What is a 2.5 way Speaker?

Two.Five way speakers are a weird duck but can sound quite amazing. We know what a 2 way speaker is and what a 3 way speaker is, and the difference there. But what the heck is with the 1/2?

First let's do a quick review of what a 2 and 3 way speaker does.

Two-way speakers usually has two drivers in them

• A Bass Speaker which produces all the mid and low frequencies
• A Tweeter which produces all the high notes

Three-way speakers usually has three drivers in them

• A Bass Speaker which produces all the low frequencies
• A Midrange Speaker which produces all the mid frequencies, like voices and saxophones
• A Tweeter which produces all the high notes

What's in a 2.5-way speaker?

Two.Five way speakers can be found in two types of setups.

A speaker where there are at least 3 speakers

• A Tweeter
• A Midrange
• A Mid-Woofer

Note that there is no "woofer" in this configuration. Usually these are not large speakers and the mid-woofer does not produce very low notes and requires a subwoofer to complement it as in these speakers that were once sold by The Speaker Company.

I've read other posts suggesting that a 2.5 way speaker would have a configuration with a tweeter, midrange and a woofer, where the mid produced both mid and lows. This however would actually constitute a 3-way speaker since the cross-over is still covering all the available musical frequencies. Also you'd loose the benefit of splitting the signal so you still allow the low frequency to not interfere with the Mid range speaker.

Here are some speakers that purport to be 2.5 way speakers

 Energy CF-30 Floorstanding/Tower Speaker (Black), Each