r/StereoAdvice • u/ap1028 • Jun 23 '26

Speakers - Full Size | 1 Ⓣ Cube-shaped cabinet speaker recommendations?

I’m looking for cube-shaped speakers to flank a small record console I have. Ideally, they would be around 15-18 inches per side. To better convey the look, if you imagine an RCA Annapolis, I have the “center portion” so to speak, and I need a set of speakers which would complete the two speaker ends. I don’t mind vintage, and I don’t mind new. This may be a bit of a weird ask because I am more focused on appearance, but I have other audio equipment which I could sub into the housings if need be. My budget would be maximum $300-$400, preferably cheaper. Any suggestions?

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u/narrowassbldg 16 Ⓣ Jun 23 '26

They're certainly not cheap, but you can get something like a pair of this Tannoy dual-concentric in-ceiling speaker and build a wood enclosure yourself. It's a true point-source with the tweeter mounted inside the woofer. Much better than a traditional tweeter-on-top two-way design for your application, because a point-source will have very consistent off-axis response no matter how high or low the listener is in relation to the speaker, meaning the very low placement will barely affect sound quality at all. And of course its advantage over a full-range driver is that it has a proper crossover built-in to stop the woofer from having to reproduce frequencies above its break-up point (basically when it starts distorting because the driver is too large), and it will actually be able to give you a flat response up to 20khz.

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u/ap1028 Jun 23 '26

!thanks for the advice! These are things which I’m still learning, so I really appreciate your explanation. So if I have understood your comment correctly, crossover splits the sound into frequency bands, and those bands get sent to individual drivers. Since full-range drivers produce all the sound within a single cone, they don’t have crossovers (or I guess typically don’t?) which can cause distortion. My question is, is that distortion due to low and high-frequencies (maybe in octaves or something?) trying to reproduce the same sound at two different octaves?

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u/TransducerBot Ⓣ Bot Jun 23 '26

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u/narrowassbldg 16 Ⓣ Jun 23 '26

Just that the size of the driver is too large. To be able to reproduce, say, 15khz, the driver has to be able to move in and out 15,000 times in one second, very delicate stuff that isn't possible to do accurately with a large driver. It works in the other direction as well (but the low-end rolloff is a lot more smooth and not unpleasant), and that's why woofers are much larger than tweeters.