If you're running a second-order on the woofer, the output from the crossover measured across the woofer voice coil probably has a significant peak somewhere near the crossover point. Look at pages 14 and 15 of this crossover lab document to see what I mean.

If the driver and horn are falling off about the same place, then crossover peaking may help boost the top end, I suppose. That would make summing through the crossover difficult to predict, so the only way you'd know is to check it and see. This is all very implementation specific, and that was the point I wanted to make.

In fairness to Dickinson (though I don't feel particularly charitable toward him) he was writing for theater owners and installers to convince them that the old stuff didn't have to be replaced to continue to provide satisfactory service - I don't know if Dickinson has the horsepower or not, but he might have written differently if it was written for speaker designers.

Me, I got no horsepower whatsoever. While I'm trying to digest this I want to ask a follow-up question: are these issues addressable by equalization? Not many active XOs (until the digital revolution ) had selectable slopes, etc...

Or put another way, is EQ a brute force way to address the kinds of things you're talking about with active analog XO that would be better addressed by the use of digital EQ that can be highly tailored?

Hope that makes sense?

• Original, inelegant question

If there is resonant peaking, that can be reduced by EQ. If there is rolled off response because of mechanical mass or inductance, that can be EQ'ed. But if there are ripples in the crossover region, that's not something you can equalize away.