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active crossover [message #45608]

Sun, 17 October 2004 18:30

Malcolms
Messages: 6
Registered: May 2009

Esquire

Hello Wayne, I'm finishing up my stage 4pi,s and came across the subject of active crossovers in the forums. I have a question as to whether a Behringer crossover would work with them. I have two 60 watt quicksilver mono blocks and a two channel gainclone also I am using a Harmon Kardon theater reciever as a pre. Would I be able to integrate the active crossover with the stage pi's.

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Re: active crossover [message #45614 is a reply to message #45608]

Sun, 17 October 2004 20:49

Wayne Parham
Messages: 18791
Registered: January 2001

Illuminati (33rd Degree)

There is a lot of good information about active crossovers in this forum, so you might want to use the search feature and scan for "active crossover." Active crossovers are always nice because they give you the benefits of biamplification. The thing you'll want to do is to make sure the tweeter circuit can be configured to provide a response curve like shown below. Some crossovers have a setting for CD equalization, and it should provide a response curve something like this:

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Re: active crossover [message #45623 is a reply to message #45608]

Mon, 18 October 2004 16:29

GarMan
Messages: 960
Registered: May 2009

Illuminati (2nd Degree)

Hi Malcolm,

If your preamp or active crossover doesn’t have an equalizer to adjust to the curve that Wayne showed, here’s a few ways to get around that:

- Let the active crossover perform the high-pass, but keep the HF compensation network in the speaker. This won’t give you the full benefit of active XO for the HF such as direct amp/driver coupling and efficient use of amp, but at least you’ll still get HF compensation.

- Build your own custom crossover with HF compensation built in. Not as hard as it sounds. Back in early 2003, Wayne posted his variation of the Steve Bench tube crossover design to work with PI Speakers. Search under “tube crossover”

- Insert a compensation network between the HF crossover output and HF amp, scaled to work with the input impedance of the amp. A variation of a line level passive crossover. This will allow you to direct couple amp and driver, and make more efficient use of your amp since attenuation happens before amplification.

Gar.

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