Well, it has been a few years since I built my last digital crossover - like six I think.
It is not that I was planning to do this - but a conversation with someone about my seemingly modest choice of the AD1941 DSP chip for my old crossover made me look at what else Analog Devices are offering.
The ADAU1442 is on the surface a very similar chip to the AD1940, but it has a lot more integrated into it, and offers significantly greater capacity.
So I set about designing a new crossover that used this, and also addressed a few of the shortcomings of my original design.
The goals were broadly:
- A modular DSP based crossover
- That provides a standard interface for the ADC
- That provides a standard interface for the DAC
- That includes SPDIF in and out
- That anybody can design digitisers and dacs for - no code level drivers built in, though the interface does ALLOW for SPI control of these
- That is controlled from a simple...

My brother was complaining about his vocals not coming through clearly in his (rather modest / amateur) band. It turned out that he was trying to use some old hifi speakers we had as kids!!!

I had a bunch of Beyma 12G125 bass drivers and some P.Audio PA-D26 compression drivers, so offered to throw some proper speakers together for him.

There were a couple of illustrations of design principles in here that are worth reiterating:
- The horn driver has a massive (and by this I mean both acoustically and electrically) resonant peakj just below 2KHz.

To use this driver and avoid horrible the resultant upper midrange peak, it is essental to put a trap on the tweeter to flatten out the impedance.

this at least gives the crossover a hope of working...

- The horn driver still has a big fat peak at 2KHz.

- The horn was CD - and needed compensation to bring the top end up to "flat".
...

In the process of upgrading the subs in the play room. The aim was to deliver in the 1kW region into 8 Ohms. Discretion (and common sense - if that ever entered the equation) led me to shoot for something closer to 650 watts (measued 73vrms, or 666 watts on a sine wave into an 8 ohm load, which brought a wry smile to my face).

I chose to use a bridged configuration, as this allowed the use of supply rails at sensible levels (+/-65V) odd. It also allowed me to use a heap of capacitors that I had laying around.

The transformers are ANTEK units, which much to my disgust cost less to buy and ship from the US than to buy locally made. (Sorry about being parochial, but shipping a two 20lb lumps of steel to Australia is expensive - what is with our local businesses???)

No surprise that I was worried about:
- Power supply - needs to be big
- Cooling - an awful lot of heat to get rid of
- Safety - don't want to be melting my speakers,...

Couple of projects of mine - not sure if the photos will load OK.

First is a pair of 25Hz horn subs I used to have - used 18inch p.audio drivers, placed facing one another along a wall to form part of the horn and achieve adequate mouth area for the 25Hz cutoff.

Efficiency was well over 100dB/w/m.

Second photo is one of my digital crossovers I built, 4 way AD1940 based audio DSP with an AD1939 CODEC as A/D and D/A. Works a treat, and makes setting speakers up a snip, as can program in delays, HPF / LPF, parametric etc.

Also included my subwoofer couch - I built this as a challenge from a colleague of mine. The carcass of the couch forms an 800 litre enclosure, the ports exit at the back of the headrest three of them, and I used four fifteen inch drivers. It is tuned to 19Hz, and achieves a -3dB point below 20Hz.