MMC6500 + PA500.4 = going active ???

Vital

Never had an active set-up but looks like might as well.

Right now i have a set of MMC6500 powered by 2 out of 4 channels of PA500.4

MMCs are 125W rms each and amp is 90W x 4.
So i can either brigde the amp for that little bit of extra juice or go active.

Which one would be better???

Any points on how the filters should be for "active"
Any points on how much power woofer and tweeter is supposed to be getting?

I'm fine with the way i got it now but one thing i wanna get rid off is momo's tweeters harshness. They ARE a bit too much for me. Short of moving them closer to the floor (away from my ears) or simply giving them less power then woofers i don't reall see anyother way to "harmonize" that sound.

TakeTheTime

Go go go active! I'm gonna do the same with my SR's now. Following this thread...

Vital

HEre's a few "active for dummies" questions:

The lower you go, the sharper I would set the slope to ensure they don't blow.
How do i set slope???

xover for the woofer around 50. I never moved the xover on mine from that point. I tried 40 in the beginning a few times but got a little distortion.
I was under impression woofer shouldn't go that low to begine with since sub takes care of that, no??

As for power, the tweeters should get less power than the woofers.
More or less what's the range of watts we are talking about?
in other words how many watts can i safely deliver to tweets and woofers?

you should have a dip around the 2k-5k range.
have no idea what that means. What's "dip"??

Also i'd like to move my momo xover from the doors to the trunk which means i'll have to use a lot longer wires. My car is sedan so with all the curves/pathways... we're roughtly talking 30 feet as opposed to 2-3 feet of wire that came with MMCs. Should i go up in guage size??? If so by how much?

MacLeod

Bi-amp. Hook the tweeters up to the front amp channels and the mid to the rear channels. That's how you go active so you can control each driver independently.

Vital

MacLeod wrote: »

Bi-amp. Hook the tweeters up to the front amp channels and the mid to the rear channels. That's how you go active so you can control each driver independently.

Do wires from the amp still go into momo's x-over?? or straight to the speakers?

arun1963

Vital wrote: »

Never had an active set-up but looks like might as well. Right now i have a set of MMC6500 powered by 2 out of 4 channels of PA500.4. So i can either brigde the amp for that little bit of extra juice or go active. Which one would be better???

Bridged will give you more db's of the same sound that you have. Active will
also give you more db's tho not as much, but better tuning capability. I'd go active.

Vital wrote: »

points on how the filters should be for "active"
Any points on how much power woofer and tweeter is supposed to be getting? I'm fine with the way i got it now but one thing i wanna get rid off is momo's tweeters harshness. They ARE a bit too much for me. Short of moving them closer to the floor (away from my ears) or simply giving them less power then woofers i don't reall see anyother way to "harmonize" that sound.

keep your sub/mid around 50-63hz and the mids and tweets above 3.5khz. Crossing the mids and tweets higher than 3.5khz will reduce the sharpness of the tweet. You can also lower the gains on the tweets from the hu. BTW what hu are you running? You can cross the drivers at the same frequency, over lap them or separate them. You can play with the gains on each driver. The flexibility in changing things around till you get what suits you best is what active is all about.

Started this post a while back and then got distracted. Didn't realise Mac and skip had already posted. All the above has already been said.

Vital

arun1963 wrote: »

Bridged will give you more db's of the same sound that you have. Active will
also give you more db's tho not as much, but better tuning capability. I'd go active.




keep your sub/mid around 50-63hz and the mids and tweets above 3.5khz. Crossing the mids and tweets higher than 3.5khz will reduce the sharpness of the tweet. You can also lower the gains on the tweets from the hu. BTW what hu are you running? You can cross the drivers at the same frequency, over lap them or separate them. You can play with the gains on each driver. The flexibility in changing things around till you get what suits you best is what active is all about.

Started this post a while back and then got distracted. Didn't realise Mac and skip had already posted. All the above has already been said.

h/u is Kenwood DNX5140 which is not all that when it comes to fine tuning.
It also only has 2 sets of preamp outputs - front and rear/sub switchable so i there's not much i can do there.

I quess my only option is to use amp's fronts for tweets and rear for woofers going via momo's xover. All with h/u's "front" output. Will that be any benefitial over what i got now?

Where should i set amp's x-over freq?

TakeTheTime

Since you're going active, the amp's setting should be off or "flat".

arun1963

I don't think you can go active with that hu. In which case you will have to change the hu. You can't set an active network on the pa amps. You would need to split the mids and tweets somewhere above 3.5kh. The amp only allows 250hz for hpf.

To go active and retain your av/navi features, you would prolly have to look at some top end av units. Serious bukaroos, if you buy new. Surf a bit and find some av units that have 3 preouts, TA and let you set a two way network. See what they cost bnib and then check for the same models on sites like CL and EB. Thats one option.

The other option would be to forgo av/navi and go for a 1 din sq unit like the p-800/880, alpine 9887 and other top end models and eclipse 7200etc.

The third option is ofcourse to stay with what you have.

Vital

arun1963 wrote: »

I don't think you can go active with that hu.

Yap, unfortunatly i can't
Who would have thought that $600 headunit will be the weakest link ?? LOL

I quess i'll just run my tweets from amp's front channels and woofers from same amp rear channels both via momo x-over.
Not active but at least i'll give me ability to:
1. tone down my tweets which are a bit too harsh/bright for me
2. give me a few extra dbs

#1 is the main thing i'm looking for, those few extra dbs really wount aren't needed but come in a "package" lol.

Thanx for your replies guys!

arun1963

I bi-amped the momos passively (what you're planing to do), before I went active with them. You'll get get extra db's. You'll get control on the tweets via the amp gains. The momo xover has a tweeter attenuation switch. I ran that at -6db even with the passive bi-amp and the tweet gains turned down a bit at the amp.

The problem of the sharp tweet is a low cross over point. The tweeter is playing lower than it should. Bi-amping and setting the xover at -6db will help a lot with this issue.