DIY active crossover kit?

Jon Best · Post by **Jon Best** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 12:18 pm

- copied and pasted from acoustics forum, accidentally posted there -

Anyone see/use this? Barefoot, any thoughts?

Seems like an interesting way to put some speakers together if you've already got a couple decent power amps.

http://www.snippets.org/filters/crossover.htm

jatougas · Post by **jatougas** » Fri Dec 31, 2004 3:10 pm

It'd be interesting to see how that sounded with a few different sizes of Killatones DIY's...

Jon Best · Post by **Jon Best** » Sat Jan 01, 2005 2:45 am

jatougas wrote:It'd be interesting to see how that sounded with a few different sizes of Killatones DIY's...

Well, the whole point of it would be a true 2-or 3-way, so a couple of full range drivers wouldn't probably be worth the effort.

I suspect you get everything you need in the kit to *build* a decent active crossover, and none of the tools you need to make it *sound* good.

jatougas · Post by **jatougas** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 4:28 am

Well, the Killatones are billed as 'limited bandwidth reference monitors', which would lead me to believe that three different sizes, each with a different size and a different bandwidth being their strong suit, all linked to an active crossover, would act as one large monitor, but with the speakers all acoustically sealed from each other.

So, say, an 10" Killatone, a 5" Killatone as described, and a 1" Killatone (Killatonette?), with appropriate breaking points in the frequencies ditributed to each...

Just a thought, and no, I'm not smoking anything...

Jon Best · Post by **Jon Best** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:33 am

Well, yeah, you've just described a 3-way speaker!

Lots of companies isolate drivers like that, just not in three fully separate boxes.

jatougas wrote:Well, the Killatones are billed as 'limited bandwidth reference monitors', which would lead me to believe that three different sizes, each with a different size and a different bandwidth being their strong suit, all linked to an active crossover, would act as one large monitor, but with the speakers all acoustically sealed from each other.

So, say, an 10" Killatone, a 5" Killatone as described, and a 1" Killatone (Killatonette?), with appropriate breaking points in the frequencies ditributed to each...

Just a thought, and no, I'm not smoking anything...

jatougas · Post by **jatougas** » Mon Jan 03, 2005 1:23 pm

Yeah, I know. That's my point, actually.

I suppose what I'm doing is taking the long way around to wondering how much of a difference it would make to have the separate elements of a three way speaker completely and utterly disassociated from each other?

Jon Best · Post by **Jon Best** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 3:23 am

jatougas wrote:Yeah, I know. That's my point, actually.

I suppose what I'm doing is taking the long way around to wondering how much of a difference it would make to have the separate elements of a three way speaker completely and utterly disassociated from each other?

I think that's fairly common design, actually- a lot of tweeters come with built-in rear chambers, and all the mid priced and higher speakers I'm aware of have separate internal boxes for the mids and lows, and often for each woofer if there are multiples.

I suppose you could build them separately and stack 'em, but your phase coherency would probably go to hell every time your cat bumped the speakers...

jatougas · Post by **jatougas** » Wed Jan 05, 2005 1:26 pm

Jon Best wrote: I suppose you could build them separately and stack 'em, but your phase coherency would probably go to hell every time your cat bumped the speakers...

And I've got four of the fuzzy little buggers to create havoc... yikes.

So much for trying out that idea. lol