Also, do these driver configurations offer better sound quality?

How Do We Hear Sound?

Before getting into speakers and how they work, it’s essential to understand how sound is created.

a sound producer working with several different speakers to create music

Simply put, sound is a vibration reaching your ear.

This sound wave is nothing but a set of compressions and rarefactions traveling through the air.

The human ear can only hear sounds between the frequencies of 20Hz-20,000Hz.

Drum-set with a musician

Image Credit: JPRoche/Wikimedia Commons

Our ears cannot process anything outside this range.

Plus, as humans age, our audible range also tends to decrease.

How Do Speakers Work?

tweeter on a computer table

In most cases, the speaker is connected to a digital rig likea computer or a DAC.

These devices send audio signals to the speaker that are then processed and sent to the voice coil.

These audio signals are a combination of different sine waves.

Mid range tweeter on a speaker

Therefore, a speaker uses diaphragms of different sizes to solve this problem.

Due to the difference in diaphragm size, different drivers reproduce certain frequencies with better accuracy.

This size difference creates tweeters, mid-range drivers, and woofers.

Open speaker driver of a woofer

Tweeters

Tweeters create high-frequency sounds.

Due to the small size, the tweeter can vibrate at higher frequencies creating shrill sounds with great accuracy.

Usually, these speakers work in the range of 500Hz and 4,000Hz.

speaker-crossover-circuit

Image Credit: JPRoche/Wikimedia Commons

Due to this frequency range, the output of the mid-range tweeters is fairly flat.

In terms of diaphragm size, the mid-range driver lies between the tweeter and the woofer.

In terms of the frequency range, most woofers work in the 20Hz to 2,000Hz range.

How Does the Audio Signal From your box Reach the Different Drivers?

This audio signal is then divided by the crossover web connection based on the speaker design.

Thecrossover networkis an electronic unit that segregates the frequencies in an audio signal into different subfrequencies.

One for the woofer, which consists of the low-frequency audio signal.

All these signals are sent to the different drivers simultaneously, offering an immersive audio experience.

Should You Buy a Speaker With Several Drivers?

The music we listen to is an amalgamation of several frequencies.

Therefore, using a single-driver design to reproduce music produces mediocre sound.