$500 to spend on speakers for active setup. suggestions?

[Gary S 10+ year member]

I'd like to know how a novice would go about getting a flat anechoic frequency response, which is critical, without a peak or especially a dip around the crossover region. And how do you know it's flat?

 

[MiniVanMan 10+ year member]

I'd like to know how a novice would go about getting a flat anechoic frequency response, which is critical, without a peak or especially a dip around the crossover region. And how do you know it's flat?

The same can be said for both passive and active crossovers. RTAs and/or some means of measurement are really the only ways to know.

At least with active you can change on the fly when you do know you have a peak or dip around the crossover point. Passives aren't as forgiving.

Being car audio, we're stuck in a guessing game. You make the best judgment call you can, and you go from there.

In the defense of passive crossovers, they are simpler to use by far. But they are harder to tune. A novice doesn't need to know anything other than how to hook up some wiring. It doesn't mean that they'll automatically have a flat response at the crossover point. No matter how much R&D goes into a passive crossover, no company can boast that their passive will yield a flat response at the crossover point in both a kick panel mounted mid, and a door mounted mid severely off-axis. Well, they can boast it, but they're lying.

By the time somebody is familiar with the term "active" they're not too far from understanding how it works, if it's spelled out to them simply. That's my goal, keep it as simple as possible.

You really need to know what you're buying when you get a passive component set.

For example, two high end component sets, the CDT ES set, and the comparably priced DLS Iridium.

The CDT, great top end extension on the mid, a little less midbass output, but better off-axis response on the mid. Allows for a bit higher of a crossover point, and therefore can handle a bit more power due to the tweeter not being ran to it's limits. The downfall though, is in a door, the high crossover point doesn't lend itself well to a flat response in the crossover region. The ES crossover is around 3800 hz. I wouldn't hesitate to use this set in a kickpanel setup. Even a kickpanel setup a bit off-axis would be okay. One huge benefit of this setup is that vocals will be mostly isolated to just one driver. In a 2-way setup, this is very nice as vocals are very hard to get right with a passive crossover when the crossover point is right in upper range of most vocal responses.

The DLS on the other hand is built for doors. Low crossover point lends itself to better "overall" off-axis response because the tweeter is taking over midrange duty earlier. With this setup tuning will be bit more difficult out of the box than the CDT in kicks. You'll get a clearer upper midrange than the CDTs in a door configuration, but once again your crossover point will be in the vocal range. While you could use these in kicks, they're more designed for doors.

So, while both sets will work in both configurations, one will be more suited to the one or the other. It all depends on what you're willing to do.

 

[Hintzyboy 5,000+ posts]

Okay, I stand corrected. I'm still calling you the ultimate Rainbow fanboi though. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

Funny, he doesn't list a single piece of Rainbow equipment in his sig. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

Oh, and I'm extremely hurt that you didn't thank me for the ST2004 in your DIYMA sig:crap:

LOL. Speaking of off-axis response, how far up do you thing the G18s you sold me will play at 30 or 60 degrees off? I don't have the time or experience to build custom kicks, and don't want to pay for them if I don't have to. The stock locations in my truck are about a foot from the floor, about mid-shin.

 

[MiniVanMan 10+ year member]

I had them crossed over at about 2.2-2.4k. It was hard to tell with the crossover I was using. The tweeter then came in at about 2.8k. These were with 18 db crossover points. If you have 24 db, drop the tweeter a bit lower, and you might get better phasing with the different slopes. Try either a 12 db, or 18 db with the G18s. Hell, even 6 db sounded REALLY good with those drivers, but I couldn't use that due to the bandpass capability of the crossover. It would use 6 db highpass, and they didn't like that at 80 hz.

So, use 24 db for your tweeter, and play with different slopes, if you have the capability on the low pass for the mids.

Oh, and I'm just picking on Don. We go WAAAAAY back. Like a week or something.

And the sig on DIYMA is fixed.

 

[Hintzyboy 5,000+ posts]

I had them crossed over at about 2.2-2.4k. It was hard to tell with the crossover I was using. The tweeter then came in at about 2.8k. These were with 18 db crossover points. If you have 24 db, drop the tweeter a bit lower, and you might get better phasing with the different slopes. Try either a 12 db, or 18 db with the G18s. Hell, even 6 db sounded REALLY good with those drivers, but I couldn't use that due to the bandpass capability of the crossover. It would use 6 db highpass, and they didn't like that at 80 hz.
So, use 24 db for your tweeter, and play with different slopes, if you have the capability on the low pass for the mids.

Oh, and I'm just picking on Don. We go WAAAAAY back. Like a week or something.

And the sig on DIYMA is fixed.

Yeah, my x-over is set at 18dB slopes. can't adjust that. I'll probably just get some kicks. Any thoughts on something like Q-forms? My local shops would charge me up the *** for labor and I really don't want to have to do this myself right now, way too busy.

 

[Gary S 10+ year member]

The following post refers to midrange/midbass to other mids and tweeter crossovers, not necessarily midbass to subwoofer crossovers or subwoofers.

You have a lot of knowledge about audio, and I enjoy reading your posts and will continue to do so... they remind of things I have forgotten, and I learn new things. But I think we will have to agree to disagree. I see people posting about going active, active, active here day in and day out, and I have dreaded the day I would make this post... I really don't feel like arguing here, don't have the time or the energy, and I hate arguing anyway... I'm a nice guy. I usually just post my two cents in order to steer people in the right direction and leave it at that.

The better component set passives that are professionally designed, are often built by pros that have years of experience doing it and are designed to play flat. This is a fact.

On the other hand, some sets are just thrown together by companies who are just glorified marketing companies, using off-the-shelf or basic text book crossovers which can be far from flat.

In the hands of a trained professional speaker/crossover designer, I will admit that an active system, everything else being equal, would be better. But I worked for many years in the audio business, even had a stint with JL Audio (I'm not saying this to impress you, but to impress upon you the fact that I do have some knowledge)... I might be able to get the relative level of the tweeter and mid matched, but I would still end up with a peak or drop out around the crossover region. I'll admit that I don't have the experience the pros do, and therefore can't beat them. In short, I would get better results with a professionally designed mass produced component set and the included passive. So would 99% of consumers. I would suggest that people who are serious about sound consider what I have said here and verify it with a qualified audio company technician before going active.

If I were serious about going active, I'll tell you what I would do... I would send the drivers and the active crossover I intended to use to a pro and have them set up the crossover slopes and frequencies. Madisound used to have a service like that, maybe they still do.

This is going to be some new information for many of you folks... some of you may not sleep tonight.

The popular school of thought is that the interior of the car dictates the sound, and that speakers need to be equalized for that interior (it used to be that way for the analyzer measurement [RTA] portion of shows). But I belong to the other school. While I believe speaker placement and aiming, and speaker installs designed to minimize off-axis problems and near field reflections are very important, I also believe that flat anechoic response rules.

I'm going to leave everyone with a thought. If Eric Clapton got into the back seat of your car and started playing his guitar, do you think it would make sense to tell him to re-tune his guitar for your interior? Do you smell what I'm cooking?!

Our brains separate the sound of the speakers from the sound of late reflections.

 

[MiniVanMan 10+ year member]

The following post refers to midrange/midbass to other mids and tweeter crossovers, not necessarily midbass to subwoofer crossovers or subwoofers.
You have a lot of knowledge about audio, and I enjoy reading your posts and will continue to do so... they remind of things I have forgotten, and I learn new things. But I think we will have to agree to disagree. I see people posting about going active, active, active here day in and day out, and I have dreaded the day I would make this post... I really don't feel like arguing here, don't have the time or the energy, and I hate arguing anyway... I'm a nice guy. I usually just post my two cents in order to steer people in the right direction and leave it at that.

The better component set passives that are professionally designed, are often built by pros that have years of experience doing it and are designed to play flat. This is a fact.

On the other hand, some sets are just thrown together by companies who are just glorified marketing companies, using off-the-shelf or basic text book crossovers which can be far from flat.

In the hands of a trained professional speaker/crossover designer, I will admit that an active system, everything else being equal, would be better. But I worked for many years in the audio business, even had a stint with JL Audio (I'm not saying this to impress you, but to impress upon you the fact that I do have some knowledge)... I might be able to get the relative level of the tweeter and mid matched, but I would still end up with a peak or drop out around the crossover region. I'll admit that I don't have the experience the pros do, and therefore can't beat them. In short, I would get better results with a professionally designed mass produced component set and the included passive. So would 99% of consumers. I would suggest that people who are serious about sound consider what I have said here and verify it with a qualified audio company technician before going active.

If I were serious about going active, I'll tell you what I would do... I would send the drivers and the active crossover I intended to use to a pro and have them set up the crossover slopes and frequencies. Madisound used to have a service like that, maybe they still do.

This is going to be some new information for many of you folks... some of you may not sleep tonight.

The popular school of thought is that the interior of the car dictates the sound, and that speakers need to be equalized for that interior (it used to be that way for the analyzer measurement [RTA] portion of shows). But I belong to the other school. While I believe speaker placement and aiming, and speaker installs designed to minimize off-axis problems and near field reflections are very important, I also believe that flat anechoic response rules.

I'm going to leave everyone with a thought. If Eric Clapton got into the back seat of your car and started playing his guitar, do you think it would make sense to tell him to re-tune his guitar for your interior? Do you smell what I'm cooking?!

Our brains separate the sound of the speakers from the sound of late reflections.

There's no disagreement here. I totally agree with you. The problem, though, and you stated it in the beginning of your post is "the better component sets".

The first goal is a flat response. But even when designing a home audio crossover, there are several ways to do it, hence, the different alignments, Butterworth, Linkwitz, Bessel, etc. Linkwitz-Riley is by far the most common due to it's flat response across the crossover region. That doesn't mean that it will be flat in a car, no matter how the crossover is designed. It can be close, but once again placement of the drivers can and will have a huge effect on how the crossover will perform.

I'm not an advocate of buying $1000.00 in speakers, and then running them active. I'm from the opposite school. I think, (and like so many other things, in my opinion) active can achieve results comparable to the high priced component sets with much cheaper drivers. You are right though, 99% of the car audio community, and I'll even go as far as to say 99.9% don't understand the nuances of speakers, and audio in general to be able to achieve great sound with an active setup. At this point it might be better for them to buy a good prepackaged set.

I'm all about cost to performance ratio. I will educate myself to no end to be able to achieve the best ratio possible, and this is not just with car audio. It's my mentality in everything I do.

I spout off a lot on this board, more to keep people educated, and to step on any myths, or flat out falsehoods before somebody makes a mistake. I'm not the end all be all of car audio. Far from it. I'm a hobbyist just like most of us on this board. I do have one talent though. That is when a true professional comes in, I can translate from smart speak to dumb speak so I can understand what the hell he's talking about. Then I can pass that information on in a manner that the average enthusiast can understand.

So, no, fellow Gary (I'm Gary as well), I don't disagree with you one bit. I just find active tuning the cheaper approach to achieving that flat response at the crossover point. At no point will I say Dynaudio, Focal, Rainbow, and so many others, don't know what they're doing. But a little knowledge on what they are doing, and what they're trying to achieve can go a long way in the education of the average car audio enthusiast.