The right capacitor can enhance the way your speaker sounds.
Choosing the right components when building an audio system can have a great impact on the performance of the system. It's not enough that you have a high-end audio player that sends a crystal-clear signal to the speakers if the speakers don't know play it properly. High-performance audio systems use crossovers to separate the frequencies that go to each speaker, ensuring that every speaker receives only the frequencies it can handle. Capacitors are the simplest form of high-frequency crossovers because they filter out sounds below a certain frequency, called the crossover frequency.
Instructions
1. Check the speaker's specifications sheet to find out the recommended frequency range for the speaker. The crossover will have to eliminate any frequency below the minimum of the speaker's frequency range, so that minimum frequency will be your crossover frequency.
2. Go to the Basic Car Audio Electronics site (see References) and scroll down to the online calculator.
3. Type your speaker's impedance in the "High Frequency Impedance" field.
4. Leave the "Low Frequency Impedance" field empty, as it is used to calculate the value coils used for low-pass filters.
5. Insert the crossover frequency in the "Crossover Frequency" field and click on "Go Figure." The value for the capacitor you need will be displayed in the calculator.
Tags: crossover frequency, Frequency Impedance, Frequency Impedance field, frequency range, Impedance field, your speaker
