best xover for horns? deqx, jbl pro or ??

Ml89009 and Ed sawyer -

What horns do you use? I'm awaiting delivery of a new midrange horn and a crossover network right now. Presently I have JBL L-200. I intend to disable the stock horn and crossover and add a large horn with a 2 inch coax driver on top of the existing woofer cabinet. This should yield a seamless 45 Hz to 16 Khz with XO points around 450 and 9K.

My first horn set-up. Does it sound like a good plan?

hi Mike -

your system deserves the best Xover you can get, certainly. I'd give the newer DEQX a try, but you should probably get someone to professionally set it up and dial it in. Other than that, I'd consider the Bryston 10B. I use one with my horn setup. Another good option is the Pass XVR-1.

Keep us posted.
-Ed Sawyer

He's pretty busy but if you can get him to take the job, Bill Woods of Acoustic Horn Company is your man. He's the former chief design engineer of Yorkville Sound and he's got 30 odd years experience doing just what you need done.

Desiging a high quality crossover for a horn system is not trivial. In my opinion, one must start with a comprehensive suite of measurements, and then there are many cycles of follow-up measuring, calculating/modelling, modifying the circuit, and measuring again as the crossover is refined.

The most important part of the crossover is the thoroughness of the design work. Your experience seems to bear that out - the JBL Pro crossover built with presumably decent but not high-end parts outperformed the crossovers built with high end parts, as well as the high end DSP crossover.

In my opinion, the best crossover will probably be the one that a competent designer with good test equipment in a good facility, using good software, spent enough time on to thoroughly optimize.

Duke
dealer/manufcturer