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In the Forum: Audio For Dummies ™
In the Thread: First order filtration and design methods.

Post Subject: 4th order crossoversPosted by noviygera on: 1/31/2014

I think this is an interesting topic. I have made experiments (with a digital dsp processor) in my system and tried 4th order crossovers. I did not like the sound at all. Trying to explain this sound signature is tricky but here is my interpretation of what I was hearing. With 1st order the sound was "stable" but not in regard to dispersion, on the contrary, there was noticeably more lobing going on as listening position shifted between channels. It was not "fragmented" in terms of continuity of overlapping regions between channels. With 4th order it was very much broken up and fragmented like a flickering unstable light bulb. For long term listening this was becoming more and more irritating and led me to conclude that 1st order gives a much more coherent presentation of the sound as a whole without this "paranoid" "anxious" disorder of the 4th order crossover.
Barbaric? This is a close enough description because what can one obtain using an ax and a sledgehammer! I think it much more difficult to sculp the sound with an "ax sledgehammer" approach to the crossover. And for most systems in the PA market the "ax/sledgehammer" is all that is needed but you can do a lot of damage to the sound with that approach, if every "blow" is not extremely calculated but then you still end up with a paranoid sound that is abruptly tossed between the channels.
One possible way out of the situation with 4th order "paranoid" tossing around is a coaxial approach. I have not tried it because I do not own a coaxial speaker but it seems that the "tossing" of the sound between channels would be minimized.

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