xmax of several high end components

Hello,

I am in the search for a set of outstanding 5.25" component speakers.  I have been researching Morel, Focal, and Boston Acoustics.  One thing I have been noticing in my search is that the Xmax spec for the Boston Acoustics appears to be extremely high, even against the top speakers of these other companies:

Boston Acoustics SPZ50 Xmax:  24 mm

So is the Boston Acoustics just a sloppy woofer?  Or could this spec be real?

What are the consquences of a higher order crossover?  The Boston Acoustics SPZ50 set claims 24 dB/octave, but the Morel Supremo uses 12 dB/octave in the passive version.

Also:  I'm having an extremely difficult time locating speakers to listen to.  Dealers in my area (Pittsburgh, PA and Altoona, PA) only carry the mid level stuff like JL Audio.  A few dealers carry Boston Acoustics, but nobody stocks the SPZ components, the highest they carry are the Pro series.  Therefore, I have no way to listen to these speakers to decide if I like them other than the spec sheets (bollocks!).  Does anybody know where I might be able to listen to any of the above mentioned speakers?

i could make my cheepo infiniti reference speakers sound great on my board compared to the 7 inch diamon d9's

all the speakers you listed are good and definitly worth buying.

i suggest simply ponying up the cash and buying what u want.  and make sure the place u get them from has a good return policy!

Xmax doesn't really matter with this size woofer.  Selecting from and listening to (if possible, of course) the higher offerings from the better brands counts for a whole lot more.  And Xmax never has anything to do with how "sloppy" a woofer is.

A well conceived crossover could use either of the two slopes in its network.  There again, try not to use specs like that when you are selecting your components.  The steeper and more complicated 4th order design in one component set may or may not sound better than another set that crosses with 2nd orders.

"That's probably a typo. The Bostons' XMax is prolly 2.4mm. I'm sure they just left the . out."

They also say on the website that the woofer gets nearly 1 inch peak to peak excursion (1 inch = 2.54 cm = 25.4 mm), so I'm inclined to believe it.

I was actually jesting about the sloppy bit.  But the SPZ50 also looks awesome too because they can accomodate the tweeter in a co-axial setup.  This really works for me because I don't want to cut a hole in my door panels for the tweeter.  My dealer in Altoona really wants to sell me a set of JL Audio ZR components because they're nearly $200 less than the BA and he says they will sound similar.  Buuuuut, the BA just flat out looks more BUILT than the JL stuff....

I think I'll tell the dealer that I'll put $500 down, have him order the BA components, set them up for a side to side shootout next to the ZRs (which they stock), and buy the set I like the best.