For car audio, I prefer 2-ways over 3 or 4-way. They seem to have better low and mid response.

These days I’ve moved on to component speakers, having 1-way midwoofers and separate tweeters. Gotta have that cone area

Wait until you find out there is a 2.5-way. Oh and what about Line Source Array!

A conventional driver has a linear frequency passband of about a decade limited by being small enough for resonances at the high frequency not to intrude and large enough for the low frequency end to be loud and clean. This leads to a 3 way and, indeed, pretty much all professional midfield monitors are 3 ways.

A 2 way requires too wide a passband from a conventional driver with the result the low frequency end tends to be limited both in extension and clean SPL plus audible midrange deficiencies due to midwoofer resonances, tweeter distortion at high SPL and often directivity issues. Nonetheless a 2 way is normally significantly smaller and cheaper and can be made to work reasonably well just not clean at sufficiently loud levels over the full frequency range. They tend to be the better choice for budget speakers but once the price level is above about £1k (perhaps a bit more these days) a well designed 3 way is going to provide noticeably better performance than a well designed 2 way with a bit more expensive components.

I’ve found I prefer less going on with drivers and crossovers. 2 way speakers tend to be easier for me to relax and just experience where a 3 way may make me work a touch harder to make sense of what’s going on.

Oh, and 6.5" is my max midrange/woofer size. 8" mids are asking too much of the driver to cover the mids, much like 5.5" mid/woofers ask too much of them to cover the upper bass.

Yes, these are very much generalizations and many designers have done great work mitigating these issues. That is why the adage to ‘get out and listen to the speakers you are interested in’ is so apt.

I do reserve the right to change my mind at a later date, and to bounce back and forth on this issue as well. ;)

The best 3-way speaker is better than the best 2-way speaker.

Speakers radiate sound all over, but when the frequency is high relative to the speaker’s diameter, the sound starts to narrow. When an 8” woofer without any waveguide crossover over to 1” tweeter at 2kHz, the sound will be narrow around 1kHz but widen back up when the tweeter kicks in.

So a 3-way allows for more consistent/linear performance of radiation, it also should lower distortion.

But if you are talking a $600 3-way, that’s more drivers and more crossover parts to fit into that budget, and some enclosure size restrictions as well, so no guarantee it’ll be better than a $600 2-way.

This is where measurements come in handy.

Don’t forget us 1-way Fostex owners :)

There are a ton of really good technical answers here with a lot of useful information. To just kind of really simplify things and assuming that both types of speakers are similar in materials and design, 3 way speakers can have an advantage over 2 way in a few ways. Mainly, having a tweeter now responsible for the higher frequencies and a woofer responsible for the lower frequencies you now have a midrange woofer/driver for all the frequencies that are in between. This splits the duties of each speaker by 3 ways now instead of two. When done well, you can potentially have finer detail and dynamics, more output and more accuracy of sound over a two way. Having a mid range speakers that handles the general frequencies of where the human voice is can add more scale and a sense of realism due to the same speaker not trying to play lower frequencies at the same as the middle ones that would happen in a 2 way. If everything is time aligned(all sound hits the listener at around the same time in space) and in phase 3 ways are a fantastic choice.

Also, bookshelf speakers are fairly rare for a 3 way design but there are lots out there and typically larger floor standing speakers are 3 way but there are lots of 2 way floor stand models out there as well.

The main benefit as stated by someone earlier of 2 way is less electronics in the design and because it’s simpler the idea is a more pure sound without the chance of anything changing the sound and it being as close to the original recording as possible.

No speaker is perfect but the good ones make the compromises in the right places no matter what the design or technology is and there are a lot out there!

Not technical here but I own the Triangle BR09 three ways and the smaller two way variant. The 3 ways have a clear midrange advantage and have a fuller sound compared to the 2 way. They just sound better

In my opinion, they can be almost the same, but a 2-way is really pushing that design to as far as it can go, if the goal is to have a full-range speaker system. I have this 2-way speaker https://www.genelec.com/1032c#section-technical-specifications and you can see the fairly close to on-axis crossover holes around 2 kHz in the vertical directivity plot, and the promise that harmonic distortion says below 0.5 % only, which isn’t super great. Harmonic distortion vanishes as soon as the tweeter becomes active, at least as far as I can measure it.

Anechoic response starts to fall around 40 Hz, but the rule of thumb here is that response extends about 30 % below the anechoic limit, and I dialed in some extra digital emphasis for the 20-30 Hz region, and so I managed to get something very close from 20 to 20000 Hz response out of a 2-way system. Harmonic distortion less than 1 % is considered inaudible for complex signals.

Lots of detailed explanations already, but practically speaking it’s not something I’d ever judge a speaker by. I’ve loved some two ways and hated others; same with three (or more) ways.

Personally speaking I always look for 3 way as I have a midrange control on my receiver. There is nothing like a really good pair

3 way with separate subs

I find the answers provided so far to be very curious. As someone who has owned good quality 2, 2.5, and 3-way speakers, there are general marked differences between the three designs.

And functionally, price isn’t everything, as many companies dump cash into nice cabinets and drivers that appear more premium.

General observations:

• Every two-way speaker has to compromise due to a woofer/tweeter handoff at a specified frequency. Either it is crossed too high, muddying the midrange, or two low, coloring the tweeter. The best two ways minimize this, but it is impossible to avoid.

• The more drivers, generally the better the bass. Often this is cabinet size and multi-driver excursion, though some transmission line 2-way designs do very well.

• Well engineered 3-ways will typically have cleaner midrange with better presence. Again, these crucial frequencies aren’t being slopped up by the woofer, and the handoff between the midrange driver and tweeter can be better set at less critical frequencies. Must have a good crossover.

• 2.5 ways (now very common in mid-fi speakers) simplifies the crossover, and generally bumps the bass, as one woofer handles all bass and mids, while a second has a filter that hands it only bass. Generally not as clean a mid presentation as a true 3-way, but a good compromise for those who love bass.

I have tried various high quality 2-way floor standers and stand-mount speakers ar various times. My current active systems have:

• Monitor Audio Silver 6. 2.5 ways, but glorious mids when paired with a tube amp.

• Wharfedale Diamond 12.3. Very nice compact 2.5 way floorstanders, with good all-around sound, though not as open in the mids as the MAs.

• B&W 683S1 - true 3 ways with two woofers, front ports, thundering bass, yet subtle and nuanced in the mids. My personal favorites, despite being the least expensive.

Best I can state is that regardless of how good a set of two-ways is, they always seem to be missing a certain something good 3-ways have.

Just as a contrast, in traditional reggae sound systems people often run 5-way. 18" scoops for 35-90hz, 15" kick horns 90-150, horn loaded 12s like the mt121 from 150-800, compression drivers on big horns from 800 up to a few khz and then bullet tweeters like the beyma cp22 on top. All actively crossed in custom preamps, some with dsp for super accurate crossovers, others completely analog.

Horn loading trades more sensitivity for reduced bandwidth, meaning you need more ways to cover the full range.

They can sound anywhere between absolutely mind blowingly amazing and utter dogshit. They work really well for certain genres, reggae being the obvious choice.

Its more in the execution/implementation of the design that leads to sonic outcome. It’s similar to tube amps and the type of tubes used or dacs and the type of chip used. I have heard both amazing 2 way and 3 way speakers. I wouldn’t get too caught up on that aspect.