I am running a CDA-9857 & H701 DSP to a JL 300/1 and JL 500/1, fronts are CDT HD-6 & ES-01, Rears are Memphis MCSQ 6.5 seperates. Subs are 11 KV2's. What does it mean to go "active"? Does this mean I uise the internal x-overs on the DSP? And if so wouldnt I need another JL 300/4 to run the rears? Because I would need a channel for the front tweets, a channel for the mids, thats all 4-channels on the 300/4, same in the rear correct?
im not 100% sure but i believe it would be the difference between passive and active crossovers, meaning the active uses external electricity and passive only uses the speaker current to do its work.
Active typically refers to an electronic crossover. With an active crossover the signal is filtered prior to being amplified. Active crossovers are user freindly because most of the time they are ajustable. Passive refers to caps and coils that are used in between the speaker and the amplifier. I like to use both in many situations. This is an example of a passive crossover. This home made crossover replaced the Polk Audio Crossover on my DX 3000 tweeters. The Polk crossover was a 12dB per Octave set at 4800Hz, mine is an 18dB per octave at 5000Hz. The difference is big. The home made bass blocker below is another example of a passive crossover. I use a similar crossover on my centerchannel speaker in my truck.
Ranger...how do you figure out how to make passive crossovers...I've looked over how to a few times but I don't quite understand yet
Passives are not really difficult to do. The problem comes from the many different types or methods. Butterworth, Linkwitz-Riley, Bessel, Chebychev, Legendre, Gaussian, Linear Phase and the list goes on. So what I do is look for the method that most manufactures use and use only that methodology. The Butterworth. Now you have just reduced you list of equations to 8. Four low pass and four high pass. Now 12 and 24 dB per octave filters are considered in phase, 18 dB per octave is 90 or 270 degrees out of phase. Now 6dB should also be considered as out of phase, but dont. It is in Phase. Now I like my tweeters out of phase, 18dB per octave. Tweeters are directional and by crossing them out of phase they become less directional. Tell me what you might want to do and I'll walk you through a coulple of equations. Tomorrow
I'm sure the SQ is still there...But what I think he means by "less directional" is that the sound disperses a lot better and doesnt all go to a single point. Some speakers you can't really hear then that well off axis compared to others. I guess wiring the tweeters out of phase makes the off axis response better. Ranger correct me if I'm wrong.
Different cars require different Strategies. And sometimes we just need to try different things. One of the worst places for speakers is in the doors of a car. The sound stage becomes too wide. We make the problem even worse when we add tweeters to the doors. The tweeters were litterally grabbing my attension toward them. I decided to try the 18dB crossover and it worked. The tweeters actually became a little brighter but it was difficult to tell were it was coming from. The next thing was to point both tweeters toward the rear veiw mirror. This is where the sound appears to be coming from. Now, you can still hear the speakers loud and clear. Overall the sound quality is not affected. All we are doing is manipulating the sound and how we Perceive it Out of phase wiring can help in other situations. In my sons car, the right rear 6 x 9 is wired out of phase, (yes just the one speaker). The effect is actually quite interesting. All of the sound appears to be coming from the front speakers.
