Crossovers

What Is A Crossover?

Crossover is a term that, at least in the world of radios, means that speaker sounds have been sent through certain wires. The basic way that a radio works is to break up the frequencies into at least high, medium, and low. Then each frequency goes through a certain portion of the wires, with the crossovers being the wires through which the sound is pushed. A speaker crossover works to get the sound to the right speaker, usually the woofer, midrange driver, or tweeter. The passive crossover design is the least expensive and most common. It allows the signal for which sounds to go to which speakers to come from one of the radio’s internal signals. If an external signal is involved, then the radio uses an active crossover. The passive crossover works just find in most instances, but sometimes people will want to change the crossover design to get better sound.

Are There New Options?

One of the newer ideas in the world of speaker crossovers is the electronic crossover. Instead of the sound being pushed and physically going through different speakers, it is made to sound that way with the audio crossover setup being used. Some people also use create their own designs in car audio crossover wiring. Because the speakers are kept in one place in the car, instead of having the capability to be moved as is the case with a home stereo system, users can design their own crossover setup. Some use pre-made designs, such as the Bose 101 crossover circuit.

How Do I Set It Up?

Other people who are interested in music stick with the series crossover design or with other specialty designs, such as the 3-way crossover. These setups permit more flexibility and may involve additional speakers beyond the basics. The wiring also matters, and some opt to play around with it, such as when using a high-pass crossover wiring design. While they can produce interesting sounds, they are not always easy to manipulate. Anyone who has tried to set up surround sound knows that the speaker placement is vital to the setup making sense to others. If you have a botched setup, then you do not get the right sounds at the right time or place in the room, which makes the full sound distorted. People will be able to hear the individual pieces of the music or speech perfectly, but it will not go well together as a group, which will create odd segments of sound instead of one cohesive unit.