Music is made up of a wide range of frequencies. No one size of speaker cone is capable of reproducing all frequencies best. So if there's no single speaker that can do it all, what do you do? Use a combination of speaker cones, each one specializing in the range of music it's best at reproducing.

By far the most common arrangement is a two-way speaker, which means it has both a midrange/woofer for the mid and low sounds, and a tweeter for the highs.

The number of speaker cones goes up from there. The largest type of speakers you can put in a car (remember, we're excluding subwoofers here) are 6" x 9" oval speakers, and these will often incorporate three and sometimes even four cones.

Sometimes two-way speakers aren't mounted on the same frame. Sometimes they're separate so the tweeter can be mounted higher up, closer to your ears.

You may have heard that bass is non-directional, that we can't tell where it's coming from. But high and midrange frequencies are highly directional; our ears can easily pinpoint where those sounds are coming from. So, if you think about it, putting a speaker inside a door panel, down by your feet is really not the best place for those sounds to be coming from. Component speakers, as they are called, let the speaker cone that handles those highly directional sounds, the tweeter, to be mounted higher on the door or almost anywhere else. This brings the music up to where your ears are and makes a huge difference in the illusion of depth and height.

Another advantage of component speakers is that most-and all the ones Circuit City carries-include crossovers. True crossovers split up the music and direct frequencies to the proper speaker cone, and they ensure that you get the best possible sound quality.

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