What exacly does a crossover do?

[Octavio 10+ year member]

Without having to used tech words what does a crossover do?

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[Verlander]

it basically dictates what frequencies are to played by the speaker

 

[acold7dusta 10+ year member]

for comps, it splits the higher frequencies to the tweeter, and the lower frequencies to the woofer.

 

[Octavio 10+ year member]

hmmm interesting ..... I just wanted to be sure what was really a crossover, thanks guys

 

[Verlander]

http://www.bcae1.com search crossover. these are just brutal basics what was posted

 

[Octavio 10+ year member]

http://www.bcae1.com search crossover. these are just brutal basics what was posted

Thanks verlander

 

[Verlander]

Thanks verlander

your welcome

go tigers

 

[JohnBlayz142 10+ year member]

Without having to used tech words what does a crossover do?

Imagine a subwoofer crossed over at 80hz. 80hz would be the point you have told the subwoofer to play up to. So, basically it will cut off material above 80hz.
This would be called a Low Pass Filter (LPF) as opposed to a High Pass Filter (HPF) which would work the opposite.

A high pass filter set to 80hz for a pair of midranges is going to tell the midrange to play everything except material BELOW 80hz.

LPF allows speaker to play beLOW the set frequency on the crossover.

HPF allows speaker to play HIGHer than the frequency to which you have set it.

Hope that helps.

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Of course, there are such things as db/octave slopes which tell how abruptly the frequency will get cut off at the point in which you set it to...A crossover doesn't just cut off the speaker, it trails off past the point you set it to, really.

 

[Octavio 10+ year member]

Imagine a subwoofer crossed over at 80hz. 80hz would be the point you have told the subwoofer to play up to. So, basically it will cut off material above 80hz.
This would be called a Low Pass Filter (LPF) as opposed to a High Pass Filter (HPF) which would work the opposite.

A high pass filter set to 80hz for a pair of midranges is going to tell the midrange to play everything except material BELOW 80hz.

LPF allows speaker to play beLOW the set frequency on the crossover.

HPF allows speaker to play HIGHer than the frequency to which you have set it.

Hope that helps.

------------------------------------

Of course, there are such things as db/octave slopes which tell how abruptly the frequency will get cut off at the point in which you set it to...A crossover doesn't just cut off the speaker, it trails off past the point you set it to, really.

****N!!!! that what I call a good explanation, thanks John I got that clear but

I'm still stock with a 2ohms, 4 ohms, 1ohms explanation, which is better or

there is no better, thanks once again

 

[96civ 10+ year member]

Most of the x-overs I see around here are passive. Passive x-overs usually come along with a component system, thus I'm going to assume you're interested in what a passive crossover actually is. A passive crossover uses passive electronic components in order to reduce the magnitude of signal coming from a certain frequency. Capacitors have a high resistance to low frequencies and inductors have a high resistance to high frequencies so if you have a high pass crossover the crossover will have a capacitor and vice versa for a low pass filter. The orientation and number of either capacitors or inductors determines the order of the crossover. A passive x-over can be 1st order, 2nd order, 3rd order, 4th order, nth order where n can be any integer I'm assuming but anything past 3rd order is a little overkill I think. The order of a crossover determines the slope at which the signal is being reduced at the crossover point. 1st order has a reduction slope of 6dB/octave; 2nd order has a reduction of slope of 12dB/octave; 3rd order has a reduction slope of 24dB/octave, so on and so forth. So say you have a crossover point at 1000Hz, for a 2nd order crossover at 500Hz the signal will be -12dB as at 1000Hz.

Also keep in mind that passive crossovers are not the only type of crossover in the world. Active crossovers filter out the undesired frequencies signal before amplification whereas a passive crossover will filter out the undesired frequencies after amplification and use resistance to do the filtration.

 

[JohnBlayz142 10+ year member]

****N!!!! that what I call a good explanation, thanks John I got that clear butI'm still stock with a 2ohms, 4 ohms, 1ohms explanation, which is better or

there is no better, thanks once again

No problem man, 96civ went into even more detail than me, but I figured I'd do my best to give you a basic lesson....good luck man.

The impedance (ohms) of the speakers just matters when matching them up to an amplifier. You will notice some amps put down more power at a lower impedance. If you're running speakers off a head unit, 4 ohm is the standard. The head unit may not be able to handle 2 ohm speakers, because it will overheat the internal amp.

Most of us here have amps that are 1 ohm stable for subwoofers, because most sub amps put out the most power at 1 ohm. If you take two dual voice coil 4 ohm subs, you can wire each one to 2 ohms. (parallel). You will then connect each of these 2 ohm speakers together in parallel to get a 1 ohm load.

Four single voice coil 4 ohm subs wired down in parallel would also result in a 1 ohm load. There's a very basic explanation.

 

[Savstyle 10+ year member]

****N!!!! that what I call a good explanation, thanks John I got that clear butI'm still stock with a 2ohms, 4 ohms, 1ohms explanation, which is better or

there is no better, thanks once again

there is no better, its the ammount of resistence. The lower the resistence the more power.

 

[thch 10+ year member]

power law: Power = Voltage * Current

ohms law: Voltage = Current * Resistance

observation: if you know any two of voltage, current, power, and resistance, you can calculate the others.

Impedance is a more technical version of resistance. the "nominal impedance" is treated as a simplified version of the speaker that is purely resistive.

as an amp designer, you would need to determine what voltage and current would be required from the power supply. but the audio system designer doesn't care about that, and only cares about power and impedance.

it ends up being a big game -- the end user almost always wants more power for less money. the amp designer finds ways to give the user more power, but this means chooseing voltages and currents that he can find these high-quality, low-cost parts. the speaker maker must make speakers for such voltages and currents, and can adjust the impedance to do so.

nowdays, speaker makers have multiple woofers in the same line, each with a different impedance. amp makers also have different lines to address the different markets. and the end user ends up trying to find an amp and woofer combo that gives high power at low cost. sometimes it means using 0.5ohm loads, and other times 4ohm loads.

 

[Octavio 10+ year member]

Most of the x-overs I see around here are passive. Passive x-overs usually come along with a component system, thus I'm going to assume you're interested in what a passive crossover actually is. A passive crossover uses passive electronic components in order to reduce the magnitude of signal coming from a certain frequency. Capacitors have a high resistance to low frequencies and inductors have a high resistance to high frequencies so if you have a high pass crossover the crossover will have a capacitor and vice versa for a low pass filter. The orientation and number of either capacitors or inductors determines the order of the crossover. A passive x-over can be 1st order, 2nd order, 3rd order, 4th order, nth order where n can be any integer I'm assuming but anything past 3rd order is a little overkill I think. The order of a crossover determines the slope at which the signal is being reduced at the crossover point. 1st order has a reduction slope of 6dB/octave; 2nd order has a reduction of slope of 12dB/octave; 3rd order has a reduction slope of 24dB/octave, so on and so forth. So say you have a crossover point at 1000Hz, for a 2nd order crossover at 500Hz the signal will be -12dB as at 1000Hz.
Also keep in mind that passive crossovers are not the only type of crossover in the world. Active crossovers filter out the undesired frequencies signal before amplification whereas a passive crossover will filter out the undesired frequencies after amplification and use resistance to do the filtration.

thanks ..... btw what brand or model of crossover you use?

 

[Octavio 10+ year member]

No problem man, 96civ went into even more detail than me, but I figured I'd do my best to give you a basic lesson....good luck man.
The impedance (ohms) of the speakers just matters when matching them up to an amplifier. You will notice some amps put down more power at a lower impedance. If you're running speakers off a head unit, 4 ohm is the standard. The head unit may not be able to handle 2 ohm speakers, because it will overheat the internal amp.

Most of us here have amps that are 1 ohm stable for subwoofers, because most sub amps put out the most power at 1 ohm. If you take two dual voice coil 4 ohm subs, you can wire each one to 2 ohms. (parallel). You will then connect each of these 2 ohm speakers together in parallel to get a 1 ohm load.

Four single voice coil 4 ohm subs wired down in parallel would also result in a 1 ohm load. There's a very basic explanation.

Lord jesus ! I feel on school again .... thanks Mastre John

one more question ...... regarding my amp ..... I saw the voltage on the scep and it say 12v to 14.5v is that correct? if yes do Amp run on diferrence Voltage? thanks once again