Outboard crossover? Why not?


What do you think?  Any disadvantages?
I am aware of only one brand that used to use it - Michael Green Audio free resonance two way reference speakers.
inna

Showing 5 responses by timlub

Overall, I find Erik's comments to be right on.  I did not see an easy answer to Inna's question of the difference between an active vs electronic vs passive. could be helpful to others... So,  when a signal from your source comes from your amplifier,  all frequencies hit your speaker.... for now, lets just say 20 to 20,000 hz.  A passive crossover is a filter network... One filter will block low frequencies to a tweeter, another filter will block upper and lower frequencies so a midrange will only see the frequencies meant for the middle region and a low pass then blocks high frequencies and allows the low frequencies or bass only to go to the woofer. 
On an active crossover,  the Filter is put in Front of the amplifier... so you typically need more than one amp.  The filter blocks the signal before the amp,  so 1 amp will be fed only high frequencies, so that amp will be used to play a tweeter... on a 2 way speaker, another amp would only be sent mid and lower frequencies which would go to the woofer.  So on an active crossover,  the dividing network is in front of the amp,  the amp channel plays highs mids or lows and you need 4 channels for a 2 way or 6 channels for a 3 way.  I hope this helps... Erik mentioned a lot of the advantages of an external crossover... I really like having the room to lay out coils to keep electromagnetic field to a minimum.  You can hear it. Erik and Bombaywalla both mentioned the advantages of a digital filter in front of the amps with variable slopes.... There is no substitute here.  Electronic/active crossovers sound better, period.

@tatyana69   Internal Crossover,  Correct?  3 pairs of teminals... Bass, mid, treble,  Correct?  For the life of me, I can't see any reason that you couldn't jumper these.... I would assume that the seller just thought they were better being tri-amped, but being passive crossovers, that is not always the case,  You should be able to jump these without issue.... To be fair, I've never laid my hands on a AudioVector speaker,  but I've been in more speakers than I care to think of,  Should be no risk involved at all to jump these.  I hope this helps,  Tim
@tatyan69    If you don't have a separate box from the speaker,  the speaker has internal crossovers... You would know if your amp had an electronic crossover to adjust frequency... Jump away,  you will be fine....
@erik_squires   Active vs. passive is not as easy as saying one is better. There's always trade offs.

Hi Erik, I agree that a competent crossover designer can come up with a very good speaker and yes better than a crappy electronic crossover and amps or better than someone that doesn't know how to use the active crossover properly,  but give me "or You"  any good crossover and amps and the crossover designer doesn't stand a chance. The improvement is always audible.

Thanks Eric,  if you ever get the chance to play with a mini dsp hd,  give it a try. experiment with frequency, slopes, time delay, all of it...

Appreciate you brother, Tim