books on passive XOs

[speedie]

i have looked at amazons book lineup and dont see anythink that might help me
so can anyone point me in the right direction for books on the concepts of passive design theory

i find it more intuitive to read from a book than scan through posts

thankyou speedie

[ByronInLawrence]

Vance Dickason's Loudspeaker Design Cookbook 7th edition has one chapter, about 50 pages, on X-overs. Of course that's only a small fraction of the entire book, so you may not think the 50 pages you want is worth the price a 275-page book.

On the other hand, you may, some day, find all the other info useful too!

-Byron

[wintermute]

Good question speedie. I've learnt my crossover design from reading Vance Dickasons "The loudspeaker design cookbock", David Weems "Designing and building your own louspeaker system" I also purchased Vance dickasons "Loudspeaker Recipies book 1" which goes through the build of four speaker systems, and the design choices he made with respect to the crossovers.

With all those under my belt, I also bought Joe D'Appolitos "Testing Loudspeakers "

You can tell I've bought a few books over the years

Not for a minute suggesting you should run out and buy all of those! What I found was that NO one book really gave me enough information. It wasn't until I started to measure, simulate, and build stuff that It started to actually fall into place (combined with asking questions and reading lots of posts here).

A few important tips.

1. It is the final acoustic slope (as measured) that is important, not the electrical order of the crossover that is important. For instance you might have an electrical 2nd order filter but a 4th order acoustic slope.

2. pay attention to what is happening with the phase around the crossover frequency and for an octave or so either side. The closer the two speakers match the better the result will likely be.

3, don't be afraid to stray from conventional means. Add in a cap or a coil in the sim just to see what happens!

4. if simulating make sure you also simulate the impedance, you might make something that looks fantastic, but has very nasty impedance dips.

Have a look at this primer from the PI speakers site http://www.pispeakers.com/Speaker_Crossover_Lab.pdf It's quite heavy on the maths, and I have only read the section on resonances (whichI found very useful) but I think it should be a good starting point!

Tony.

[AllenB]

That link appears promising wintermute. It skims over what, for all intents and purposes is the first few months of electronics TAFE training. I wouldn't feel out of place recommending a text book. http://wps.prenhall.com/chet_floyd_electfun_7/

Although this knowledge is valuable and will lead to good results, the path to those results is often not intuitive and best results may come from experience with speakers.

Still... learn about:
Ohms law (invaluable)
the voltage divider principle
reactive components
rectangular and polar notation
resonance and damping
filters
complex voltage dividers and deriving the applied voltage to a speaker
the relationship between the drive potential and the sound produced
the interaction between crossed drivers
the goals of a crossover