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High Pass a hard-to-drive speaker - Now Easy????

Good Morning,

My understanding is that the low frequency register is by far the hardest portion of the audio spectrum to drive in terms of power requirements.

If we change things around a little bit and high-pass the speakers crossed over at 80hz or so with a powered sub, how much easier do the speakers become to drive? Just a little bit? Or a lot?

In my case, I'm running Dynaudio S1.4s which need a lot of power (current especially) to sound open as opposed to congested. I'm using a Plinius SA102 which does the job quite well. If I high pass these speakers at 80hz, do the speakers become orders-of-magnitude easier to drive? Do you think I could get by with a 40WPC push-pull tube amp in this case? What about something like a Lamm 18WPC SET? An 8WPC 300B amp?

Is there an easy way to measure this? Ie - Run the speakers full range, and measure how much power the speakers are demanding, and then run them high-passed and measure how much power they need.

Reason for my inquiry - In theory, by definition, speakers that are hard drive require use of high-powered amplifiers, which by definition are always a major comprimise and less transparent than low-powered amplifiers. I'm wondering if a tough-to-drive speaker can overcome this limitation by not requesting the hardest-to-drive frequencies from the amplifier.

Thanks, and I appreciate your thoughts on this interesting subject

Todd
goatwuss

Showing 3 responses by gregm

gregm
3,395 posts
 
Good hi-powered amps are invariably expensive. But NOT, by definition, compromised as you seem to believe.
In my book, expense is as good a reason as any to avoid them if you can.

Yr question: In theory, yes, you'd be gaining in energy required. I don't know the impedance & phase characteristics of yr spkrs to estimate how much (I'd guess around 40-50% crossed @ 80Hz)

OTOH, if yr Plinius is doing the job and you already have it, why change it???
gregm
3,395 posts
 
Should be able to, using a line level filter & bypassing the internal hi & low passes on the b/pass section.
OTOH, you'll have to pray that tonality & voicing b/ween the different amps are compatible -- because you'll hear the bass amp, 60Hz upwards, easily...

Whatever you do, look for the Dynaudio xover schematic! Cheers
gregm
3,395 posts
 
Duke: one octave for 9db?? I was banking on the standard +6db energy/octave. Can you give a quick pointer on how you obtain this (I'm sincerely interested -- not contesting :)). Cheers
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