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Hi Wayne Wondered if you would say how many watts you need to drive the proffessional 7's properly with JBL's... what kind of amplification have you found works best with them? I'm also curious if you've tried bi-amping them or even tri-amping them, and if you have what you thought of the results. Thanks Chris Smith
You can drive them with flea-power, 1 watt is just fine. I personally prefer more power, 10 watts minimum, for dynamic range, to handle the transients. Multi-amps are always good, just make sure you have CD EQ for the tweeter. In this case, I suggest a low-order woofer-to-mid crossover filter, just like the passive crossover. That's unusual for active setups, but it works very well in the seven π cornerhorn, making an invisible transition from bass to mid and helping to smooth midbass and lower midrange room modes. Use a third-order tweeter crossover because that sums best with the midrange. Depending on the midrange driver (see the chart in the plans), you may still want a coil in series with the midrange driver (after the amp) but otherwise, there is no electrical low-pass filter on the midrange because the horn itself sets the low-pass slope. To summarize, what you want to do is mimic the passive crossover with active filters, gaining the benefits of multiamping but retaining the slope and contour of the existing crossover, which has been optimized for the seven π cornerhorn, because it accounts for and takes advantage of the physical relationships between each driver.