[phil2009]

What brackets do they come under or in what range?

[BlueWizard]

Oddly, no one really knows.

What any one person defines as low frequencies, or midrange frequencies, or high frequencies has as many variations as there are people to comment on it.

As a tangential discussion. this came up in one of the speaker building forums, and even people intimately familiar with building speakers couldn't agree.

In general, one could say any thing below 500hz is low frequency. Anything between 500hz and 2,000hz to 4000hz falls in the midrange, and anything above that is treble or high frequencies. But even in my own mind, that is not etched in stone.

There are 3-way speaker systems that cross over at 800hz. If a bass speaker, meaning a woofer, is handling a frequency does that automatically make it a bass frequency? I don't know for sure.

Now if I listen to test tones, what I perceive as bass-ish ends at around 200hz. I perceive based on listening to pure wave tones, that treble begins around 4,000hz. But that is more my perception than the rule.

Also, speaker design alters what people commonly perceive or label as bass, midrange, and treble. With standard straight forward 3-way speakers design, it seems simple. It is similar to what I described above. The bass speaker handles the bass, the midrange handles the midrange, and the tweeter handles the highs.

However, modern speakers are rarely standard 3-way speakers any more. Far more common are speakers that are not standard bass, midrange and treble, but low-bass, midbass, and highs. Or, to look at it another way, a standard 2-way speaker with an added low-bass driver. A person for whom a speaker like this is common, is going to perceive the low/mid crossover as being much lower, as is the mid/high crossover.

With the introduction of subs, it become even more difficult. With subs in the system, what a person perceives as low, mid, and high, is going to be more very low bass, midbass, and high. In this case, the low/midbass crossover is extremely low.

So, it is difficult to specify the ranges with exact boundaries.

Sorry.

Steve/bluewizard

[Mark.Yudkin]

The midrange is generally considered as the frequencies around 1000 Hz. Frequencies are a logarithmic scale: halving / doubling yields an octave, so if the midrange were two octaves, it would be 500-2000Hz. Low frequencies are generally defined negatively by saying that they don't exceed 1000Hz, with 500Hz as the typical maximal extent. Similarly high frequences don't typically drop below 2000Hz, with a 1000Hz limit.

Human hearing is 20Hz-20000Hz, degrading with age (more rapidly for males), so these two frequencies reflect the limits.

This yields the rule-of-thumb cutovers at 250Hz-500Hz and 2000Hz-4000Hz with a factor of 2 tolerance.

There is sometimes an attempt to match the frequencies with the woofer / midrange / tweeter design of 3 way speaker systems, but this is approximate at best.

Subwoofers try to cover the low end (20Hz-80Hz by definition, although many will go higher in practice to support smaller satellites). Supertweeters (above 20kHz ) are designed for the listening pleasure of your dog or pet bat, but you'll neverthless find claims of human perceptability.

See also the chart at Woofer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[BlueWizard]

I'm actually not 100% sure what your question really is, but hopefully we are addressing it.

I don't disagree with anything Mark said, he did an excellent job of covering it from a different perspective than mine.

As an potential example of Midrange, we might use the telephone as an example, since it is intended for voice and we would generally consider voice in the midrange.

The standard frequency response of the telephone is 300hz to 3400hz. So, that is generally midrange.

Since you asked this question in the Speakers forum, I have to assume it has something to do with speakers.

If you could expand on why you want to know, or how you plan to apply this information, we could probably give you more specific answer, but as it is, we are just guessing at the context.

Steve/bluewizard

[MI55ION]

I typically see it as follows:

sub bass : 0 > 100hz
mid bass : 80 > 500hz
mid range: 400 > 2khz
upper mid: 1 > 14khz
highs : 13 > 20khz

[BlueWizard]

Originally Posted by MI55ION

I typically see it as follows:

sub bass : 0 > 100hz
mid bass : 80 > 500hz
mid range: 400 > 2khz
upper mid: 1 > 14khz
highs : 13 > 20khz

To my knowledge no one of any authority, like a standards organization, has actually clearly defined these ranges. Because of that, it is down to the opinion of each person and the context of the conversation, to determine what frequencies are classified where.

That said, I would make a modification to what MI55ION said, and do so without remotely implying that he is wrong.

It is hard for me to consider anything above about 6khz to be 'upper midrange'. The highest note on a piano is just under 4khz. Above this, there are virtually no fundamental notes, and certainly there are no musical instruments, to my knowledge, that can produce fundamental notes above 8khz.

So, I will make a modification to MI55ION's statement to more accurately fit my own mindset. Again, I'm not saying he is wrong, I'm just expanding the perspective based on my view of musical frequencies.

sub bass : 0 > 100hz
mid bass : 80 > 500hz
mid range: 400 > 2khz
upper mid: 1k > 6khz
high freq: 4k > 12khz
Very high freq: 10k > 20khz and above

Above 10khz we are moving out of the realm of first harmonics and into the realm of second harmonics and higher.

Again, it is not so much a matter of right and wrong, as your own perspective on the matter.

At least, laid out like this, you have a pretty good idea of the frequency ranges.

Just one man's opinion.

Steve/bluewizard

[phil2009]

I was just wondering thats all cos the between the main driver and a tweater, there must be a set freq to crossover unless you can get diff tweaters that will go lower then others. But I cant see them going much lower cos there tiny things, and to be honnest I was amazed how clear and loud those things were when I ran high freq tones a few days ago, to see how bad my hearing was.

Heres another one, what are the freq range for tweaters?

[BlueWizard]

There is no set crossover frequency. It is determined by the drivers.

You might find a woofer with a rated frequency response of 30hz to 5khz. But if you look at a frequency response graph you will see it starts to get flaky above 1khz. Though when properly tuned, they can be useable to roughly 2khz to 2.5hz.

LARGE horn tweeters can reach down very low. Back in they days of 15 inch woofer combined with high frequency horns in a 2-way system, it was not uncommon to see crossover at 500hz and 800hz. Usually a tweeter capable of a 500hz crossover, only went up to about 16khz.

Today, because of smaller woofers, it is common to see crossovers in the range of 1.2k to about 2.4k, though sometimes higher in a 2-way system.

Old style 3-ways typically crossed at 800hz and about 4khz.

New style 3-ways, more often than not, cross around 300hz to 500hz, and the mid/high cross is usually in the 2khz to 3khz range. As I said before, these are more of a standard 2-way with extended bass.

When you are building speakers from available parts, you have to select your drivers carefully, to make sure that not the rated response, but the real response overlaps. You place the crossover in this overlapping area, and it is what it is. You design the crossover to fit the speakers.

Keep in mind that speaker makers are also driver makers and designers. They control details and characteristic of the speaker that are beyond the do-it-yourself maker. If they need a bass speaker that has better midrange, they design a speaker to do that. But in doing so, they make it a very specialized speaker suited to one purpose in one design.

So, the selected drivers, more than anything, dictate where the crossovers must be. Though the designer has some general control of this in his design concept.

Steve/bluewizard

[MI55ION]

Originally Posted by BlueWizard

That said, I would make a modification to what MI55ION said, and do so without remotely implying that he is wrong.

It is hard for me to consider anything above about 6khz to be 'upper midrange'. The highest note on a piano is just under 4khz. Above this, there are virtually no fundamental notes, and certainly there are no musical instruments, to my knowledge, that can produce fundamental notes above 8khz.

So, I will make a modification to MI55ION's statement to more accurately fit my own mindset. Again, I'm not saying he is wrong, I'm just expanding the perspective based on my view of musical frequencies.

sub bass : 0 > 100hz
mid bass : 80 > 500hz
mid range: 400 > 2khz
upper mid: 1k > 6khz
high freq: 4k > 12khz
Very high freq: 10k > 20khz and above

Having just thougt about it yeah, I would go along with that. Not sure why I considered 1khz > 14khz as upper mids but certainly, the higher frequencies kick in much earlier and I think you've got it spot on. I suppose the ultra high freq range you've added makes more sense too.

[Mark.Yudkin]

I was just wondering thats all cos the between the main driver and a tweater, there must be a set freq to crossover unless you can get diff tweaters that will go lower then others. But I cant see them going much lower cos there tiny things, and to be honnest I was amazed how clear and loud those things were when I ran high freq tones a few days ago, to see how bad my hearing was.

As I said:

There is sometimes an attempt to match the frequencies with the woofer / midrange / tweeter design of 3 way speaker systems, but this is approximate at best.

Approximate was polite for may be right, may be roughly equivalent or may be totally rockers.

If you want to ask about dynamic speaker design, that's fine, but it's a totally different question and has nothing to do with frequency classification.

Heres another one, what are the freq range for tweaters?

A cone or dome tweeter is generally considered to be anything not exceeding 3cm diameter (some sources stretch this to 3.8cm = 1.5"). This definition fails with ribbon, quasi-ribbon, radia planar and electrostatic technologies.

Generally a tweeter has a (maximal) range of 2000 - 20000 Hz, with the usual tolerance at the low end. A 3cm dome is limited to 2000Hz. The typical dome tweeter is 2.5cm.

Speaker sizes are always a compromise. Larger => deeper as it can move more air, but means greater mass. Greater mass => greater inertia => slower reponse => greater distortion at higher frequencies. Hence increasing the size effectively restricts the upper limit. Ribbon, quasi-ribbon, radia planar and electrostatic technologies avoid this dilemna by keeping mass down, allowing a single unit to handle both mid and upper frequencies.

[phil2009]

Sorry if I got off the topic a tad their, but Im new to all this and its all very intresting stuff, and if it wasnt for you guys I would never changed to bookshelf speakers from pc speakers..

[BlueWizard]

I'll add to my previous post by saying that while there are not fixed predetermined frequencies for crossover points, there are general ranges and guidelines.

For example in a 3-way, they usually try to make the midrange cover 3 octaves.

If the first crossover is at 500hz then the first octave is 1000hz, the second octave is 2000hz, and the end of the third octave is 4000hz. That's not that difficult or illogical. But let's look at what happens if we move the first crossover up slightly to 800hz (1st octave = 1600hz, 2nd octave = 3200hz, 3rd octave = 6400hz); 6400hz is pretty high for a midrange. That is starting to move into treble territory, so it is not uncommon to see these 3-way speakers crossing in the 4khz to 5khz range; 6400hz is just too high.

In two way, tweeter only reach down just so far, and woofer only reach up just so far, which leave a range in the middle where most woofer and tweeters will meet. If is down to the specific woofer and tweeter, but there is a range there between 1.5khz and about 3khz where most 2-ways will cross.

With midrange and tweeters, ideally, you usually want the crossover at least one octave, if not two, above the resonance of the midrange or tweeter. Again, that set a functional workable range for the speakers.

My point is that there are many factors and guidelines controlling the crossover frequencies. This is one of the areas that make home design of speaker incredibly complex.

Steve/bluwizard

[phil2009]

I was just looking at these XTZ | Fullrange speakers • 99.36 White and thought they could easily make these into bookshelfs by just chopping the bottom off, as I can only use bookshelfs?

[Mark.Yudkin]

Another factor is the volume of air moved: the amount increases as he frequency decreases. This is why a high frequency cone/dome can be small and a low frequency cone needs to be large. The extent of the to-and-fro movement is another factor, especially with subwoofers.

There's another consequence of this. Assuming the same throw distance, we can see that two woofers of n cm moves the same volume as one speaker of sqrt(2)*n cm, or in simpler terms, a pair of 20cm woofers is the near equivalent of a 28 cm cone, but each has lower mass. We've effectively obtained an LF extension from midrange speakers. This allows "spouse-friendly" speakers only 19cm wide such as these Piegas (photographed with the grille removed) to yield reasonable bass from multiple 13cm drivers:

BTW, these speakers use a ribbon tweeter.

[Mark.Yudkin]

and thought they could easily make these into bookshelfs by just chopping the bottom off

It doesn't work that way; the result of applying a saw will be to produce the most disgusting sound imaginable (actually, I can't imagine how disgusting it will sound). If you want bookshelf speakers, buy bookshelf speakers

[dunk05]

Originally Posted by phil2009

I was just looking at these XTZ | Fullrange speakers • 99.36 White and thought they could easily make these into bookshelfs by just chopping the bottom off, as I can only use bookshelfs?

You could save some money and just buy the top bit on it's own

XTZ | Bookshelf speakers • 99.26 White

[phil2009]

Originally Posted by Mark.Yudkin

It doesn't work that way; the result of applying a saw will be to produce the most disgusting sound imaginable (actually, I can't imagine how disgusting it will sound). If you want bookshelf speakers, buy bookshelf speakers

What I mean is they could make them into large bookshelfs

[Mark.Yudkin]

What I mean is they could make them into large bookshelfs.

XTZ do indeed make bookshelf versions of the 99.36; they have the model numbers 99.25 and 99.26. Click on Products -> Bookshelf Speakers on the XTZ home page for the full range.

[phil2009]

Originally Posted by Mark.Yudkin

XTZ do indeed make bookshelf versions of the 99.36; they have the model numbers 99.25 and 99.26. Click on Products -> Bookshelf Speakers on the XTZ home page for the full range.

you still dont have the 2nd driver tho

[Mark.Yudkin]

you still dont have the 2nd driver tho

As I already explained:

It doesn't work that way; the result of applying a saw will be to produce the most disgusting sound imaginable.

If you want that extra driver, you have to give it the necessary cabinet volume. Merely reducing the cabinet volume results in it's sounding absolutely awful - or worse.