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How to design a high end crossover…

My joke as the sun rises…


Requirements for the casual designer:

$4k worth of reference premium inductors, capacitors and resistors just laying about…

Zero out speakers on manufacturers specs before 5 pm.

Add 1/5 of excellent bourbon, branch water, natch.

Test each driver on a, in the old days scope, Ha! 
Computer program or four…

Fiddle with 1st-4th level crossovers for each driver, in this case, in a three way system.

Play your favorite test tracks, Opera thru Rock, change X-over components, pushing and pulling, repeat till the sun rises, or the victim slays the opponent, (manufactures x-over), on the audio analyzer, then refine with the ear, (having been to every concert on that albums release), knowing what the artist intended…

Thank Mom or Dad for the leisure afforded to you to do this ad infinitem.

Love the newfound resolution…

Plan B: Make money, know when to quit, play with this stuff as you personal inside joke.

Wait for post to be retracted… Go to hammock…
128x128william53b
larryi
3,759 posts
 
There can be a whole lot more than picking crossover points, slope, and particular components.  A lot of designs include networks to compensate for phase, to notch out certain frequencies, to fill in certain frequencies, etc. 

I saw an advertisement for the YG Carmel speaker that showed its crossover.  This thing had well more than a dozen caps, about a dozen inductors and a whole lot of resistors, and this is a two driver, two-way system.  Obviously there is a whole lot more going on than just a high-pass and a low-pass network.  


william53b's avatar
william53b OP
211 posts
 
Oh heck yeah. Below is a link to a free online circuit calculator for a third order Butterworth, and this has no Zobel circuits or notch filters.  

Second link is to Humble Homemade HiFi for pictures of some of their more advanced x-overs.

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/crossover?c=USD&v=filter_order_type:0,additional_circuit:0,spread:8,type:3.000000000000000,filter_order_type_3_way:3.000000000000000,woofer_impedance:4!ohm,midrange_impedance:8!ohm,tweeter_impedance:6!ohm,crossover_freq_low:500!Hz


http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/assembly.html


william53b's avatar
william53b OP
211 posts
 
This photo shows one of their designs that incorporates cheap to expensive inductors for their specific attributes, and bottom drawer to top shelf caps.

It's a science that’s an art.

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/services/assembly_99.jpg
czarivey
5,740 posts
 
https://www.marchandelec.com/ has lots of useful information on building passive or active crossovers.
wolfie62
352 posts
 
I wind my own inductors. Easy peasy.

I have a capacitance board. Any value +/- 10 uF.  Same for non-inductive resistors.

I always use 2nd order. Not L-R.

Its painless.


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