JBL L300 / 4333 3 way analog electronic crossover question

Riley / Widget / Macaroonie

Thank you for the concise explanation. I now understand that there is more to using a crossover than meets the eye.
I may look into digital in the future for a crossover but I really like the DAC in my preamp now (ATC CDA2 Preamp/CD/Dac) so I will try my best to get it dialed in with the Marchand.

Riley - The tools you disclosed (spectrafoo or smaart). Is either very easy and intuitive to use for dialing in an electronic crossover (digital or analog). I would entertain getting a license
for one if it was easy to use as I am never going to become an expert in this but may use electronic crossovers in other speakers in the future.

Regards,
gwho

On the digital vs analog crossover question I am a big proponent of using DSP crossovers for discovering the best crossover characteristics for any speaker system regardless of the eventual solution being passive networks after the amplifier or analog crossovers before the amplifiers. Very flexible digital crossovers ( in the sense of having multiple filter slope selections ) are very cheap on Ebay now that the virus has killed the live sound industry top to bottom. Hate to be ghoulish about that but buying someones DBX or BSS crossover used may put breakfast on some poor sound engineers table.

I'm not familiar with the Marchand crossover but I'm a big fan of the old analog BSS FDS360 electronic crossovers. Most were used in live sound applications and would need a thorough rebuild at this point but they offer much of the flexibility of DSPs while being analog.

On acoustic analysis software Spectrafoo was originally designed for use in recording studios for signal analysis and leans heavily in that direction. It does have the core acoustic anaylsis tool for transfer function but is a bit less malleable in that area. Smaart is the industry standard for sound system measurement and has a large user base of live sound and installed sound practitioners. It actually allows measurement with program material ( if you like heavy metal guitar anyway ) Its fairly pricey for software to be used only a few times a year and often requires for fee training for effective use. As I mentioned I'm pretty impressed with REW for home use and it's certainly effective for evaluating crossover characteristics. REW is free and I'm fairly sure Foo and Smaart have free demo downloads. All of them are easier to use than the TEF machine was.:blink:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwho

Riley / Widget / Macaroonie

Thank you for the concise explanation. I now understand that there is more to using a crossover than meets the eye.
I may look into digital in the future for a crossover but I really like the DAC in my preamp now (ATC CDA2 Preamp/CD/Dac) so I will try my best to get it dialed in with the Marchand.

Riley - The tools you disclosed (spectrafoo or smaart). Is either very easy and intuitive to use for dialing in an electronic crossover (digital or analog). I would entertain getting a license
for one if it was easy to use as I am never going to become an expert in this but may use electronic crossovers in other speakers in the future.

Regards,
gwho

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwho

Riley - The tools you disclosed (spectrafoo or smaart). Is either very easy and intuitive to use for dialing in an electronic crossover (digital or analog). I would entertain getting a license
for one if it was easy to use as I am never going to become an expert in this but may use electronic crossovers in other speakers in the future.

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These are all professional tools and are designed to be used by someone with extensive knowledge of sound system design/operation. As Riley points out the different systems are aimed at slightly different markets and applications. MLSSA, CLIO, and the now defunct LEAP are more for loudspeaker design and may be more appropriate for your application, but they are/were also costly and not intuitive to someone who isn't deeply involved in audio.

REW is likely your best bet... and a simple RTA while ultimately not that useful is not a terrible starting point. Most of us probably got their start with one. I know I did.


Widget

Don't the current DBX DSP's have a set up wizard in them ?

If it does that's a good reason not to buy one right there.

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Originally Posted by macaroonie

Don't the current DBX DSP's have a set up wizard in them ?

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Is it possible to get the 2216 woofer? I assume they are probably very expensive.

Regards,
gwho

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Originally Posted by gwho

Is it possible to get the 2216 woofer? I assume they are probably very expensive.

Regards,
gwho

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There are two versions of this driver. I have not played with them myself so I can not say whether the 2216ND or the 2216ND-1 will be better in your application, but they are available and while on the expensive side, they are not refi expensive.

https://reconingspeakers.com/product...bl-m2-5041785/

https://reconingspeakers.com/product...-320-0045-002/


Widget

Widget,

Thank you for that information. I will consider it in the future. I was contemplating putting a 10" woofer on top of the box if I did not like the sound of the 4333 or just to try it (I know another crossover). I was able to pick up a couple of 2251J very inexpensively so they were my back up plan.

Happy New Year
gwho

The whole 15" woofer crossing directly into a compression driver type of speaker design is a very 1950s way of approaching a world of 15 watt tube amps. As transistor amps became more powerful three way designs with cone driver mids crossing into compression drivers above 1k hz made for much better sounding speakers. Putting a ten between your 15 and your one inch will likely make for a much nicer sounding box. The ten can be in a small sealed box and crossed into at 400 hz. This among other things means that 40 hz movement of the woofer cone aren't modulating the 1200 hz tones from the same driver.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gwho

Widget,

Thank you for that information. I will consider it in the future. I was contemplating putting a 10" woofer on top of the box if I did not like the sound of the 4333 or just to try it (I know another crossover). I was able to pick up a couple of 2251J very inexpensively so they were my back up plan.

Happy New Year
gwho

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Riley,

Thank you for that information. I will definitely try that at some point. From reading in the forum it appeared that there were varying opinions on where you could cross (800hz - 1.2Khz) the 2311/2441 to the 2235. Some said you can cross the 2441 at a lower frequency because of the larger diaphragm. Other said you couldn't because of the 2311 horn. I never could find a definitive answer which is why I purchased the JBL 10" speakers just in case.

Regards,
Gary