Thread: crossover question

No, those wont' do for what you are trying to do. You are going to want a steeper attenuation than that. I would say normally, for components, you'd like to stay at least 2nd order, 12db. IN the case of stock speakers, I'd actually try to go for a 3rd order slope to sharply cut those frequencies. NOt just for safety sake, but for sound sake as well. Remember, factory speakers are designed to be more or less full range from the signal. The drivers play something like 20-180 or something. This is done because car manufacturers either generally don't include a sub or if they do not a powerful one, so they rely on using lightweight coned drivers with high sensitivity to reproduce ALL of the frequencies below the HP point, or at least as much as can be safely. I really haven't used a ton of AM passive stuff, but I would look into the dayton stuff from partsexpress. Its bound to be affordable and probably will give you 3rd order attenuation. After all is said and done, you may find a need for a an audiocontrol active crossover as well, depending on well your eclipse amp handles it all and how well those stockers respond to the frequency split. Aside from those dayton products, I'd say if you look elsewhere just look for a passive xover with a sloope of at least 12. Me, I'm going 3rd order considering the speakers are stock.

thanks. that helps me alot.

i think a pair of these will do it for me... primarily for cost and ease of use. I'll keep my eyes peeled for that -18dB/octave crossover though.

Those second order will do you fine. Look pretty good actually. Damn that's cheap. I love partsexpress. A side note, their 10" Dayton home theater sub is absolutely incredible for the money. My friend loves my dayton sub which I bought solely because I didn't have a bunch of money to blow on home theater after I bought my house. I spent I think $80 on it? HE spent $650 on his Boston Acoustics and he loves my Dayton...

it seems like there's this hugeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee markup on anything labeled "for a car" where with a little understanding and knowhow you can pull great stuff off the shelf for next to nothing.

Nothing wrong with a simple cap in line 5.6K @ 6db would be ok. The second one you have listed is better though. What do you think your stock amp was using? (Hint:Probably #1)

yeah, i can't imagine it was anything special. I'm sure I could probably guess the answer to this, but crossovers seem (at least in this form) to be a relatively simple thing to design and build given components with a reasonably close tolerance. Is there any reason not to just raid the digikey catalog and get the components to build a crossover myself?

Nope-you should be able to find everythign you need at digikey too. There are all sorts of passive crossover calculators floating around on the interent. If you want high quality components www.Madisound.com is another great place to get crossover parts. When buying caps from digikey, make sure they are non-polarized. I guess if you want it to look cleaner, the circuit board will cost you a few bucks.

Not sure I'd go to the trouble of building xovers for stock speakers though, it might be more trouble then its worth considering those dayton should do you fine. The stock amp definitely does not use inline bass blockers, the xing is done amp level so as to ensure that no unneccessary amplication is done. You would find a steeper cutoff than 6. In fact, Im certain if you used a first order blocker you would not be satisfied with the result.

Well most component stock speakers I have ever seen have a cap soldered right onto the back of the tweeter. So now that I think about it, if he checked his tweeter to see, he shouldn't even need anything if he is using the stock speakers. I can't say for sure because I haven't installed in a newer civic. My Bose system in my 06 Mazda had caps on the tweeters-no crossover in the amp for example.