Need help with car audio (passive crossovers)

[Taiden]

Alright, so I have this Geo Prizm with stock speakers and head unit. I currently listen to my ipod through it so i have no real need for a different head unit at the moment. The stock speakers sound fine on everything except my dance/electronic music (bass) and then they start to crap out.

I recently purchased an 8" Elemental Design sub in a Qlogic sealed enclosure with an Audiobahn amp, and a schoshe (or w/e) device that splices into the rear speakers and creates an RCA output for the amp.

This was supposed to go in my 240.. but because of the winter season I will be in the Prizm for another 4 months at least...

I can easily hook the subs up to the system... but I dont have any way to stop the stock speakers from playing the low frequencies. I can't seem to find any passive crossovers that filter just low notes... only ones that filter mid/highs or low/mids.


So I thought what if I turn the bass down a bunch on the head unit and turn up the volume at the amp until it sounds right. would that work and not hurt any component? ideally i'd like to have passive crossovers... i just can't find any. I don't like my bass idea, i think it's too "jerry rigged". anyone got ideas?

[MELLO*SOS]

Partsexpress has these...

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=266-200

[Slammed180]

No it wouldn't hurt anything.
Sub volume controls are always a good thing to have, incase the preset EQ in the headunit are too much for the amp.

[GSXRJJordan]

The sub will already have a passive crossover (meaning a crossover that filters the signal given to it - an active crossover filters the signal before it leaves the source, like the head unit).

Just turn the subs crossover to "Low Pass" and set it at about 100Hz on a shallow (12db/octave) slope, and it should make your 8" sound pretty good (for a ghetto/cheap setup).

And no, its not bad for your stock speakers to get the "full" spectrum signal. They're so shitty they wouldn't know what a <200hz note looks like, much less how to play it lol.

[Taiden]

The sub will already have a passive crossover (meaning a crossover that filters the signal given to it - an active crossover filters the signal before it leaves the source, like the head unit).

Just turn the subs crossover to "Low Pass" and set it at about 100Hz on a shallow (12db/octave) slope, and it should make your 8" sound pretty good (for a ghetto/cheap setup).

And no, its not bad for your stock speakers to get the "full" spectrum signal. They're so shitty they wouldn't know what a <200hz note looks like, much less how to play it lol.

The sub amp does have a crossover... for the sub. I'm interested in cutting out the low frequencies going to my speakers... Because yes, they are attempting to play the low frequencies... you can hear it. And i'm not asking about hurting the stock speakers. I'm wondering if turning the bass down on the stock head unit and turning the sub volume up at the amp to compensate will be kosher. The idea being to reduce the bass going to the stock speakers, and to have the bass coming out of the sub be reasonable.

[MELLO*SOS]

did you click on the link I gave you, its exactly what you're talking about.

[Adikt]

just make sure that you hook the crossover up AFTER your converter otherwise you'll be blocking bass coming to your amp.

BTW you can find those at bestbuy/circuit city

[GSXRJJordan]

Yeah, I understand what you're talking about now; if you're getting distortion, you would want to put a crossover in on the woofers. You can't turn the bass down on the headunit, because that'd effect the bass to the sub.

The link above is exactly what you need, a capacitor that blocks out the lowest frequencies. So you wire this "bass blocker" in to one side of the stock speakers' wiring (don't need to do both), but make sure that it's wired in AFTER your Line-level-converter (the Scosche device).