Tweeter/Woofer hook up question

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S Clark

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Tweeter/Woofer hook up question
« on: 29 Oct 2017, 06:52 pm »
When running  negative wires from tweeter and woofer back to the crossover, is there any reason not to simply jump from the post of one driver to the other, then back to the crossover.  Electrically it's the same ground, isn't it?  I never seem to see it inside cabinets, but it would save a foot of wire. ????

S Clark

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Re: Tweeter/Woofer hook up question
« Reply #1 on: 30 Oct 2017, 12:22 pm »
I'm going to bump this once, since it's such an easy question.  Should a negative go directly from the crossover to the tweeter or jump from the woofer to the tweeter? Or is there no difference?

JohnR

Re: Tweeter/Woofer hook up question
« Reply #2 on: 30 Oct 2017, 12:30 pm »
Typically it will be the same ground for a parallel crossover. If it's a series crossover it won't be.

Also, if the speaker has two pairs of terminals for bi-wiring/bi-amping, wiring them together post-crossover would defeat the purpose. (And could even cause a problem in some cases and with some amps.)

S Clark

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Re: Tweeter/Woofer hook up question
« Reply #3 on: 30 Oct 2017, 01:18 pm »
Thank you JohnR.  The crossover is a pretty standard second order with a notch filter.  Since both woofer and tweeter see the same negative, I couldn't see any difference.  But just because I couldn't see a difference, certainly doesn't mean that one doesn't exist.

Speedskater

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Re: Tweeter/Woofer hook up question
« Reply #4 on: 30 Oct 2017, 02:21 pm »
While you won't hear a difference and it may be a challenge to measure a difference, from a theoretical point of view it's a poor idea.
Why?
Because 'ground' is a point, not a generality.
Wires are an imperfect path back to ground.
So with both speaker connected to one wire the signal will be different at the speaker end compared to crossover end.
Each driver cable will have it's own end-to-end loop inductance. With a 3 conductor cable this loop inductance may be different.
So while we can calculate these small differences, no chance of hearing them.

But separate cables just look better.