Big drivers are heavy and therefore can’t move fast enough to play high frequencies. So, to move a lot of air, you need a big driver. If you put your headphones in the middle of the room, you’ll hear all the highs, most of the mids and, none of the bass - the driver simply can’t move enough air. Mainly because to reproduce bass frequencies in a room vs the tiny space between the headphone and your ear, you need to move a lot of air. Speakers are not like cans where a single driver can handle the entire spectrum. You get a dedicated driver for bass, midrange and, tweeter. This takes a lot of stress off them and reduces distortion. The main advantage of a 3 (or more) way speaker is that all the drivers play a narrower frequency band. It looks like this (this image splits what I call diffraction into two - reflection and diffraction): Diffraction is when the sound wave wraps from the driver cone back and bounces off the baffle and comes forward towards you (sort of like an echo of the original wave). The more diffraction, the more loss of fidelity and, the easier it is to localize the speaker. The larger the baffle, the more diffraction. The soundstage goes beyond the boundaries of the speakers and it’s as if the music didn’t originate from them. If it’s done really well, you don’t even need to close your eyes. If you close your eyes and point to the sounds and what you’re pointing to is the speaker, it hasn’t disappeared. “Disappearing” is generally defined as sounds coming from an imaginary soundstage rather than the speaker. The “baffle” is the front of the cabinet. When you say smaller baffle, that’s on the inside of the speaker housing, or a part of the speaker / driver itself? how would you define ‘disappearing?’ would speed be a better word?
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