Active car audio xover for home use

[cjh]

Hello,

Just wondering if anybody here has had good results in coming up with an active crossover network for their home speakers using off-the-shelf car audio crossovers. I'm thinking of running my sub with a behringer a500 using a pyle active crossover powered by a 12v wall wart transformer. Seems much cheaper and easier using off-the-shelf components that are pretty cheap. I don't see why this couldn't work for the cross between woofer/mid/tweeter unless i'm missing something...

[impsick]

na you aint missing anything. maybe youll miss the crossovers in your car.? j/k
why not passive though? are you using it just for low pass?

[AndrewT]

Hi,
car speakers tend to have high Qts.
This virtually wipes out all of the boxed options, leaving open baffle and infinite baffle as the likely loading candidates.

If you design the speakers correctly then the simple crossover is very easily achieved.

But, one usually needs a lot more than a simple crossover to get good results from the active speaker combination.

One word of caution.
Active allows more efficient coupling from pre-amp/source to speaker/driver. This results in source noise becoming prominent. Get a quiet crossover or you may be troubled with constant hiss.

[richie00boy]

I didn't see car speakers mentioned Andrew.

Yes, a car active crossover can do the job, but beware that as Andrew pointed out it's not just a case of slapping it all together. The acoustic response of the speakers must be taken into account with active crossovers just as they must with passive ones. It's only the impedance headaches active saves you from.

[AndrewT]

Hi Richie,
you've outted me, I can't read.

[owdi]

I did just that using an Audiocontrol 2xs crossover, and a 12v DC wall wart. I did not get good results, but that is probably because my receiver does not have preouts, so I had to use the speaker outputs.

I did test the Audiocontrol crossover, and it was really clean. I believe SNR and distortion was about 3-6db worse with it in place, compared to a straight loopback test. Sound card was the M-Audio Audiophile 2496.

Dan

[cjh]

Thanks for the info guys. Sounds like its doable, but with some potential downfalls.

My system is a two-way dipole with separate stereo subs. All of it dipole. The mains are BG RD-50's crossed 1st order (passive) at 400 hz to Dayton 175's. I plan to run these with a home theater type amp set to "small" from 80 hz on up. I bought two of the XJ-15 drivers for the subs from diycable. This is where I'm having trouble coming up with the right amp/crossover to drive them. I don't feel confident enough to design and build active crossovers for them that also take care of the 6db per octave dipole cancellation with a linkwitz transform. Thats how I ended up with the idea of using one of these car audio crossover/Eq combos to do all of this for me. I'm sure its less than optimal, but it seemed to address all of my needs for less than $40.

[Andy G]

Ok. I'm going to admit it.

I use the following car x-o in "Gumby".
It does its job very well, set to 125Hz.

I use it hooked up to the second main outs of my Bryston pre-amp, so the bass level adjusts with the overall volume. I can also adjust the bass separately on the front of the PA amp I use to drive the bass.

With no cd playing, and the volume up way louder than I would ever use, you can hear a faint hiss if you get about 1ft from the bass driver.

[seagrasser]

I have used both an audiocontrol 2xs and EQX in home "installations". I had great success with both. Be careful of the wall wart though. A good powersupply will go a long way to reducing introduced noise.

The pyle may be a little more crude in design and "noisier." Look for a good used audiocontrol. They are hard to beat and built like tanks.

Cheers,

Jason