Question Of Efficiency

[gpsmithii]

I’m wanting to build a monitor type hybrid. The woofer is rated at 95db 1 wt/mt and the tweeter is 93. How or does one pad the crossover? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[AndrewT]

Hi,
usually it's the other way around.
It's relatively easy to pad down the tweeter since the average power going to the driver is fairly low. The extra resistance is less of a problem for the tweeter as well.

The power problem and the response anomalies for the bass driver brought about by excessive resistance make this more difficult.

Somebody will have a cheap solution for you.

I have a more expensive solution. Build a biwireable crossover for the two drivers and use separate amplifiers for each half of the crossover. Passive Bi-amping. Since the US has stolen Bi-amping to mean active speakers. Then just adjust the bass amp to have 2db less gain than the tweeter amp.

[Notax]

Originally posted by gpsmithii
I’m wanting to build a monitor type hybrid. The woofer is rated at 95db 1 wt/mt and the tweeter is 93. How or does one pad the crossover? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

It is not a problem. Probably, that woofer is rated 95 dB, but in real it is not just 95 dB, but smaller. Do you have some data for that woofer?
T/S parameters and frequency respons?

[GordonW]

Also, while a woofer will "lose" some effective efficiency due to baffle step diffraction, the tweeter will not. Having a tweeter that's 2 dB less efficient than a woofer, may be just the thing, once the crossover is sorted out. May wind up NOT having to pad anything... just to contour the midrange output of the woofer, to match up with the bottom and the tweeter response...

Regards,
Gordon.