Why some audiophiles like to choose electronic crossover？

Oct 27, 2022 | 0 comments posted by Vincent Zhang

Why some audiophiles like to choose electronic crossover, you may look at the following reasons. Of course, to use electronic crossover will consumes more power amplifiers, and one channel needs one amplifier.

1. Electronic frequency crossover (active crossover) eliminates insertion loss of power frequency crossover (passive crossover).

The so-called insertion loss refers to a part of the power that is output by the power amplifier, but cannot be transmitted to speaker and converted into sound. The traditional power frequency division is also called LC frequency division. Its principle is to use low-pass and high-pass characteristics of inductor (L) and capacitor (C) to prevent a part of the frequency signal from passing through a certain circuit, thereby completing frequency division. However, the inductors, cement resistors, etc. used in power crossover are power components that consume a lot of energy. The energy lost to these elements constitutes what is called "insertion loss", and the more complex crossover, the greater insertion loss.

Friends who have experience in modifying the speakers must have experience that after adding a frequency divider to the speaker, its volume is greatly reduced compared to when using capacitor frequency division. This is caused by insertion loss of the frequency divider. Since there is no third device between power amplifier output and speaker, electronic crossover can eliminate the insertion loss, in other words, its utilization of power amplifier output energy is significantly higher.

2. Electronic frequency crossover changes damping coefficient of the speaker system.

Damping coefficient reflects the ratio of speaker impedance to total impedance of entire front-of-speaker circuit. The higher damping coefficient, the more obvious response of the change of the output signal of the power amplifier to the speaker, That is to say, the higher controlling power of the power amplifier to the speaker.

The frequency dividing components used in the power frequency dividing itself are all high-impedance components (for this reason, there will be a large insertion loss), so the power frequency dividing will greatly increase total impedance of the circuit. This reduces controllability of the power amplifier. On the other hand, since the electronic frequency division does not have this stage of circuit, it has no adverse effect on damping coefficient of the system. These two are the most important and obvious advantages of electronic frequency division.

3. Phase characteristics of electronic frequency division are better.

In addition to the trouble caused by the internal resistance of the LC components of the power divider, phase effects brought by them as phase components also need to be carefully considered when designing power frequency divider.

For a speaker, at different frequencies, its phase situation of the tweeter and the frequency divider itself is very complicated. If the phase problem is not considered when designing a frequency divider, appropriate phase compensation is made. And for electronic frequency divider, its circuit design is easier than power frequency division in phase control, and much better than power frequency division in phase characteristics.

4. Frequency crossover point and its characteristics of electronic crossover are easier to control.

Specifically, electronic frequency division is active crossover. Since integrated circuit active filter is used for frequency division, for active electronic frequency division, its characteristics can be simply adjusted by adjusting the input parameters. In fact, some AV or Hi-Fi subwoofers even have knobs that allow user manually to adjust the crossover point. This is something that power division can't do anyway.