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Topic: PC as a active crossover (Read 8972 times) previous topic - next topic
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PC as a active crossover

Guys,

I'm looking for plugin (winamp/foobar/vlc) capable of splitting a inpus signal into 4 outputs of multichannel soundcard acting as an active crossover (and possible to regulate, preferably in real time). So on fronts I would have bandpass filter and sound for kickbass, on rears hipass filter for tweeters, and sub stays where sub is. Then I wire it it 5 channel car amp and bi-wire to my custom made speakers...

I googled for such thing but no luck.

thanx for any tips,

mike.

PC as a active crossover

Reply #1 –
I dunno....  The concept sounds like it should work, but it also sounds pretty specialized...

But, since you're using a car amplifier and you must have a good 12V power source, and you can get an electronic crossover made for a car for under $100 (example).

PC as a active crossover

Reply #4 –
thanks for tips! actually I have taken my old active crossover (alphard sc 202) for the project and wired it to my Axton c600 amp and then to custom made  speakers, so I have the setup going. The whole thing started with me being upset with passive XO in my speakers, they just split the freq at wrong place and I could not determine the right spot in other way than listening to different combinations. Since passive XO cannot be regulated (at least mine Signaats c2) I came up with the concept of active XO. Alphard usfortunately offers only one slope for filtering that is 12db/oct and I do not think that knobs are marked with frequencies very precise. I believe that digital filters in PC would give much more options and colud by far more precise... What is more - it is just interesting concept to explore.

Yess you need serious power supply for car amp inhouse. Right now I use 12V part of 550W codegen PC power supply that is 26Amps for 12V and it is far too little... I'm in the process of designing custom stuff around 500W halogen lamp toroidal trafo.

by the way - try biwireing! it is much more cool than people expect. Cutting off passive cross improvves a looooot!

PC as a active crossover

Reply #5 –
Quote from: com4tee on
Yes you need serious power supply for car amp inhouse. Right now I use 12V part of 550W codegen PC power supply that is 26 Amps for 12V and it is far too little... I'm in the process of designing custom stuff around 500W halogen lamp toroidal trafo.


One problem with PC power supplies is that they by design don't have the ability to store a lot of energy, and again have effective short-circuit protection that will cut power indefinately if a peak load exceeds the predetermined amount. Great for digital logic with relatvely steady current drain, but not so good for audio where the current flows fluctuate wildly with the music. One work-around - throw a few 100,000 uF of capacitive energy storage across the 12 volts as close to the load and as far from the power supply as possible. If you use too big of a cap bank on too short of too thick wires, you will probably trip the PC power supply out again, this time with the turn-on surge.

One other trick - delay the turn-on of the power amps using a RC network in the remote power lead to the power amp(s).

PC as a active crossover

Reply #6 –
100% true  - PC power supply is cheap to have but is less than good for big car amps. That is why I started to build power supply on toroid from the scratch. Toroids accept short overloads pretty well (unlike switching power supplies) and I can put as many capacitors as I like  Moreover it is quite cheap to achieve quite reasonable amps that way (I target for circa 50 Amps at 12V) - it should not cost more that 70$.

One more issue with PC power supplies - producers lie!!! My 550W Codegen was supposed to produce 26 amps on 12V lines in fact (measured) it gave 14 amps max, then the voltage dramatically dropped... the difference??? nearly 100%. They know that 1 user in a million will ever chceck reality, so they dont care...

PC as a active crossover

Reply #7 –
..me again, thanx for the plugins as well! this is exactly what I looked for. I will experiment soon with foobar plugin, and maybe post some comments on this.

and finally - if you have some time and cash to burn - try testing real biamped setup. This is not the kind of a difference that you hear after changing you speaker cables for 20$ per 1 meter . This is a difference you will be surprised to hear.

Take your old speakers, get all XO elements out of the box, mount additional speaker terminal, weld what is needed and biamp... you will see... (ofcourse you need to setup filters right)

PC as a active crossover

Reply #8 –
Quote from: lvqcl on
http://www.fb2k.org/show.php?id=202

Unfortunately, it's quite outdated: there's no updates for it since May 2006.



disaster...

Failed to load DLL: foo_dsp_xover.dll
Reason: This component is not compatible with this version of Windows and needs to be recompiled with a newer version of the foobar2000 SDK; please contact the author of this component to obtain an updated version of this component.

do you know who made the plugin? maybe with no effort the guy could recompile the code and it might work. I use Vista, but this is the first plugin that failed to load on my system, and I use quite a few...
 

PC as a active crossover

Reply #10 –
Hello com4tee!

I spent a lot of time searching and searching for a Winamp X-over plug-in in-which I can set stereo output to 2.1 output. (Of course specific crossover point and slope of cross-over should be fully customize-able.) I'v got a car audio, Starsound, active crossover hooked up between my PC and my pre-amp/power amps. -It takes my PC's stereo output and sends the sub-woofer frequencies to my sub-woofer and the higher frequencies get sent to my Left and Right monitor's. My PC has a 7.1 channel sound card but most of my music is .mp3 -ie - stero output!

I want my PC to an active crossover as well as my media source. Well here are two promising links for any of you out there who also want your PC. to active crossover! -From what I'v read, it looks like either of these are what I'm looking for! I'm about to try 'em out!

http://www.brothersoft.com/crossover-3-way-261827.html

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/1...-allocator.html  -->  (http://www.thuneau.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=135)

  Brakwatsnxa.