noobish active crossover questions

[density]

don't have a clue as to if I'm going to build passive or active crossovers on the speakers I'm researching to build in the far future. Just doing research right now. Came to questions. Either way I'm going to need to drive them. New receiver, perhaps amps. I understand getting signal to the passive, now for the actively cross overed loudspeaker.

From how it was explained to me, in an active crossover you basically have a crossover circuit for each of the drivers in the loudspeaker. And you need to pass each of the crossovers the signal. So, if this were a three way system, you would need 3 2-channel amplified signals.

I'm not quite sure how to set this up with what I see on the market.

So I get a box that processes the signal from the player. It then has a 2 channel output. Do you split the signal, and feed it to three 2 amps and from the amps go to each of the crossovers?

where there is a will I could find a way, but it seems as though there would be something made to do this more cleanly.

 

[annunaki]

With an actively crossovered system the signal is crossed over then sent to the amplifiers. The amplifier then sends the signal to the speakers directly. With a a Behringer DCX2496 you can do such a system.

It would go Source-> Preamp-> Crossover-> Amplifier(s)-> Individual Driver(s)

As you can see it can get quite expensive. A tweeter protection bulb would be recommended in such an instance to prevent damage. The tweeter's amplifier could also be very low in power (25-50 watts rms) in most cases and potentially even lower.


These types of systems yield excellent results though. The Phase Technology D.A.R.T.S. system is a great exaple of what can be achieved. I believe Meridian has a system as well. Both cost at least $10K.