Driver matching

[Toon Army]

I'm looking for a driver for the upper frequencies in a 2-way speaker, basically a Cornscala with an Oris horn. I'm initially going to use ALK ES500 crossovers and keep them external for future experiments. My question is does the efficiency need to be higher than the woofer? I'm using a Crites woofer which is 97dB 1w/1m. If I use a driver with lower than 97dB will it make my speaker too bass heavy?

[ZAKO]

The efficiency of the HF unit should be higher,,,Then padded down to match the woofer,,

[bhendrix]

Hi TA,

I'm a bit confused by your indicated 97db sensitivity for Bob's woofer. It has been my understanding that the Crites woofers were fabricated with the same specs as the OEM K-33. If my understanding is correct, the sensitivity of the Crites in a Cornwall cabinet should be the same 102db as the Cornwall.

That said, we recently discovered how good the Klipsch KDE-75-8P driver is, especially on the K-510 horn, when we bought KPT-904s. This driver/horn combo is the KPT-904HF.

The Cornscala-type LF with the KPT-904HF is going to be very similar to the new Klipsch KPT-325 in the cinema line.

The sensitivity of the KDE-75-8P (B&C DE75) driver is 108db. You will need to pad the HF down to match the woofer cab.

[Toon Army]

It seems I may have made a school boy error. I was going from the spec I found from Bob in a post in these forums. This is likely the spec of the woofer in free air, I hadn't thought of the cabinet boosting the efficiency. I know I can get a compression driver easily but wanted to try an 8" wide range driver to allow for future changes/experiments. Audio Nirvana Super 8 Neodymium seems like it may be closest.