Wiring

It depends on YOUR EARS. I didn't notice all that much, but I did notice that the sudleties in a recording (Tori Amos mostly) are more pronounced.

 

ah HA! all these years of my friends making fun of me for listening to "dyke music" others do exist....

James> so you pull out the "U" shaped tabs and then run the fornt channels of your amp to the tweeter input and the rears to the mid input, or the other way around. You're essentially not putting any mroe power to anything, as they'll still each only be getting 75w, but being able to independantly set gains is the big deal. it's kind of like adding an infinately variable tweeter attenuater (possibly a good thing on notoriously harsh quarts) Eventually, you can ditch the passive crossovers alltogether, and run an active crossover inline before your amp. This will give you the added bous of variable crossover frequencies/slopes.

 

I bought my component set as a set like you did then I sold the xovers. It was cheaper that way for me. I run everything active.

 

IT alldepeds. Some ppl sweat by actives, some swear by passives. A well constructed passive is nothing bad, and sometiems beneficial, but ultimately fixed, and not really adjustable. Active crossover is jsut that, you've got infinate tunability. which is sometiems nice, and sometimes jsut more of a pain. Actives are generally designed for optimum performance for the specific speakers tehy go with, so again, you're likely not missing much. Part of the biggest appeal of actives is if you start mixing/matching drivers adn tweeters, etc.

 

I like passives, and I like to bi-amp if I can.

The subtleties mentioned by smgreen20 are called dynamics, and they DO benefit from bi-amping. It is not really the ability to be able to set gains seperately that is important, it is the fact that the power durring a transient attack is handled by multiple channels. Basically, it reduces the additional recovery time of the amplifiers capacitance durring these transitions. Also, bi-wire will make a differance (at least in HT, I haven't tried it in a car before), but it isn't as dramatic as bi-amping.

I prefer passives (the little plastic case you have pictured above is a passive) to actives. The crossover is really the voice of the system. To properly impliment a fully active system, you need entirely too much test equipment, a golden ear, and a set of speakers that have a voice compliment and that you like butt naked, without crossover manipulation. In a custom 3 way set, along the lines of a store bought (complete set I mean) 2 way, plus a seperate midbass, actives are great. Really only because the midwoofer will only be required to recreate a tiny portion of it's useable range, and it should remain natrually fairly linear, with regaurds to output and dynamic impedance. Then leave the passives to do their duty with the broad spectrum required by the midrange and tweeter.