Absolute beginners - Trying to figure out how to connect a woofer and tweeter

Hello there,

I have a set of speakers I intended to use in a DIY project - each has one 8 ohm 20 watt and the tweeter with 8 ohm 10 watt (or would that qualify more as a mid? I don't know :). But, I haven't got the idea on how to connect them, and if if I need a crossover or a resistor between them. I've looked inside some older speaker and saw the tweeter/mid is connected to the woofer from the right and left, and on the right side there was a resistor. Any advice is welcome and please be patient with me :)

Thank you!
 
music soothes the savage beast
Joined 2004
Paid Member
Minimum you need capacitor before the tweeter, otherwise it will burn.

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Depending on power and ussage, woofer may be directly wired to the amp's output or through a low pass filter. ITOH tweeter needs always a high pass filter. The inertia of woofer mechanics rejects per se high frequencies. But the more delicate movements of the tweeter may result damaged by high power low frequencies audio programm.

Eventually an attenuator in the tweeter's signal path may be desirable.
 
Depending on power and ussage, woofer may be directly wired to the amp's output or through a low pass filter. ITOH tweeter needs always a high pass filter. The inertia of woofer mechanics rejects per se high frequencies. But the more delicate movements of the tweeter may result damaged by high power low frequencies audio programm.

Eventually an attenuator in the tweeter's signal path may be desirable.
Thank you! What would be the right attenuator in this case? Does it depend on the power?
 
diyAudio Moderator
Joined 2008
Paid Member
The power of 20W woofer and 10W tweeter is not really helpful to working this out. Often speakers include this power value prominently so that newcomers have something less complicated to look at. You can ignore these for now.

Do you have any other specifications on these units?
 
Sincerely, I cant answer the question because it depends on power and personal taste. I have biamplification from signal level ergo never used crossover networks.

A friend suggested me to use a small light bulb of filament type to extra attenuate the bass signals coming to tweeters, but never tryed it.
 
The power of 20W woofer and 10W tweeter is not really helpful to working this out. Often speakers include this power value prominently so that newcomers have something less complicated to look at. You can ignore these for now.

Do you have any other specifications on these units?
Yes, they're actually the House of Marley Get Together Duo set - the logic boards are non functional but the boxes and speakers themselves are fine. (they look nice, so though I could salvage them).

This is what I've seen on the box:

Transducer: Φ114mm (15W) * 2 | Φ30mm (5W) * 2

Output Power: 2 * 10W

Impedance (ohm): 8Ω

Frequency Response: 20Hz-20KHz

Sensitivity: 20HZ-4K ± 3DB.4001-7K ± 4DB, 7001-10K ± 5DB , 10001-15K ± 6DB

THD: 1
 
You can add a combination of a series (R1) and parallel (R2) resistor in front of the tweeter. The circuit, known as an L pad, is shown below:

1715111962685.png


For a noticeable amount of attenuation (-6 dB), R1 = 4 ohm and R2 = 8 ohm.

The resistors should have power rating of 5W or 10 W.

Search for ceramic wirewound resistors that look like this:

1715111730274.png
 
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