A driver is the cone or dome that actually moves air. Woofers handle bass, tweeters handle treble, full-range drivers attempt both, and a passive radiator moves air but has no motor - it isn’t a driver at all, though spec sheets often count it like one.
Driver information appears on 825 ranked speakers, more than any other specification here, and it’s the one that best predicts what a speaker can physically do.
What Is The Difference Between A Woofer And A Tweeter?
Woofer - the large cone. Bass and lower midrange. Its area and how far it can travel set the speaker’s low-end ceiling, which is why size class predicts bass better than any other factor.
Tweeter - the small dome or cone, usually 20-25 mm on a portable. Treble only.
Full-range driver - one cone covering everything. Common in small portables, where there isn’t room for two. It’s a compromise: no crossover to get wrong, but no driver is good across the whole band.
Midrange - a dedicated driver between the two, found on larger three-way designs.
A typical entry from the store reads 1x 90mm woofer + 2x 65mm midrange drivers + 2x 20mm tweeters, which describes a genuine three-way. Another reads 2x 45mm fullrange, which is two small cones doing everything.
Is A Passive Radiator A Driver?
No, and this is the most common spec-sheet confusion. A passive radiator is a cone with no voice coil and no magnet. It isn’t driven electrically at all - it’s moved by pressure changes inside the cabinet, reinforcing bass around a tuned frequency in the same way a port does, but without a port’s noise or its opening.
So 2x 48mm full-range drivers + 2x passive radiators is a two-driver speaker, not a four-driver one. Marketing frequently counts all four.
Passive radiators are why small speakers can produce more bass than their size suggests, and also why that bass falls away sharply below the tuning point.
Does More Drivers Mean Better Sound?
No. Driver count is one of the weakest predictors of quality in these rankings. What matters is total moving area, excursion, and the crossover that decides which driver handles what.
A well-executed two-driver speaker routinely beats a four-driver one with a sloppy crossover. Several speakers with impressive driver counts sit in the bottom half of their class, and the portable buyer’s guide explains what to use instead.
What About Coaxial And Racetrack Drivers?
Coaxial mounts the tweeter in the centre of the woofer so both radiate from one point, which gives unusually consistent off-axis behaviour. KEF’s Uni-Q is the best-known example - see the KEF brand page.
Racetrack (oval) drivers, like the store’s 44x80mm racetrack full-range driver, fit more cone area into a slim cabinet than a circular driver of the same height. It’s a packaging solution, common in portables.
Where To Look Next
Driver details are in every speaker’s spec table. For what they translate to in practice, see bass extension for how low a speaker reaches and why wattage doesn’t tell you much for the specification people wrongly use instead.
Last Updated August 08, 2026