Speakers Crossovers; Active vs. Passive
April 10, 2019 by Coleman Thedinger
Crossovers are an incredibly important part of your overall car audio configuration and speakers in general. Whether you’re looking at a bookshelf speaker for your home that has a mid-range driver and a tweeter, or you’re planning your car audio setup with numerous speakers and subwoofers, the crossovers ensure that each frequency is being sent to the correct place.
The crossovers are there to take the input from an amplifier, and send the higher frequencies to the tweeter, and the lower ones to the woofer. In other words, crossovers connect the correct frequencies with the correct drivers and filter out the rest. This creates a fuller and richer sound experience, as opposed to just blasting the entire signal at each individual driver.
There are active crossovers and passive crossovers, and we’re going to explore the differences between each type, and we’ll discuss why passive crossovers are more popular for car audio systems. But, popular doesn’t always mean better, and there are some big advantages to active crossovers that you won’t find in their passive counterparts.
About Passive Crossovers
With passive crossovers, you don’t need an additional power source for them. They’re powered by the audio signal that passes through them. If you have component speakers in your car, for example, the crossover splits up the signal between the tweeters and the woofers by using inductors and capacitors.
On a crossover, you’ll find inductors that only allow the signals to pass through them when the frequency is low enough, so only the sound meant for your woofers will get through. There are also capacitors, which only allow signal to pass through them when the frequency is high enough, and on the other side of those capacitors are the tweeters.
Our component speakers come with excellent passive crossovers that do a fantastic job of directing traffic to give you a heightened clarity in your music.
What About Active Crossovers?
These are less common to come across because they’re less practical and more expensive, and they also require a ground wire. Despite that, active crossovers are still the preferred choice for some enthusiasts, for several reasons.
For starters, they give you a lot more control over your audio. On your active crossover, each driver in your sound system gets its own amp channel which opens a lot of doors to finetune the sound beyond what’s possible with a passive configuration.
Another advantage of an active crossover is that it is installed before the signal even reaches your amplifier, which cuts out some of the wasted audio potential. The amplifier doesn’t have to work at amplifying signals that aren’t going to make it to the speakers, since those are eliminated directly after they leave the receiver.
Active crossovers are trickier to install, but it’s still very do-able for anyone who can install the rest of a car audio system. If you aren’t interested in tinkering and fine-tuning things on a micro level, and would like to spend less, and have an easier installation, you’ll still be very happy with a good set of passive crossovers.
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