analogue 2 way active crossover, very good sound quality?

Hello,

I am looking for a DIY 2 way analogue active crossover. Something that performs like this:
https://passlabs.com/products/preamplifiers/speciality/xvr-1

Solid state, balanced,  discrete, as transparent as humanely possible. 6 or 12 db slopes. Anything out there for less than $2K? Kit?

Herman

I don't know any but I'm in, I like the idea of 1 to 4 pole like the one on the link... I want one for my monitors, a switch that bypass HPF and mute LPF output would be nice for me.

JS

http://www.thel-audioworld.de/module/saw/saw.htm

158€ for a stereo pcb, I think it's 24 dB/octave. German description only

Michael

The expensive/difficult part is making the crossover filters adjustable. Designing fixed filters for a specific application can be far cheaper and better behaved than any adjustable crossover.

There are a number of different filter approaches that can be better or worse for a specific loudspeaker drivers. The raw driver frequency response, and safe operating range ideally should be factored in optimal curves.

JR

For a kit look here:

http://www.marchandelec.com/

Once I used their passive L based kit and it worked very well and was very transparent.

For 6dB filter you will need to find really good and well behaved speaker drivers, which are expensive. Even then you might want to add some passive correction/response shaping circuit.

It will depend on how loud you want to play, so the tweeter will need to have very low Fs and then you will need to cross it at least 4 octaves up to make it happy. It is not a trivial task to find a woofer/mid-bass to be linear that high. It will need to be a smaller (about 4"-5") unit. But even then you will get into lobing and off-axis directivity problems with high x-over point. Really, the 6dB for an optimized system makes much more sense in a 3-way, or a small (3") mid-woofer with subwoofer crossed around 200-250Hz. If you are going two way then IMO, 12dB is much better idea.

Best, M

Yeah, after my share of speaker adventures I decided that first order is quite useless (the 6db slope) 12db is alright, 18 or 24 is the best. Same with crossovers - passive caps/coils are the most transparent and easiest to implement.
I think there's too much "info" on internet that may lead one to believe otherwise, so you may have to try and see for yourself.

In my case I have 2 way active HF speakers, yamaha HS-50. I want to add a x-over to add a sub to the configuration. I like how they work cutted 4th or higher order using my computer as x-over but I need one extra output and use a software to use the sub... I may go with JR aproach, put everithing in place, make my measurements and build a x-over for the freq I want, fixed.

JS

I have a set of Advents with 1st order crossover that sound surprisingly nice for casual home listening.  Easily a different story at higher power, I'd guess. 

emrr said:

I have a set of Advents with 1st order crossover that sound surprisingly nice for casual home listening.  Easily a different story at higher power, I'd guess.

Click to expand...

Yup, crossovers are full of trade offs and a 1 pole crossover trades slow roll-off for low phase shift, and no suck-out, like 2 pole crossovers do. So simple one pole sounds good if you can get away with it (high power pro stuff often can't).

The best GP crossover I've heard used a staggered pole filter alignment, where it was one pole response in the critical transition region, getting steeper an octave above and below where phase response was less critical.

If rolling your own also consider a derived or subtractive crossover, where one filter is subtracted from unity, to make the other response.. They always add perfectly but one passband has a shallow slope.  If rolling your own, research the drivers to see how steep of a roll-off you actually need.

Commercial GP crossovers gravitate to steep fixed symmetrical filters because that "seems" like a good solution and is easier to make adjustable.

Starting with a blank sheet of paper for a known speaker you will rarely come up with a textbook perfect filter.

JR