Crossovers

If you pay me, I'll put it into laymans terms. $200/hr.

Should take 10-12 hours, to get you the basics so you can build on that foundation.

What you're asking is so broad and vast that quite literally I have offerred you a bargain.

Crossovers are about division thus math is necessary to explain what is happening with any kind of precision.

So what I recommend as "cliff notes" to get you started is get a DIY book like the Loudspeaker Cookbook by vance Dickason or I think martin Collums book touches on the subject too. The fact is very few speakers have text book crossovers in them despite what they claim since most drivers do not not exhibit text book responses and with phenomena like the baffle step etc. this will alter a crossover from stock too.

I'm afraid it takes some time and initiative to get to where even "layman's explanation" can be understood otherwise you will be in a world of mostly false generalizations...worse off than you are now.

Thus I look to your own vision statement and say you will need some DIY experience and some math. Without understanding the basic elements you will be lost on the concepts. You have to meet it atleast half way, learn the math and the relevent vocabulary and the concepts will make more sense. Otherwise you'll just be kidding yourself.

The orders are the degree of turn over at the knee, the point where the cross over rolls your drivers off. The 1st order is 6db/octave, and the 2nd is 12, and 3rd is 18, and 4th order is 24db/octave. The higher the order the sharper the cut-off. The type of filter, Bessel, LinkR, Butterworth, etc describe the circuit apporach to the design. All are quite similiar and different type have different plus and minus's to them. The LinkwitzR, type is often used in D'Appolitto type designs for it's advantage if phase projection.

So without getting into math, that's about as clean as I can tell it.

loon

In simple terms, first order is the simplest and things become more complex as you the order number increases.

You can say roughly that the order number relates to the number of major components in line (series) with each driver. A first order has one part in line with each driver - a cap with the tweeter, and an inductor with the woofer.

Not to get too technical, but a second order crossover adds an inductor in parallel to the tweeter, and a cap in parallel to the woofer. Third order adds another cap in series with the tweeter, and inductor in series with the woofer. Fourth order does the same thing the second order did to the first order on a third order network.

Despite most trying to make this stuff rocket science, it's nowhere near as complicated as we are led to believe. But, watch how many disagree with me here in this thread...