Built-in speaker crossover vs external crossover

[DukeNut 10+ year member]

What are the advantages of external crossovers versus built-in crossovers for component speakers?

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[dragnix 5,000+ posts]

What are the advantages of external crossovers versus built-in crossovers for component speakers?

external crossovers are what is considered to be active crossovers. What this basically mean is that you can actively determine crossover points for your speakers. This allow you to mess around with different crossover points to find the one that can allow the speakers to blend better.

Passive xover, which comes with your component speakers has fixed crossover points so no matter which speakers you use with those xovers, the xover points will always be the same. Hope that helped somewhat

 

[DukeNut 10+ year member]

thanks dragnix. what i meant was those passive crossovers in their own crossover box versus the crossover built directly on the component woofer and on the tweeter

 

[vaiboy 10+ year member]

"Built-in" crossovers are typically first order, 6dB/oct slope crossovers. In other words just a capacitor or an inductor wired to the speaker terminals. "External" crossovers are typically second order or higher, some have added circuitry to help level match the drivers, match the impedence curves of the drivers, help correct phase issues, and provide additional protection for tweeters.

 

[DukeNut 10+ year member]

Ah that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation:toast:

 

[goingdef 10+ year member]

Now you SEE!

 

[zako 10+ year member]

The crossovers built on the back of speaker are on average less sophisticated. They're typically done for the ease of installation and also cost concerns. There are coaxial speakers where the "crossover" is a single capacitor to act as a filter for the tweeter, and the woofer is running with no filters.. and others where there is an implementation of 2nd order filters and also tweeter attenuation. It depends. The more sophisticated crossover usually needs more parts, so it's harder to fit it on the back of speaker.