Crossover settings and driver position

[West]

Doing some upgrading soon.

I have a HAT Legatia driver set (L1pro, L4SE, and L6Se)

I am going to go active on the setup and looking for any advice you guys can give.

I have got some advice before but I am looking to finialize everything.

Driver position:

I am having custom kick pannels made by starr mountain. The position should be slightly off access turned upward a few degress yes?

I was also planning on mounting the tweeters on the dash as opposed to the sail pannels (angled upward). Is this the way to go?

Crossover settings:

Can anyone give me a baseline starting point for the crossovers? I know I am going to have to play with it some on my own, but was just curious if anyone had some settings that they prefer with these or similar drivers.

Thanks guys.

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[West]

Going in a 99 camry.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

I have no experience with kick panels so I'm going to pass on that question. After having speakers on and above the dash for a couple of years now, experimenting with different positions and driver combinations, I would advise you to avoid placing your tweeters aimed into the windshield. Actually, I have found that any nearby hard surfaces will cause havoc with treble due to reflections. I haven't tried tweeters in the sail panels, but I now have tweeters in spheres on the A-pillars aimed across the dash and it sounds quite good. This is the second time I've used the spheres and it just works really well to minimize early reflections and get rid of diffraction.

As for crossover points, I'm a fan of crossing mids below their beaming frequencies. Beaming makes the sound more focused toward on axis, so rather than trying to get your midbasses and midranges on axis I prefer to use the naturally widest dispersion. I know the theoretical benefits of using a 6.5" driver that plays 6-7 octaves, but for imaging I haven't been convinced it works. I don't have the math memorized to calculate the beaming frequency, but it's dependent on the diameter of the driver and the speed of sound(at sea level for simplicity). As explained here Hawthorne Audio • View topic - How to calculate driver beaming frequency. it's 13,740 inches per second and divide that number by the diameter of the driver in inches. A 6.5" driver begins to beam at 2,113 Hz, a 4" driver begins to beam at 3,435 hz, and a 1" driver begins to beam at 13,740 Hz.

What I get from this is you probably want your 4" mids close to on axis if you want to low pass them above ~3.4 kHz. Your tweeters should be able to start playing that low, but if it were me I'd probably not want to have the mids playing such a narrow passband. That would cross them in the vocal range. I personally use a 6.3 kHz crossover to mate my midranges and tweeters.

 

[West]

I have no experience with kick panels so I'm going to pass on that question. After having speakers on and above the dash for a couple of years now, experimenting with different positions and driver combinations, I would advise you to avoid placing your tweeters aimed into the windshield. Actually, I have found that any nearby hard surfaces will cause havoc with treble due to reflections. I haven't tried tweeters in the sail panels, but I now have tweeters in spheres on the A-pillars aimed across the dash and it sounds quite good. This is the second time I've used the spheres and it just works really well to minimize early reflections and get rid of diffraction.
As for crossover points, I'm a fan of crossing mids below their beaming frequencies. Beaming makes the sound more focused toward on axis, so rather than trying to get your midbasses and midranges on axis I prefer to use the naturally widest dispersion. I know the theoretical benefits of using a 6.5" driver that plays 6-7 octaves, but for imaging I haven't been convinced it works. I don't have the math memorized to calculate the beaming frequency, but it's dependent on the diameter of the driver and the speed of sound(at sea level for simplicity). As explained here Hawthorne Audio • View topic - How to calculate driver beaming frequency. it's 13,740 inches per second and divide that number by the diameter of the driver in inches. A 6.5" driver begins to beam at 2,113 Hz, a 4" driver begins to beam at 3,435 hz, and a 1" driver begins to beam at 13,740 Hz.

What I get from this is you probably want your 4" mids close to on axis if you want to low pass them above ~3.4 kHz. Your tweeters should be able to start playing that low, but if it were me I'd probably not want to have the mids playing such a narrow passband. That would cross them in the vocal range. I personally use a 6.3 kHz crossover to mate my midranges and tweeters.

Thank you I appreciate the reply!

Something like this then?

Sub cross 20-50hz

L6 cross 63-2.5khz

L4 cross 3-6.3khz - Aimed slightly off axis

Tweeter 7-20khz (24 db/oct) - Mounted on the a-pillars - Are there any mounting kits avaliable to do this? And you have them mounted below or above ear level?

Thanks again.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Thank you I appreciate the reply!Something like this then?

Sub cross 20-50hz

L6 cross 63-2.5khz

L4 cross 3-6.3khz - Aimed slightly off axis

Tweeter 7-20khz (24 db/oct) - Mounted on the a-pillars - Are there any mounting kits avaliable to do this? And you have them mounted below or above ear level?

Thanks again.

With those crossover points I would start with 24 dB slopes all around. With lower slopes, should you care to try them, remember you need to adjust for the increased low frequency energy you'll be sending the drivers.

Check out the tweeter spheres thread in the Advanced SQ/SPL thread. keep_hope_alive showed how to do this. There's also a thread on DIYMA where I showed my spheres in the early stages. You can make them for under $10, but they're not the prettiest things. Cheap, adjustable, easily replaceable tweeter pods

 

[West]

Any other things I should consider?

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Don't be afraid to try different settings. As long as you keep your high pass filters sane there's little chance you'll damage your speakers. If you have memory presets available use one as your reference and then use another one to experiment. I go for weeks at a time before I get the urge to try different crossover points and slopes, or to move speakers or whatnot.