Can someone tell me what a passive crossover does? Today, I installed replacement 4 ohm polk tweeters in place of the stock Bose 4 ohm tweeters. I used the supplied 'passive crossover' as instructed. It sounds great. Why couldn't I have simply hooked the wires directly to the tweeter, instead of going from source to crossover to tweeter? If I did hook it directly, would I blow something? Would it sound better?

Thanks, I'm very new to car audio!

Oh yeah...it does say in the instructions for the tweeters that if you have an active crossover in the car...you don't need the passive one they've included. How would I know if the Bose includes an active crossover?

 

There is the chance of blowing your tweeters when fed a full range signal. Generally, a passive crossover prevents the lower frequencies from reaching your tweeters. If you are replacing the stock tweeters, I would expect that it is not needed as the tweeters would already be receiving only the higher frequencies. Not sure of the setup on the BOSE system, but that's usually how it works.


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You get better sound with the passive crossover. It basically blocks the frequencies that are out of the range of that speaker to reproduce accurately. You block the low signals from reaching the tweeters, and you block the high signals from reaching the subwoofer. I can't recall the difference between active and passive crossovers.

2003.5 G35 Sedan Desert Platinum/Graphite Premium/Sport/Aero/Nav/Winter

 

Generally, an 'active' crossover is inserted into the signal stream prior to the amplification stage. There is therefore a separate amplifier for each frequency and channel. A 'passive' crossover is downstream of the amplifier and separates the frequencies of the amplified signal. At least that's how I remember it from my Audiophile days.[img]/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/img]

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