Why do you need a speaker crossover - discuss

[Marco]

Hi Ali,

You may be right, who knows? But I'm delighted with what I've got (couldn't ever imagine not using the Copper amp, as aside from how it sounds, it's a thing of beauty), so I ain't going there, dude...

Pretty much all the gear I've got now is a keeper for a VERY long time! There will be some further tweakage, here and there, but the core components are staying put.

Satisfactionville is a nice place to be!!

Marco.

[Ali Tait]

Aye, but you'd still be using the copper amp! What I'm saying is, use the copper amp to drive the 15 inchers, and a good SET to drive the.tweeters, using a Behringer DCX2496 active crossover in place of your passive one.

[SPS]

interesting thread, i'm an avid collector of all things hi fi, and old speaker books rate quite highly

the standard crossover is cheap, easy to couple speakers with, and can be easily tailored for a flatish sound, at the expense of a little quality

i dont see it being replaced in the near furure,

john, thanks for the nice comments about my old speakers
but there s no magic dust, i'm lucky enough to have bought/ collected lots of good quality drivers, so i can use combinations of drivers that manufactures could not use, for my one off creations.

there is no one 'right' way - single drivers or multi drivers.
there are ways of mechanically restricting/ boosting drivers across the audio band. most ways have neen used in the past by someone, thats exactly what most single driver speakers do.. they are mechanical 3 way speakers

i remember a knowlegable enthusiast saying to me speaker designers he knew, design using sharp cut crossovers.. but use 1st order themselves.

I was an avid single driver user once, but not now..

[Marco]

Aye, but you'd still be using the copper amp! What I'm saying is, use the copper amp to drive the 15 inchers, and a good SET to drive the.tweeters, using a Behringer DCX2496 active crossover in place of your passive one.

Ah, reet-o, I see where you're coming from.... Maybe one day, sometime, perhaps!

Marco.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Ah, reet-o, I see where you're coming from.... Maybe one day, sometime, perhaps!
Marco.

I will lay you a wager of a £100 you would find it worse. Now do it passively via just splitting the crossover would be interesting, but the Behringer is cheap cack.

[Ali Tait]

Sorry but you are completely wrong there Richard. I use one myself and it sounds superb, far better than the passive crossover it replaced.

[Tim]

[BTH K10A]

There have been a number of reasonable full range drivers made over the years. All have their idiosyncrasies and none are perfect but a lot of people still like to use the, mainly due to efficiency reasons when using SET's. I have over the years tried a few and was never really comfortable with any of them. If my taste in music was purely solo acoustic stuff then maybe they would have been ok.

The best of them were some vintage Goodmans rear horn loaded cabinets two Axiom 80's in each cabinet. They had fairly deep bass with a reasonable top end but were not as enjoyable as the JBL 4333a's I had.

What Richard seems to be striving for is a two or three driver speaker that has naturally occurring roll offs between drivers, at the correct frequencies, with the correct slopes and equal sensitivity.

If this could be done then I think we would have at least seen some kind of paper on the theory if not an actual product. Unless..... Richard knows better

[anthonyTD]

hi all,
intersting thread, of course the ideal way to be able to do without any form of cross-over is to use a wide band single driver, however as has already been explained, such drivers are rare beasts, and even then, controling cone break up at certain frequencies is usualy always a problem.
i am not a supporter of adding anything to the cone that adds mass, however, i know there are many who have used such compounds with varying levels of success.
My own personal view on speaker design is, yes, drive units on the whole can be made to have a much wider linear frequency range [fact] however, it is more expensive to design and maintain the quality needed, so, most speaker manufacturers take the easy way out and just use mediocre drivers that can be tuned relitively easy with a bunch of passive components.
unfortunetly, even when you get to the high end, this principle practice is still widely used in certain designs.
If we go back to the early days when low [ish] powered valve amplifiers were the norm, loudspeaker drive unit design was much better in that the sensitivity and frequency extreemes were much better [all imho] I blame the 1970's for the demise of the best drive unit designs, as with the increasing availability of good solid state devices it seems it became far cheaper to make a high power solid state power amplifier to drive a mediocre loudspeaker, than to produce high quality drive units, hence the need to continue the evolution of the loudspeaker drive unit as better technology and materials became available was phased out in favour of the big brash solid state designs of the day.
Anthony,TD...

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

There have been a number of reasonable full range drivers made over the years. All have their idiosyncrasies and none are perfect but a lot of people still like to use the, mainly due to efficiency reasons when using SET's. I have over the years tried a few and was never really comfortable with any of them. If my taste in music was purely solo acoustic stuff then maybe they would have been ok.

The best of them were some vintage Goodmans rear horn loaded cabinets two Axiom 80's in each cabinet. They had fairly deep bass with a reasonable top end but were not as enjoyable as the JBL 4333a's I had.

What Richard seems to be striving for is a two or three driver speaker that has naturally occurring roll offs between drivers, at the correct frequencies, with the correct slopes and equal sensitivity.

If this could be done then I think we would have at least seen some kind of paper on the theory if not an actual product. Unless..... Richard knows better

There is no theory and no paper involved and I wouldn't waste my time trying to write one, there is only ears. Very very difficult with 3 way in fact I wouldn't even try it, but with two way it is very possible, and I have done it and so have Epos and some Royds got pretty close. Anyone is welcome to come around and listen. Just a single blocking capacitor on the tweeter, not a full range driver as bass mid, just doped and tailored with cabinet and positioning.