A well-designed three-way monitor using high quality drive units exhibits really outstanding performance:
It plays louder. A midrange driver is typically four to five inches in diameter, meaning that the midrange driver can "move a lot more air" through the mid frequencies than a diminutive 1" tweeter. For the same wattage input, a five-inch midrange driver literally takes a "bigger bite" out of the air, which translates into more sound for the same input power.
It handles great amounts of power and is extremely reliable. Having a dedicated midrange driver means that the tweeter - which is the most fragile of speaker elements - does not have to struggle trying to reach down to the midrange frequencies, as tweeters must do in two-way systems. The crossover frequency specs tell the story: In a properly designed three-way speaker, the tweeter doesn't have to "enter the game" until around 4,000Hz - well up into the treble region, which is not a frequency area that requires the current-heavy drive signals that can burn out a delicate tweeter. In contrast, the tweeter in a two-way speaker crosses over about a full octave lower - around 2,000Hz - which puts it in considerably greater thermal and mechanical danger. The lower a tweeter crosses over, the more likely it is that you'll suffer tweeter failure from burnout or irreparable voice coil displacement from over-excursion.
The sound coverage (sometimes called "dispersion" or "radiation pattern") is extremely wide and consistent. This is critically important in a studio monitor - you have to have wide, even, consistent sound coverage so you can hear your mixes with clarity and detail, even if you're standing a little off to the side ("off-axis") of the speaker. The M3-6 uses its drivers only in the frequency range where it has very wide-angle dispersion.
Best of all, the space-saving M3-6 Studio Reference Monitor delivers its truly spectacular three-way sound from the same compact cabinet size as a standard two-way monitor.
