Level adjusting speaker drivers


Sometimes when I listen to various things it would be nice to turn up mid and Tweeter levels, and also bass too.

The speaker gets the signal and then it's split between the drivers by the crossover's, but what about the individual levels hitting these drivers. Would it be worthwhile to have a means to increase or reduce these levels?

Anyone ever done this and what tool did you use?

emergingsoul

Hey OP,

 

It's as we discussed, a tone control, so it changes the levels of the sound but not directly the sound of each driver, which is a really good thing. :)

 You would need 1 of these devices for each speaker. It doesn't really address increasing voltage to each Driver as a result of using 2 amplifiers per speaker for biamping flexibility.

 

 

 

OP:

The problem you describe and the way you think you want to fix it are not lining up.

Sometimes when I listen to various things it would be nice to turn up mid and Tweeter levels, and also bass too.

The simple and best solution for what you described is a tone control like the Loki which will give you more control than driver adjustment.

The issue with adjusting driver levels is that they may or may not be at the musical boundaries. That is, if you want more bass from 100 Hz down but your woofer goes to 300 Hz you can’t fix it by adjusting driver levels.

The same for the tweeter.

OTOH, if you feel like getting into speaker making and crossover design, then yeah, get a crossover like a miniDSP and some drivers in a cabinet and go have fun or get an active line level crossover and multi-amp your speaker, but again, you will find based on your stated problem, that none of these solutions give you the level of control and ease of use you are seeking.

If you want to bi-amplify and the amps don’t have the same gain then you need to put a volume control on the higher gain amp.

Otherwise, have fun on your learning journey. 

 

Minidsp seems more design for subs.  And it seems pretty cheap of a product. And it's a nightmare to work with. 

Yes controlling gain is absolutely essential, and frequencies. would be wonderful if there were some Devices to do this that are easier to work with.

 

@russ69 -- "Unfortunately it's an indication that your loudspeakers are not cutting it. Even without any tone controls, all your music should sound great with no reason to adjust things."

I have to somewhat disagree with that -- recordings are all over the place in terms sound quality. The vast majority of commercially recorded music has already been mixed, eq'd, limited, compressed and otherwise processed to some degree. Different artists, engineers and producers have their own opinion as to what a particular recording should sound like, and that will also be influenced by the sound signature of the microphones, studio monitors and other equipment used for that work. So, it is no surprise that when you play things back in your home, some recordings just sound better to you than others. 

As such, some people like the ability to tinker with the sound by using tone controls or an equalizer.  Along those lines, Schiit offers three well regarded  EQ units at attractive prices.  Or, you can also explore the use of digital software equalizers. Roon can do this as well as some other digital players and software.