First Digital Crossover Settings Help!?

[Robbie010]

Morning All,

Long story short(ish)..... I have a set of project speakers that I'v been working on over the last few weeks. I was struggling with the crossover setup due to a mix of single ended and balanced kit causing noise / hiss / ground loop. I now have some new kit arriving today / tomorrow, balanced crossover and balanced source to partner with my balanced power amps, which will hopefully sort this issue out.

In addition, after a clumsy bit of DIY tweaking, I mangled one of the 12" woofer drivers and have now had to buy a set of Fane drivers as a replacement. Here is the kit list:

DIY Hybrid 3 Way Horn Speakers - Fane 12-250TC in 55L sealed cabinet, Faital Pro HF144 Comps on 18Sound XT1464 Horns & Visaton TL-16H Ringradiator Horn Tweeters.

Source - Eversolo DMP-A6 Streamer / Balanced Pre-amp

dB-Mark XCA 48+ (V2) Balanced DSP Crossover

KJF Audio MA-01 4 way balanced power amps (x2)

The immediate issue I have is that I have all of this kit arriving today and tomorrow and I have a house party on Friday!!!! . This doesn't leave me with loads of time to get it setup and sounding something like it should / could.

I have the spec sheets for each of the drivers and I have already done some of my own REW sweeps. Based on this info, I was looking at basic crossover settings at 650hz and 6,500hz.

Fanes: https://www.fane-international.com/downloads/FANE-SOVEREIGN-12250TC-DS141117.pdf

Faitals: https://faitalpro.com/en/products/HF_Drivers/product_details/datasheet.php?id=502020170
Horns: https://www.eighteensound.it/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTkvMDcvMTkvMTBfNTZfMzZfMTY4X1hUMTQ2NC5QREYiXV0

Visatons: https://www.visaton.de/sites/default/files/dd_product/TL 16 H_24520.pdf

I do plan to integrate a sub at a later date but just need a functioning system asap.

This is my first active setup and I've never used a digital crossover before last week, so I will need to get to grips with other settings, delays phase etc

Can anyone please tell me how you would set the initial crossover filters based on the above?

Hints, tips & pointers would be greatly appreciated

 

[dualazmak]

I assume (or believe) it would be impossible for you to fully optimize your mentioned audio system in your own room acoustic environments within 2 or 3 days.

Nevertheless, since you are planning to have DSP-controlled fully active 3-way (6-channel) stereo "sealed" SP system, my post #931 and #1,009 on my project thread would be of your reference and interest; looking those my posts, you can easily understand that you need to have long and tough exploration journey towards your destinating summit.

 

[Sokel]

My advice is to rent some gear for the party.
You have a long road ahead to make your project work and include the needed fail-safes to it.

 

[staticV3]

I don't really have crossover frequency recommendations based on the datasheets alone. Would need some in-situ measurements like THD vs Level vs Frequency and off-axis response.

Though in the long run, consider moving to Hypex FA plate amps.

Fewer wires and built-in FIR filtering will make for a cleaner, more flexible setup with greater potential sound quality since you can then correct phase as well.

At that point, using a WiiM Mini as source will give identical sound quality to the DMP-A6 as both have bit-exact SPDIF output.

 

[Robbie010]

I don't really have crossover frequency recommendations based on the datasheets alone. Would need some in-situ measurements like THD vs Level vs Frequency and off-axis response.

Though in the long run, consider moving to Hypex FA plate amps.

Fewer wires and built-in FIR filtering will make for a cleaner, more flexible setup with greater potential sound quality since you can then correct phase as well.

At that point, using a WiiM Mini as source will give identical sound quality to the DMP-A6 as both have bit-exact SPDIF output.

The dB-mark unit will also deal with phase, delay, time alignment etc. it also has 6 peq’s per channel.

Appreciate that there is a long journey to perfection but thats not what I’m aiming for ATM, just a safe starting point.

 

[dualazmak]

Appreciate that there is a long journey to perfection but thats not what I’m aiming for ATM, just a safe starting point.

For your "safe" starting, you should have proper "physical" protection mechanism for your treasure SP drivers against out-of-Fq dangerous frequency inputs, and also against accidental overloads (high-gain inputs)!

In my case, I use multiple "HiFi integrated amplifiers" with volume/gain dials, and I also have protection capacitors (68 uF cap for midrange driver covering ca. 500 Hz to 6 kHz, 10 uF caps for tweeters and super-tweeters covering ca. 6 kHz to 25 kHz).

Furthermore, again for your "safe" starting, you should be most careful in your "startup/ignition sequences" and "shutdown sequences" for the total audio system; please refer to the bottom portion of my rather long post #931 on my project thread in this regard.

Also let me warn that you should never change the gain/volume numbers in your DSP system/controller by numeric keyboard input on-the-fly (while playing music); if you would mis-input plus 35 dB instead of your intended plus 3.5 dB, it may easily destroy your treasure SP driver(s); if available, mouse-wheel up-down rotation of 0.5 (or less) dB granularity should be used for gain control on-the-fly.

 

[Robbie010]

For your "safe" starting, you should have proper "physical" protection mechanism for your treasure SP drivers against out-of-Fq dangerous frequency inputs, and also against accidental overloads (high-gain inputs)!

In my case, I use multiple "HiFi integrated amplifiers" with volume/gain dials, and I also have protection capacitors (68 uF cap for midrange driver covering ca. 500 Hz to 6 kHz, 10 uF caps for tweeters and super-tweeters covering ca. 6 kHz to 25 kHz).

Furthermore, again for your "safe" starting, you should be most careful in your "startup/ignition sequences" and "shutdown sequences" for the total audio system; please refer to the bottom portion of my rather long post #931 on my project thread in this regard.

Also let me warn that you should never change the gain/volume numbers in your DSP system/controller by numeric keyboard input on-the-fly (while playing music); if you would mis-input plus 35 dB instead of your intended plus 3.5 dB, it may easily destroy your treasure SP driver(s); if available, mouse-wheel up-down rotation of 0.5 (or less) dB granularity should be used for gain control on-the-fly.

Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions. However, last one for now:

With regards to the protection capacitors, is this something that would stay in place permanently or just for the purposes on testing and setting up a crossover?

 

[dualazmak]

Thank you. I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions. However, last one for now:

With regards to the protection capacitors, is this something that would stay in place permanently or just for the purposes on testing and setting up a crossover?

For "safety", I strongly recommend using the protection capacitors permanently/always in DSP-based multi-channel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier fully active audio system where each amplifier is directly and dedicatedly connected to SP driver.

Spoiler: Protection capacitors in my setup

In my case, I carefully checked/measured these protection-capacitors are essentially "transparent" in the coverage Fq zone; please refer to my posts #402 and #1,009 for the details in this regard. I have measured Fq-SPL responses of SP-high-level signal before and after the protection capacitors.

Spoiler: Fq-SPL of SP-high-level signals before and after protection capacitors

I recommend you to check/measure the transparency of your protection-capacitors in your own system on your way of exploration journey.