Looking for some advise on CAR AUDIO...

I have a MTX crossover hooked up to gain more bass through my WOOFERS..
Now I am considering buy a EQ with a built in crossover...
The model I have chosen has seperate for MIDs, Highs and LOWS...

Now the store selling this ITEM says this is better than the crossover...

I went to a CAR AUDIO place - and they say that the Cross over is better....

Can anyone help !!!

THANX

On Tue, 08 Jul 2003 at 00:20 GMT, Just_me
wrote:
Looking for some advise on CAR AUDIO...

I have a MTX crossover hooked up to gain more bass through my
WOOFERS.. Now I am considering buy a EQ with a built in
crossover... The model I have chosen has seperate for MIDs, Highs
and LOWS...

Now the store selling this ITEM says this is better than the
crossover...

I went to a CAR AUDIO place - and they say that the Cross over is
better....

So the Q is where to put the crossover. The store says to put it
before the amp so that each speaker needs it's own amp. CAR AUDIO
is saying to use the passive crossover that comes with the speakers,
which where designed for the speakers.

Boston Acoustic (BA) has this to say about the crossover points they
use in their passive crossovers: ( http://tinyurl.com/g9ty )

----------- Cut -----------
Replacing the Boston passive network with an active crossover can be
problematic. Each component in the supplied Boston crossover is
factored into the total acoustic output of the system. When you
remove it from the signal chain and directly couple the woofers and
tweeters to an amplifier, you will be unable to exactly replicate
the properties of a Boston system specific passive network.

Why?

The first point is that the typical active crossover does not allow
nearly the flexibility of a passive design. The second point is that
we often stagger or overlap the crossover points to achieve a flat
response. The actual electrical crossover points for the woofer and
tweeter however are generally asymmetric and different on all of the
Boston components. Finding an active crossover that will allow you
to adjust each of these points independently and tuning it correctly
is going to be difficult but not impossible. Just as a note:
designing a passive network takes our team of experienced engineers
several months to complete.

You will get better performance from your system by paying more
attention to the installation techniques and driver placement rather
than pursuing the use of active crossovers. There is no substitute
for proper speaker placement and solid installation.
----------- Cut -----------

To a point, I think BA makes a very strong case for using the
passive crossover that comes with the speakers. BA states that "the
typical active crossover does not allow nearly the flexibility of a
passive crossover". I scratch my head on this one, but then they do
refer to the "typical" active crossover and I have the habit of
looking at the best I can find.

I am at the stage in my system where I am working on makeing the
speaker pods to hold the mid and tweeter. Rather then buying a
3-way system from BA, I bought the BA ProSeries 4.5 System and then
two ProSeries 6.5 woofers. It is my intent to use the passive
crossovers that came with the 4.5 system, but use an active
crossover to seperate the 4.5 system from the 6.5 woofers. I am
doing this because I want to be able to tweek the exact crossover
point of both speakers. I expect there to be a bit of overlap. I
am going to do this because of the speaker placement. The tweeter
and 4" are going to be on my dash and the 6.5 will be on the doors.
It is all about imaging

In general, I like BA's attitude that the best performance will be
achieved by speaker placement, not an active crossover.

Sam

P.S. I also listen to books-on-CD and want to be able to turn off
the 6.5 woofers when I don't need the lows!