evildude88

Thanks for the info.

I am definitely learning an immense amount here in a short amount of time. The real fun is yet to begin, though!

Basically I'm just waiting on getting some speaker wire for the tweets and then I am gonna go ahead with the upgrade. At that point I'll shoot some pictures and put them up when I'm all done

For the tuning part, I understand how slopes and octaves work. The only thing I'm wondering about is setting crossover points - is there any objective information you use as a reference point or is it all done by ear (or RTA if you had one)? I guess I'm just worried about damaging the equipment.

Thanks again, you've been very helpful!

jstoner22

iTrader: (1)

no problem.

the crossover points are really going to vary depending on your car and listening habits.

look into the manufacturers specs on the drivers to get a baseline of what the drive is capable off first.

while at my loudest listening levels, I will generally cross my drivers as low as possible while maintaining safe operation and just tweak from there.
you are listening to it, not a machine. personally I do it all by ear.

Dukk

^ Agreed. I like to start at the top for crossover points and work down. So I start with the tweet and set my initial crossover point at 2x Fs. So if the driver has an Fs of 1800hz, I start in the 3600hz range and go from there. If you have a slope steeper than 12db you can lower the point if desired but be careful. Play your music at a fair volume and listen for distress.

Then move onto the mid. I set the low pass of the mid at or up to half an octave below where the tweeter is high passed. Again, set the high pass at about 2x Fs and work from there. First play the mid alone and work the low pass until you drop it to where the mid still plays clean and without distress. Now bring the tweet back in and work the high pass on the mid so they blend well.

Move onto a midbass if you have it. Set it up the same way as the mid.

Finally end with the sub.

One of the things many people new to active systems get hung up on is gap and overlap. It is natural to think that one speaker should end at the same frequency the next begins. Truly, depending on your car, speakers, and setup, you may arrive at your best sound with one speaker overlapping another or with a gap between two speakers. Don't sweat it - you're not going to hear a half or octave wide gap, even with 18db or 24db slopes. Set it up so it sounds right, not what your pencil tells you should be right.

evildude88

Thanks for all the information, jstoner22 and Dukk. That is extremely helpful. Especially since I will be doing this upgrade today or tomorrow

Quick question for you Dukk, regarding Fs, how do you determine the Fs of the midrange and tweet? The box for my C5's as well as the manual do not state anything about these kind of specs. Is there any way of determining it or should I just ballpark it?

On JL's website for the tweet, they say: "The C5-100ct is designed to operate above 5 kHz with a minimum high-pass slope of 12 dB / octave."

They are talking about the 1" tweet, but it's identical otherwise. So my guess for this is the Fs is around 2k hz? But that's probably not accurate. Basically I just want to know if it's really important to know it or not, or if there's another way to determine a good starting point.

Thanks again guys this is helping me big time. I will actually have a well-tuned system now

Dukk

If you don't have access to Fs then look either at the crossover point of the manufacturer passive or any suggestion from the manufacturer, in this case 5k, which IMO is pretty high but not unheard of. What diameter is the midrange?

evildude88

It's the JL Audio C5 component set - comes with a 6.5" midrange woofer and a 0.75" tweet.