How to design a high end crossover…

@teo_audio

Yes, the highs and the mid’s are where you open your wallet and let the supplier take the money out, and thank God for that, since the higher in frequency you go, the smaller the mf needed. 

It's the difference between being familiar with what you’re hearing as opposed to seeing the musician perform in front of you in your minds eye. I simply can't believe that I am listening to the same speaker.

It all started when I stumble on DIY YT videos of people moding speakers for themselves or professionally by accident, and then start binge watching them. Danny at GR Research and a fellow named Joppe Peelen, as well as a bunch of others in the led me down the road to sin… 😂 


This is a random one from Joope: https://youtu.be/mcqVb08tgpo

The only speakers I own, or have owned, that I haven’t taken apart and modded are My KEF R's, just brilliant design and manufacturing quality that was beautiful to behold but I dare not fiddle with, lest I mess them up.

But yeah, I do take them all apart and check out pretty much everything just to see what makes them tick. That goes for just about any mechanical or electronic thing I own.

There can be a whole lot more than picking crossover points, slope, and particular components.  A lot of designs include networks to compensate for phase, to notch out certain frequencies, to fill in certain frequencies, etc. 

I saw an advertisement for the YG Carmel speaker that showed its crossover.  This thing had well more than a dozen caps, about a dozen inductors and a whole lot of resistors, and this is a two driver, two-way system.  Obviously there is a whole lot more going on than just a high-pass and a low-pass network.  

Oh heck yeah. Below is a link to a free online circuit calculator for a third order Butterworth, and this has no Zobel circuits or notch filters.  

Second link is to Humble Homemade HiFi for pictures of some of their more advanced x-overs.

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/crossover?c=USD&v=filter_order_type:0,additional_circuit:0,spread:8,type:3.000000000000000,filter_order_type_3_way:3.000000000000000,woofer_impedance:4!ohm,midrange_impedance:8!ohm,tweeter_impedance:6!ohm,crossover_freq_low:500!Hz

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/assembly.html

This photo shows one of their designs that incorporates cheap to expensive inductors for their specific attributes, and bottom drawer to top shelf caps.

It's a science that’s an art.

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/services/assembly_99.jpg

https://www.marchandelec.com/ has lots of useful information on building passive or active crossovers.