Resistors: Say an amplifier is delivering 10 watts of power to an 8 ohm tweeter. Let’s look at what these filters do “theoretically”, before considering some real-world complications. How do crossovers work?Ĭrossovers create the shaped bands of frequencies that are tailored for each driver through the use of only three kinds of filters: capacitors, coils (called inductors) and resistors. If you’re fairly well learned in this subject, put on your trusty thinking cap and proceed. From here on, the discussion will get a little more technical so, if you’re not already versed in some audio vocabulary and concepts, we recommend that you first read “ Physics of Sound” and “ How Speakers Work” before proceeding. So that’s a brief description of what crossovers do. Further, they play a large role in defining the only speaker property your receiver cares about: its impedance. Crossovers affect the timing of when sound waves originate from a driver which, in turn, determines if the waves from other drivers meet in a coordinated fashion or not. Different driver outputs are matched so that they all play at the same loudness.Īnd, believe it or not, there’s more.Is just what’s needed for each driver to sound its best.So, the second job of the crossover is to manipulate the signal it sends to each driver so that it: The very cabinet that a driver is put into has a large effect on which frequencies play louder and therefore need to be accounted for. Tweeters are usually more sensitive than woofers and need to be brought into balance. They play louder (are more “sensitive”) at some frequencies than others and can benefit from being “equalized”. So the first job of a crossover is to split these frequencies up and send them along to the proper drivers.īut crossovers do much more. This is why speaker boxes contain drivers that are treble specialists (tweeters), bass specialists (woofers), and sometimes midrange and low bass specialists. The physics that govern what it takes to produce these waves demands different kinds of machines for the fast, short waves than for the long, slow ones. That may sound like hard work, but speaker drivers do it every moment they’re playing music. The deepest audible bass makes the driver move about 60 times a second and sends 50’ sonic wavelengths out at your room. Speakers produce an astonishing range of waves! The highest frequency humans can hear requires a speaker’s driver to move back and forth 20,000 time a second in order to make those 2/3” long sonic waves.
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