poll: outboard electronic crossover

I think they have become a useless piece of equipment. There is a crossover built into every amplifier produced. If you spend over 150 dollars on a Deck, it too has a built in crossover.

They can be very useful in a complex system.  They are generally far more powerful and flexible not to mention higher sound quality than Xovers built into amps, plus it places all Xover controls in one location making system tuning easier.   On the other hand, if you're just crosssing over subs it's likely overkill.

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yea, probably 90% of the time i see someone with an external crossover it really isnt needed but in my case it is necessary. im running my components active through an electronic Xover because i didnt have space for the giant passive crossovers that came with the set. they are also good for radios that dont have 3 sets of pre-outs or if you want different crossover points for your front and rear.

the ability to bandpass the mids without using multiple crossovers. and externals are usually labeled better with realistic increments, unlike most amps which just give you a range from 30Hz up to 500Hz and you cant really be sure what the actual crossover point is not to mention most radios and amps wont let you crossover anything higher than 500Hz with no 10x option if you want to filter specifically for tweeters even though my JVC navi has these crossover options most people dont want to spend $1000+ on a radio with advanced crossovers when you can buy a decent external for under $100.

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In addition to extremely power crossover capabilities (generally more powerful than a deck or an amplifier's built-in devices) you will, in higher-end crossovers, come across SO MANY things that aren't even imagined in a deck or amp...

Mine offer 31 bands of true parametric EQ (Q, gain and frequency), TD for up to 6 channels, crossover slope adjustment up to 48dB per slope, noise gate, fixed settings that are only adjustable with a PC, thus not "tweakable" by anybody but me. They were expendy pieces (I recall them being about $800.00 each...), but that was back when the technology included in them was relatively new. The RF 3Sixty.3 does the same thing. I'd never try to compare the 3Sixty to anything inside an amp or deck. :)

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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."