Cross-over and Driver Matching

[Don McR]

For many years, Altec usued versions of the N501 and N801 as the standard crossovers for both home and pro systems. Since the systems employing these cross-overs had varying sensitivity matches between the LF and HF drivers, I was wondering how this was compensated for. Was it up to the user to use the level control on the back of the cross-over to determine the optimum setting or were the these crossovers modified when installed in specific systems?

For example, consider 416 bass driver and a small format HF driver. Depending on whether you used a horn loaded enclosure (A7), a ported enclosure (Valencia), an 802 or an 806, you could get sensitivity differences greater than 6db. However, the same N501 could be specified for all of these uses.

I know that when there were extreme sensitivity differences, such as when the 411-8A was employed, Altec specified a separate attenuator/eqaulizer. However, I'm not aware of any such device to deal with the situation I described above.

[Todd W. White]

There were, as I remember, differences in the various versions of these crossovers.

There were never any special modifications when they were installed in different cabinets, as far as I have ever been to determine. Instead, Altec seems to have arrived at a design for a good, general purpose crossover at the specififed frequencies, then put the L-pad on them to allow the end user to adjust them according to taste.

In truth, they WERE well made crossovers, but I always felt that Altec should have built dedicated ones for each of their systems.