u/blublubbluf

Hi DIY Speakers,

Im getting into DIY Audio and have been wondering about this after looking at crossover and driver types. From what I've seen people typically stick to 2 or 3 way passive crossover speakers and then maybe a subwoofer. In car audio 5 way systems with dsp and poweramps seem to be almost standard these days. Of course they have less options with porting and correct enclosures, but from principles they seam just superior. Heres my though process:

Advantages of a 4-5 way system:

Less problems with drivers at the edge of their designed frequency range, drivers dont have to be engineered for as broad of a task and there is less demand of individual drivers making high sensitivity less of a need.

Problems with passive 4 and 5 way crossovers seem to be high complexity and resulting cost, hight single channel power demand and problems with 2nd degree/12db per octave crossovers causing a lot of overlap in speaker ranges.

DSP and individual poweramps seem to solve all of there problems. 4 channel dsp boards with ADAU1701 sound processors can be found for 25€, add a programming board and 4 poweramps at 100 watt and you're still under 100 €. Now you have the ability to do steep 24 db per octave crossovers, no power limit and the ability to adjust crossover with in the box measurements. For comarison, i've found Dayton Audio preasambled 3 way 2nd order crossovers for around 80€ so cost doesn't seem to be the deciding factor.

Problems I thought of with 4 way speakers:

Enclosure complexity. With how much effort people are putting into their speakers I think this is unlikely, espeacaly because people are already doing complex things with porting and enclosure simulation.

people not wanting to deal with crossover software. I think this is also unlikely, since people are already simmulating enclosures, ports and analoge crossovers.

diminishing returns. this is propably were the awnser lies, but DIY speaker people seem like the kinds of people who would go after even the smallest performance gains

limited lifetime of circutboards. this is may be a problem with them giving up after 30+ years of use, but tbh I think my speakers would be more likely destroyed in a move, something damages a driver or my life just changes and I have different demands of my speakers. If you write down what crossovers you did at what frequency individual boards should be replacable fairly easily.

Is the problem simply convention? Subwoofers also took a long time to get widespread adaption in hifi circles even though now we know that their fundamentals have a positive impact on sound quality. How come no one in the home audio world has created a 4-5 way kit with preprogrammed boards? such kits are commonly available for car audio, so its not impossible.

Thanks for any awnsers that can show me blindspots or things that I've simply missed

Hi DIY Audio,

Im getting into DIY Audio and have been wondering about this after looking at crossover and driver types. From what I've seen people typically stick to 2 or 3 way passive crossover speakers and then maybe a subwoofer. In car audio 5 way systems with dsp and poweramps seem to be almost standard these days. Of course they have less options with porting and correct enclosures, but from principles they seam just superior. Heres my though process:

Advantages of a 4-5 way system:

Less problems with drivers at the edge of their designed frequency range, drivers dont have to be engineered for as broad of a task and there is less demand of individual drivers making high sensitivity less of a need.

Problems with passive 4 and 5 way crossovers seem to be high complexity and resulting cost, hight single channel power demand and problems with 2nd degree/12db per octave crossovers causing a lot of overlap in speaker ranges.

DSP and individual poweramps seem to solve all of there problems. 4 channel dsp boards with ADAU1701 sound processors can be found for 25€, add a programming board and 4 poweramps at 100 watt and you're still under 100 €. Now you have the ability to do steep 24 db per octave crossovers, no power limit and the ability to adjust crossover with in the box measurements. For comarison, i've found Dayton Audio preasambled 3 way 2nd order crossovers for around 80€ so cost doesn't seem to be the deciding factor.

Problems I thought of with 4 way speakers:

Enclosure complexity. With how much effort people are putting into their speakers I think this is unlikely, espeacaly because people are already doing complex things with porting and enclosure simulation.

people not wanting to deal with crossover software. I think this is also unlikely, since people are already simmulating enclosures, ports and analoge crossovers.

diminishing returns. this is propably were the awnser lies, but DIY speaker people seem like the kinds of people who would go after even the smallest performance gains

limited lifetime of circutboards. this is may be a problem with them giving up after 30+ years of use, but tbh I think my speakers would be more likely destroyed in a move, something damages a driver or my life just changes and I have different demands of my speakers. If you write down what crossovers you did at what frequency individual boards should be replacable fairly easily.

Is the problem simply convention? Subwoofers also took a long time to get widespread adaption in hifi circles even though now we know that their fundamentals have a positive impact on sound quality. How come no one in the home audio world has created a 4-5 way kit with preprogrammed boards? such kits are commonly available for car audio, so its not impossible.

Thanks for any awnsers that can show me blindspots or things that I've simply missed