Help with Apogee Diva Crossover

Madhf:

I did take a look at the manual and yes you were refering to the MR coil. Yes, its value should be 0.05mH. I recommend Alpha Core airfoil inductor.

By the way, you should also add a very large cap in series with the coil to protect your ribbon or otherwise the MR ribbon will flutter a lot, possibly causing a damage in the long run. The value of the cap should be large enough so that it is out of the crossover point, say 200uF.

The bass connection is direct from the input binding post to the output binding post of the passive box. You can bypass that if you like, just to avoid extra connections and cables; that would means the pigtails can be directly connected to the amp driving the bass.

Gallant Diva:

Thanx again for the additional info. I am just planning on wiring the woofer up as shown in Fig 2. It will be a cleaner job imo. I'll love to hear the difference when I install the DAX. I'll keep you posted>

Mike

Hi again GD,

My shop technician researched the Alpha Core inductors and the 200uF caps and can get them. He did think that the 0.05mH coil was awfully small. If that's the right value, he will order the largest one (12 gage wire). Since you appear to have the experience with the DAX 1, I'll go with your input. Is the tech on the right track? Also, your opinion on Divas with passive xovers vs the DAX 1? The teck will make the mods so that returning the passive xovers to orig config will involve minimum work.

Mike

The value of 0.05mH is correct for the crossover MR inductor when used with the inductor. It is smallish, because the crossover point between the MR and TW is rather high.

You asked my opinion on the DAX versus the passive crossover, an issue that has been debated endless at the forum. I have lived with both the configurations and I believe the passive sounds much better than the DAX.

The DAX is a two-way actieve crossover. If you look at the "partial crossover box" that goes with the DAX, you will see that it drives the woofer directly but has a full passive crossover at the tweeter to spplit the trbele from the composite MR/TW signal at the speaker level. Then you need an inductor for the MR. Add a high valued cap also in series with the MR for protection purpose, then this is itself a big passive circuit, defeating the purpose of active crossover.

If you have a big powerful amp, then you are better off driving the Diva passively. You can sell the DAX and use that money to improve the components within the complete passive crossover.

But if you want to go active, then go for Davey's crossover (see another thread at the forum), and dump the DAX. Davey's crossover is much better than the DAX. I never liked the DAX because it has colored sound, and is somewhat noisy. Davey's crossover will be most transparent, dynamic,and noise-free, without speding mega bucks. Of course you will need to make the same changes in your passive box as you would do for the DAX, unless you can go for active tr-amping. Or you could also ask Davey to make you an active crossover with the option of bi- as well as tri-amping (for tri-amping you will not need any passive components except protective caps at the MR and TW).

GD

I am duplicating this at the Apogee forum.

http://audioworld.com/sw/Forum1/HTML/005425.html