In an ideal and simple form, we could use full-range speakers to wonderfully playback music in our home and car hi-fi. However in reality, most full-range speakers in exception to a few expensive and exclusive speaker drivers are not capable of reproducing the full frequency spectrum faithfully without signs of strain.

Instead of using full-range speakers, some car manufacturers adopt co-axial speakers that promises to give a step up in sound performance. The co-axial speakers are sold in pairs, each consisting of a high frequency driver, called a tweeter, attached to a cone, called the mid/woofer. As a complete whole, it plays the full range of frequencies from the highs, lows and the frequencies in between in which we call midrange.

The speakers will be fed with high level music signal by the player’s in-built amplification or a dedicated amplifier. In the case of a 2-way co-axial, a small capacitor is placed before the fragile tweeters to only allow the high frequencies to enter the voice coil and diaphragm. The midrange and low frequencies are filtered away to protect the tweeters from being damaged. This is the simplest form of a crossover, called a high-pass filter.

In most cases the bottom cone will still be fed with the entire music material and the effect you get with the extra tweeters, is a sparkle in the highs which translates to a slightly better separation and clearer reproduction. Some manufacturers introduced 3-way or 4-way co-axial speakers or 6×9” speakers, with large peak power ratings but sad to say most are hypes without much substance.

2-way separates or components were then introduced that comprises of a pair or tweeters and a mid/woofer. Tweeters came in all types of size and shapes, with ½”, ¾”, 1” and even 1-½” dome variants, using all sorts of materials from silk domes, aluminum/metal domes, beryllium and even diamond, each with it’s own character and capabilities. Common mid/woofer sizes are 4”, 5”, 5.25”,6”, 6.5”, 7” and 8”. These come with engineering designs of all sorts, various build quality, and cone materials such as paper, polypropylene, aluminum, Kevlar or hybrid materials. 3-way separates goes one step further by introducing a dedicated midrange driver that is usually 3”, 4” or 4.5”. In true high-end cases, a 5” mid-driver is used but one has to take into account the complexity of installation and space constraints. 3-way separates introduces better division of duties, where highs are dedicated to the tweeters, mids to the midrange, and lows to the woofer. Properly set-up and implemented, they can sound a step up in performance compared to a typical 2-way component.

Why Audio Creations Passive Network?

Anyone can build a crossover, seriously! However, it is the level of importance one place in building that really matters. The knowledge of how the transducer/driver will respond to different crossover points and crossover designs cannot be merely studied by reading but it has to be experienced.

A speaker is only as good as how it is being installed and the crossover being used. The crossover is the heart of any speakers. Speakers do not sound polished by themselves, they need to be controlled and guided to perform their best. A good speaker driver is like a good athlete – Just like a dancer or a gymnast require a coach to bring out the best in them. That is why we call them raw drivers.

Unlike home audio loudspeakers that have the enclosure to bring out the best of the drivers, the car environment is limited to doors, kick panels and pillars for mounting and placement. Thus, even the best install will leave much to be desired and countless hours of tweaking is required to bring the best out from the speaker drivers.

Isn’t using an electronic crossover an easier solution? Electronic crossovers are flexible and useful but the quality of sound and tonal character again leaves much to be desired, leaving the reproduction to sounding dry, clinical, thin and uninvolving. My partner actually calls it ”boring music”, which is exactly what it is. Equalizers will help in the aspect of fine tuning and tweaking but being electronic and limited to the quality available for car audio use, the more natural and analogue method still boils down to the use of custom crossovers like you see in any home audio loudspeakers.

Many available electronic equalizers are not useful/powerful enough in the first place. At Audio Creations, on top of using high-end capacitors and coils as NATURAL equalizers, we still use equalizers, but only analogue units. We use them for serious fine tuning and not a quick fix or a mask to problems. The major bottlenecks like the power supply and the passive network has to be addressed early on. Once solved, they make a  solid foundation of a good sounding kick-ass system.

At Audio Creations, we manufacture crossover networks using capacitors, inductors and resistors from highly regarded companies like Duelund (Denmark) and Mundorf (Germany), which we have tested and proven countless times to provide the best reproduction available from any high quality speaker drivers. We also use premium V-Caps (USA) in our applications.

Our custom crossover comes complete with high-end parts soldered with 4% silver solder or highly recommended Mundorf silver/gold solder, wired with Transparent Cable or highly recommended Van den Hul CS-122 and encased in a tasteful but simple enclosure (classy enclosures can be requested). We restrain from any form of connectors to avoid sound degradation and therefore prefer to hard wire all connections. We fully emphasize that cables from the amplifier and to the speakers from the passive network should be soldered and heat shrinked for a safe and sure connection. Five cents connectors should be avoided at the speaker ends.

Bring your speaker performance to a level that justifies the price you paid for them. Visit us and learn more about Audio Creations custom crossovers.