Best way to learn about crossovers?

[mazeroth]

I know a lot about speaker drivers and enclosures but crossovers keep killing me! How would you suggest I learn everything there is to know about crossovers and designing them, starting from the beginning? I wish there was a Crossovers for Dummies book, but there isn't 😀

I'm willing to purchase a book or software, whatever. If it's something I can read off the net, even better.

Thanks!

 

[Grahamt]

I am in the same boat. The best resource I have found so far is the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason. It seems to skip over some stuff but it does have a lot of information.

 

[thomas997]

I am in the same boat. The best resource I have found so far is the Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason. It seems to skip over some stuff but it does have a lot of information.

Yeah that is a good read.


Or just check the audio section at the library, has some decent stuff. You can use www.amazon.com for book reviews.

 

[f4ier]

starting from the beginning? I wish there was a Crossovers for Dummies book

It's called a circuit analysis book -- titles from different authors are available from your local library 🙂 Goodman's book of Circuit Theory & Techniques (Vol. 1 and 2) seems to be a good introductory book.

 

[Swedish Chef]

Although AC circuit theory is necessary for deeper crossover understanding, this document is the best I have ever read for basic practical crossover implementation:

http://www.pispeakers.com/Speaker_Crossover.doc

/M

 

[Kittle]

My best friend on this has been the pispeakers site plus a breadboard and some various components to actually _test_ stuff out on.
Reading all about it is one thing.. but its a different matter when you can hook stuff up to a driver, apply signal generator and listen to stuff work (or not work).

 

[Solid Snake]

Learn about capacitive and inductive reactance and everything else will fall into place.

 

[Cloth Ears]

I found 3 articles from Rod Elliot go quite a way to explaining how the bits all work together:
http://sound.westhost.com/beginners.htm - Beginners' Guide to Electronics - Part 1
http://sound.westhost.com/lr-passive.htm - Design of Passive Crossovers
http://sound.westhost.com/parallel-series.htm - Series vs. Parallel Crossover Networks

Vance Dickerson's book gives a pretty good start on parallel crossovers

There's some fairly good software to play with on the FRD Consortium page: http://www.pvconsultants.com/audio/frdgroup.htm

I also found a pretty good spreadsheet (called PXO.xls by Murray Hauschild) earlier this year - but I'm currently unable to locate it on the web. It gave a fairly good indication of what happens when using different topologies and when inserting series components or Zobels in the crossover.

Then again, buying a few components and a breadboard (and with a careful hand on the volume control) you can have quite a bit of fun - but I'd read a couple of articles first, as tweeters can be expensive.

Enjoy.