quick question about crossovers

[pocketcincos]

Hey all, I've got a set of Aiwa speakers that I wanted to use with a normal receiver. Aiwa speakers aren't supposed to be wired to anything non-proprietary.

They are 3-way speakers, with one cable for the woofer and another for the midrange and tweeter. I'm assuming there is a crossover in the speakers to split between the midrange and tweeter, but obviously between the woofer because it's a separate circuit. Specifications say that the woofer handles 50-200hz, and the midrange/tweeter handles 200hz-20khz.

So do you think it would work if I just bought a 200hz crossover to split the frequencys between the woofer and the rest at 200hz, and then just hooked that up to a normal receiver?

Any input appreciated.

[GuyPanico]

I would open up the speakers to see if there is a crossover for the woofer. Just to make sure.

[richie00boy]

Probably split active in the main unit. An external passive crossover would work, but wouldn't be as good.

[sreten]

Originally posted by richie00boy
Probably split active in the main unit. An external passive crossover would work, but wouldn't be as good.

Hi,

True, but the speaker could use the common car arrangement.

A stereo amplifier is bridged, so the channels are relatively inverted,
but the amplifier is still fed the left and right channels.
The bass is connected across the outputs so gets a summed mono
signal, the mid/trebles are connected relatively out of phase as
normal, so they get left and right 6dB lower then the bass.

Active splitting in the above does not work.
Probably the mid / trebles have a series capacitor.
The bass units are usually in bandpass cabinets, i.e. all you
can see is the front port, which implements the low pass filter,
i.e. the bass units likely have no c/o components.

I'd say the best way of driving them is a gainclone wired as above.

/sreten.

[richie00boy]

Ah yes sreten that would be a cheap way for a manufacturer to get a bit more from the woofers. I'd vote for your way then.

[pocketcincos]

Originally posted by sreten



The bass is connected across the outputs so gets a summed mono
signal,

The bass units are usually in bandpass cabinets,

/sreten.

Yeah it is a bandpass. So since it has a low pass filter built in, I shouldn't need to add anything. You say the bass is connected across the outputs, so do you mean I could just splice the woofer wiring into the wiring for the mid/trebble?

[sreten]

Hi,

you need to check the mid/treble has series capacitor. If so you can
drive the two in parallel. You need to check relative phasing of the
mids to the bass.

If the speakers were wired as I proposed -
If the bass were in series the above should be fine
If the bass units were in parallel then bass levels in the above will be weak.

Adding a subwoofer plate amplifier would be needed in the latter case.

/sreten.