PEI330Ci

I remember some people talking about comparing a passively crossed over front stage to an actively crossed over front stage.

Has anyone done what they said they would?

I remember a few people saying that they were going to try it, but I haven't seen anything on the matter since then. (November)

Here is the scenario:
(Assuming 2 way front stage)

Take a 4 channel amp, run just 2 chanels to the passive X.O.s.

Take the same 4 channel amp, bridge it to 2 channels, and run that to the passive X.O.s

Take the same 4 channel amp, actively X.O. the 4 channels and run them to the highs and lows

Evaluate the above for SQ.

Any answers people?

Adam

islandphile

I don't know if this applies to what you guys are trying to figure out, but here goes: I will be in a position to test my scenario pretty soon as the kicks are slowly coming together.

The speakers are 3-way Focal Mistral (Early Poly Kevs) and the x-over that came with them is pretty beefy Utopia grade so it should NOT be a limiting factor.

I'll try this through the passive with the VRx2.400 which puts out about 200Wx2 at 4 ohms.

Then I'll try some small Wavelenght amps that are 25x2W @ 4 Ohms or 100W @ 4 Ohms bridged. One bridged per each midbass and one each per channel so that tweeter runs off one side of the right side amp and the mid off the other channel, ans the same thing on the left side. All active processing duties will be through the PXA-H700.

The passive option will be at 400 Watts RMS and the Active option will be at 300 Watts RMS. I've been waiting to do this for a while it's just been so busy at work...but I can't wait to see the results.

Any ideas about this?

[ March 15, 2004, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: islandphile ]

fozzz

iTrader: (1)

I believe that in car audio atleast, active crossovers will yeild a better result. Simply because you can more easily change your crossover points.

PEI330Ci

Dukk, I remember exactly what you talked about. I'm just trying to stir the pot on some run off ideas from that discusion.

I still haven't sprung for a good DMM to measure true output after a passive X.O., so I'm still at the guessing stage here.

I do have a good tone generator though. I could run a tone to my midbass drivers for example and measure SPL with and without the passive X.O.s in line. Just an idea.

Adam

PEI330Ci

And Islandphile, I'll be totally active this week with roughly the same power as you. (same amp for midbass, roughly 100wpc for the mids and tweeters)

islandphile

I can minimize phase shift with the passive setup b/c the alpine deck does have time correction, not as good as the PXA, granted....but it'll help significantly vs. not having it. Also minimizing phase shift will be the fact that the speakers are mounted far back in the deep foot wells, close together.

This system is being designed to be very good out of the box w/o any processing (besides x-overs & gains) and then make it better with some very minor DSP tweaks.

TomK

Active means more control. Control is everything. Power isn't "power". Control is "power". Some of you will understand that, while others will go [img]graemlins/dunno.gif[/img] and think I'm insane !!!

islandphile

Well Tom, we just wanna play and have a little fun [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img] ...accumulatin' some binderedonedat kinda experience, nothing beats it!