[Voncarlos]

I think it is well understood that vibration has a detrimental effect on components and their quality of sound, so why then are speaker crossovers built into the speaker box. I realize there are some obvious mechanical benefits to putting them in the speaker, but has anyone done some testing to see what improvements can be heard by placing the crossovers in an exterior box. I'm not talking about adding more binding post, but running the wires out of the speaker and into an exterior box no more than a few inches away. This would obviously create a bit of a problem when you wanted to move your speakers (ala Maggies and their X-overs), but even that could be resolved without too much thinking.

[Scotty]

In the case of the maggies,specifically the MGIII, this was a three way loudspeaker with more parts than could be mounted on the back of the panel.
That was the only reason that the Xover came in an external enclosure.
The vibration problem is probably overrated and is more likely dependent on the nature of the crossover parts construction  and how and where they are mounted  in the enclosure. Having the xover in the speaker simplifies the shipping ,reduces the cost,and eliminates one more set of connections that the end user can miss wire.
Scotty

[Voncarlos]

The vibration problem is probably overrated and is more likely dependent on
Scotty

Scotty, have you actually done an A/B comparison or do you know of anyone who has?
Carlos

[konut]

Because most buyers of said speakers are not as obsessive as we are and don't want to be bothered with excessive complexity. 

[WallyWest]

IMO if you're going to go external you might as well use an active crossover, since that has some real advantages to passive crossovers. 

And honestly I've never heard of vibration being an issue in a simple electrical circuit like a crossover. 

[Scotty]

Carlos,Yep, I have, on a DIY three-way speaker. I started off with all of the components in the enclosure,except for a .25mH Goertz inductor which was mounted on the outside where it could be wired directly across the free standing planer magnetic tweeter. Everything else was in the enclosure. I then moved everything outboard when I upgraded all of the caps in the system to Hovland caps and replaced the 3mh coil on the midrange with another Goertz inductor.
It was a lot easier to play with the crossover to optimize it for the F6 midrange driver which replaced a Lineaum dipole midrange driver with everything outside the enclosure. Wiring point to point inside the enclosure was a bitch the first time and I still have some scars from trying to solder inside the hole where the woofer mounted. There was a steep learning curve where I figured out that soldering point to point inside the box was a dumb idea the first time around.
   I think eliminating the xover circuit board,mounting the parts on a wooden board and wiring point to point may be a bigger possible improvement
than placing the xover outside the enclosure. The theory goes that the parts themselves may  microphonic in some cases and moving them away from a major source of vibration could yield an audible improvement.
A single blind test would be easy enough to do but the results, positive or negative, would be specific to a particular pair of loudspeakers and the crossover parts used and could not be construed to support a generalized rule of thumb one way or another. Another good test would be to thump on the capacitor connected to the tweeter while a piece of music is playing and see
if you can hear if it modulates the signal going to the tweeter. If you can't hear anything thing you don't have a problem.

Scotty

[JLM]

Good question.  Just browse the Mother of Tone site or the last 20 or so pages of the Promethius TVC thread to see what some think of various cabinet (and no cabinet) options for electronics.  I'm not one to even want to get deep into all that because I rarely listen at higher dB's.  Shoot, I currently have my baffle step/Zobel circuits literally hanging from the back of my single driver speakers.  But inside the speaker cabinet is where spl's are the highest.

I agree about going active too.  Years ago I compared Paradigm's active and passive versions of the Studio 20 (small two-way standmount) and it was no comparison.  Bass was HUGE, dynamics greatly increased, and frequency response was ruler flat with the Active 20's.  It was an ephiphany for me and one big reason why for modest/simple systems I recommend single driver speakers.

[poseidonsvoice]

Separate enclosures for crossovers are necessary imho only where:

1)The crossover components are so large that they are hard to fit inside the loudspeaker enclosure,
2) They take up so much room that quite a bit of additional fiber fill is needed to restore the original acoustic volume needed for the loudspeaker itself.

You might be better off cost wise with just a subenclosure inside the loudspeaker like many of Danny's designs.

I've never been too concerned about vibrational issues with regards to crossovers, but it makes some sense. However, the quality of components I have used are quite high and so feel that this is a moot issue.

And finally, going active is a great option and easiest as well to get reasonably good sound. Best sound, whether active or passive needs plenty of tweaking however.

My $.02 from a hobbyist/diyer...not engineer. I did an A/B comparison with my North Creek Okara II's (which have a subenclosure) and had one channel's crossovers completely outside sitting on the floor. Both speakers were fed the same mono musical signal, so there were no volume related differences. Couldn't hear a difference. The crossovers went back in the subenclosure. Nuff said.

Best,
Anand.