symphony, small and medium-sized classical music and vocal pop. And the price is approachable, plus their own three-part 300 watt front and rear grades are about 2.5-3,<>.

d. Three-way (and upper speaker)

Speakers with more units with three-way frequencies or more are generally floor speakers. More crossover mainly improves the low-frequency performance of the speaker, which is more relaxed, the low-frequency distortion is smaller, the dynamics are better, the independent midrange can also make the burden of the tweeter lighter, and the intermodulation distortion of the multi-way speaker is also significantly lower than the two-way speaker, so as to achieve better treble performance. Low distortion and wide frequency response are its main features.

However, the cost of large-scale floor speakers is amazing, the design and debugging are difficult, and the surrounding area, especially the environment, is high, and the power amplifier of promoting large speakers is also very demanding. These greatly limit the application of large speakers.

It should be clarified that the three-way speaker is around 4-600Hz due to the middle and low frequency crossover points, and here is the sensitive frequency band of the human voice, affected by the crossover point, the vocal performance of the three-way speaker is not able to catch up with the two-way or even full-range speaker. Due to the different crossover points of multi-way speakers, this conclusion is not entirely correct.

The picture below shows the flagship floor speaker of German Guanyan, which requires a listening room of about 50 square meters with good acoustic treatment.

e. Other special speakers worth mentioning

1. Spherical mid-tweeter

This speaker form is based on German MBL and brute sound boxes, using 360-degree mid-tweeters, the sound has its own characteristics, and the sound field image is very good. MBL is highly transparent, and the brute voice is warm and enduring.

But what they all have in common is that they are inefficient, very difficult to push, and very expensive!

2. Electrostatic speaker

There are two types of electrostatic speakers, one is an electrostatic screen, and the full range is sounded by an electrostatic unit. There is also an electrostatic unit that is only responsible for sound in the middle and high frequency bands, and the bass is still used with traditional speakers.

Electrostatic speaker Because the electrostatic unit has almost no vibration quality, its mid and high frequency band distortion is very low, bringing a very delicate and charming vocal and high frequency. However, low-frequency dives at full frequency sounded by an electrostatic unit are usually not very low and have limited power tolerance, resulting in the fact that they can usually only replay popular vocal and small-scale music. The electrostatic connection of traditional speakers at low frequencies is another problem.

In general, various types of crossover structures have their own advantages and disadvantages. Each category has its own excellent products, and there are also junk products, which cannot be generalized.

Finally, let's talk about the sensitivity of human ear frequency response, with his own practice in recent years, it should be wrong to say that the most sensitive frequency band for human voice is 3000Hz. The main reason for this statement is that the sound of 3000Hz is similar to the sound of metal scraping each other, or close to the sound band of the chainsaw, and the sound of this band is too high to cause very uncomfortable hearing. But that doesn't mean we're very sensitive to it. The real sensitive area of the human ear is in the 200-2000Hz frequency band, especially the 200-1500Hz frequency (roughly the range of the bass 3 in C key to the 3 of the treble), because the main base tone of the human voice and musical instrument is concentrated in this frequency, so the human ear is very sensitive, and the very small unevenness in the frequency response will be easily felt.