chibi

Whats the difference from componet speakers and regular speakers?? i dont get it.. and whats crossover?? hehe sorry.. im very confused about all this stuff.

LOUDSYSTEM

a component speaker system will have a tweet and a mid woofer with a crossover. you can place the tweeter in a different location thus letting you have better imaging plus with the crossover your speakers will be able to play in their proper range alot better. a reg speaker also known has a coaxial has the tweeter in the center of it and only has a small capacitor to block the bass and unless the tweeter pivots will have alot less imaging capabilities

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dc24me

A component speaker comes in two formats, separates and coaxials. A separate has a tweeter and woofer to be mounted separately, usually within 4" of each other for the best linearity. Some higher end coaxials have separate woofer and tweeters because they have two separate inputs for the woofer and tweeter, so technically their still separates. Basically you need to run a separate wire for both from the outboard crossover.

Regular speakers would be cheaper coaxials where the tweeters has a crossover on the speaker's frame for the tweeter only. Or the woofer type with a little whizzer cone to help reproduce some of the higher frequencies, which is now pretty much extinct.

Separates components are not necessarily better than coaxials, as long as the coaxials are same quality as the separates. It usually depends on the location of the speakers, the speakers themselves, the vehicle's acoustics and also the position of the seat for the primary listener/driver. Many people actually start off with separates (because they're generally higher end than most coaxials and coaxially mount the tweeters.

dc24me

A crossover is device that sends proper frequencies to speakers which would be best able to reproduce that particular signal. It's basically a filter circuit. There's 2 types. A highpass (which is a capacitor, looks like a small tube) or lowpass (which is an inductor and is a wound coil). A combination of the two would be called a bandpass. So for your typical 2 way component system, let's say you have a crossover point of 3500Hz. Above 3500Hz (highpass) would go to your tweeter and below 3500Hz (lowpass)would go to your woofer. The dB per octave is the slope which is the rolloff the the speaker or how quickly the sounds filters out. If your crossover was 3500Hz at 12dB per octave (octave is a halfing or doubling of a note, at half an octave lower, 1750Hz, your tweeter would be playing a 1750Hz note 12 decibels softer than at 3500Hz. The crossover doesn't make the speaker just stop playing at a certain frequency, rather it starts to attenuate it until it barely audible. In cheaper speakers, crossover are only used on the tweeter. The woofer rolls off naturally in the top end.

The crossovers I described are the passive type. They deal with an amplified signal and is connected AFTER the amplifier. The other type is the electronic or active type, which occurs at line level, BEFORE the signal is amplified. These active crossovers can either be a separate unit or built into the amp. You will need both type in your typical system, since the passive crossover will not be able to separate the frequencies between your stage (front speakers) and your subwoofers. You don't want to send too much bass to your front speakers because that's what your subwoofers are for.

Hope this helps..