| Author |
Message |
Craig Dewey (Craigfl)
Member
Username: Craigfl
Post Number: 574
Registered: 1-2001
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 2:02 pm: | |
As Whart said, passive crossovers are typically high pass or lowpass filters. The problem with them is because they are usually capacitance (and/or inductance), the phase shift is dependant on the frequency. Unequal phase shifting is distortion. Using a good active crossover will eliminate that type of distortion but you need to have a system that is balanced down the line. Using a high end electronic crossover with poor amps or speakers(high distortion or low dynamic range) would negate this effect. Then it just becomes a matter of what sounds best to you. |
DamonB (Prova7)
New member
Username: Prova7
Post Number: 47
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Monday, April 28, 2003 - 10:52 am: | |
Have to agree with WHart. I have been an avid hifi fan for a while and build a lot of equipment as well. Sound quality is always the goal, loud is easy. My main speaker pair is tri-amped with active xovers and custom room filtering (my entire home theater employs 10 discreet channels of amplification!) and my system with "affordable" amplifiers typically blows away other systems costing several times as much.
Active is better, but for the car not needed for real world listening. That said there are some affordable active xovers for car audio and in some cases they make wiring the system easier, especially with subwoofers. |
wm hart (Whart)
Member
Username: Whart
Post Number: 974
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 6:03 pm: | |
When i was intensely involved in home hi-fi, there was always a raging debate over the degree to which crossovers interfered with phase relationships and the like. I could clearly hear the effects of an active crossover in my home systems, but doubt given the amount of ambient noise in a car environment, that it would be that noticeable. The passive crossovers were typically like bandpass filters, allowing or filtering out, sounds above or below a certain frequency, at a predefined rate per octave. I think you can get alot more precision with an active crossover, at the expense of interjecting an additional layer of electronics, noise, etc. into the sound chain. I am not up on the latest in car stereo equipment, so i can't make equipment recommendations; the biggest villain in home audio is usually bass being played out of speakers that don't really go very deep, and by being relieved of that burden, the system can sound cleaner and play louder. I would think that some of the engineering that has gone into "spatial engineering" through software, to tune a system to a specific room environment, would have great utility in the car/truck context, and would be interested in knowing if there are car products out there of this type. I know at one point i investigated trying to use one of Bob Carver's little subwoofers in a car, but the amperage draw was just too much. |
Randall (Randall)
Member
Username: Randall
Post Number: 370
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2003 - 1:39 pm: | |
This is for any of you that know a lot about car stereo equipment. The passive crossover that comes with my mids and tweets is biamplifiable. Would it be better to use an active X-over, send the highs to the tweeter amp and the mids to the mid range amp and not use the passive X-overs at all? |
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