I'm considering a build with a 12 inch subwoofer (200 watts, 4 ohms), a 12 inch mid-range driver (compression driver (500 watts, 8 ohms) and a horn-loaded compression driver (60 watts, 16 ohms).
I want to use car amplifiers. What's a good way to go about dividing these drivers up in terms of amplifiers -- do I need an amplifier per driver? If not, which of the two drivers can I combine to wire to one amplifier? If I use a 4-channel amplifier to drive the subwoofer and the compression driver, will I run into problems separating the signals in a DSP?
I want to use car amplifiers. What's a good way to go about dividing these drivers up in terms of amplifiers -- do I need an amplifier per driver? If not, which of the two drivers can I combine to wire to one amplifier? If I use a 4-channel amplifier to drive the subwoofer and the compression driver, will I run into problems separating the signals in a DSP?
You may use a more powerful amplifier to drive the woofer, a less powerful one to drive mids+highs and a passive crossover to separate these two.
Crossover frequencies can be determined from each driver datasheet and frequency response curves and programmed via DSP.
I fear using a Sub woofer which does not reach high enough and a horn midrange which does not reach low enough will give you an impossible to fill deep hole in the important midrange frequencies, unless you only listen to "Drum 'n Bass" music only.
Crossover frequencies can be determined from each driver datasheet and frequency response curves and programmed via DSP.
I fear using a Sub woofer which does not reach high enough and a horn midrange which does not reach low enough will give you an impossible to fill deep hole in the important midrange frequencies, unless you only listen to "Drum 'n Bass" music only.
My guess is that the mid is not a horn - he mentions 500 watt and 12 inch and that’s not a “compression driver”. I would run mids and highs off a 4 channel amp and the sub on its own. SPL will be limited by what can be dumped into the sub, so the mid/hi amp won’t need to be super powerful. Sone sort of portable boom box? If so, it may need some re-thinking. A 12 inch car sub at 200 watts can get loud but not stupid loud - so 12” mids are a little bigger than what’s needed. Unless they are what you already have, in which case one woofer in hand is worth two in the catalog. One can get 8’s or 10’s that are as efficient as 12’s if they are not playing bass and only need to keep up with a single 85-ish dB/W 12”. If one is still in the process of driver selection.
