What is the difference between 2-way and 3-way car speakers?

Looking to put new speakers and head unit in my car?

• well i'm looking at some 6 by 9's. can anyone tell me the difference between 2way and 3way speakers and whats a good watts RMS power range. i have no clue what all this means. also if ...show more

• Answer:

  Ok you asked alot so I hope your sitting down. I'll cover wattage and RMS power in simple terms for you. Wattage is a rating of work much like horsepower. It is not how fast the car can go, how quickly it accelerates, or how it handles. It is simply a way to measure how much work is being done. In the case of an amplifire the wattage is the amount of work the amp is doing. In the case of speakers, they do not make "watts", ( to all tech geeks reading this: I am leaveing out the sigma feed back for the purpose of this answer as it is not relivant to the question as it is asked ). Speakers will use current ( not watts ) from the amp and transduce (make) that into an analog sound wave. In its simpelist form a speaker is a transducer that takes electrical engery and coverts it into a sound wave which we hear. Dispite the lyrics of Big Tymers, you do not "hear Boom from the amplifires. You hear it from the speakers. RMS is an acronym from "root mean squared". It is simply an avearge. As an amplifire works it takes more current to produce low (bass) frequncies than it does to produce the mids and highs. This average of the work load is the RMS power. An amp may make 30 watts of power amplifing a bass frequency but only 3 watts to make a midrange frequency to the same amplitude ( volume ). The RMS average will give you an idea of what an amplifier is capable of over the audible spectrum. 3 way vs. 2 way It is the number of drivers on a speaker. For the systems I design I tell people that the the only good 3 way speaker is a seperate 3 way speaker with an outboard crossover. A 3 way co-ax is a gimmic. Save the money. Do a Two way. It will sound better ( clearer ). Those are the easy questions. You are looking for 6/9s. Are they front speakers or rear speakers? Why are you replacing them? What kind of music do you listen to? What amp are you planing to use or are you planing to use the amp that is in the aftermarket radio? How loud do you listen? Why do you want to replace the factory radio? Let me know some more specifics and I'll be glad to help. Michael Oechsner Mobile System Design WORLD WIDE STEREO (p) 215/ 368-8343 (f) 215/ 855-9306 [email protected]