If tweeters are better suited to highs, small speakers to mids and large woofers to bass, why don’t we have an array of ten say ten or twenty gradually increasing speakers from tiny tweets to ENORMOUS woofers, each with a unique crossover at a specific frequency they perform best at?
We really seem to have settled on three sizes. Tweets, miss, and subs. Why is that the case?
Surely more speakers handling less varied frequencies means a better response, right?
There are 4, 5, 6 way designs and higher. Drivers usually are designed to cover a decently wide frequency response, so often two or three drivers can handle the audible range from 20Hz to 20kHz.
Things get a lot more complicated when you add more drivers. The crossover, impedance matching, level matching, driver spacing, driver interactions, baffle reflections, cabinet dimensions, time alignment - so many things need to be considered when trying to use multiple drivers in a speaker design.
Kind of making things unnecessarily complex, without being objectively better than a simpler design. Simplicity is the hallmark of good engineering, IMO.
I personally have a 4-way speaker setup, but have heard great systems using single drivers as well.
Yup. Less is more.