Active crossovers
A traditional passive crossover sits between the amplifier and the speakers, splitting the signal with capacitors and inductors. An active crossover does the same split in the digital domain, before amplification — one amplifier channel per driver. This gives much better control over the crossover shape, and avoids the power losses and phase distortion of passive components.
A simple two-way example
Consider a pair of speakers with a woofer and a tweeter, each driven by its own amplifier channel. A basic setup in CamillaDSP would look like:
- Capture a stereo signal (left and right)
- Apply a low-pass filter to the signal going to each woofer
- Apply a high-pass filter to the signal going to each tweeter
- Route the four resulting channels to four output channels
The crossover frequency and filter type (Butterworth, Linkwitz-Riley, etc.) are chosen to match the speakers. CamillaDSP supports both IIR filters for simple crossovers and FIR filters for linear-phase designs.
Time alignment
Woofers and tweeters are physically offset from each other, which means the sound from each driver
arrives at the listening position at slightly different times. CamillaDSP can add a small delay to
the closer driver to bring the two into alignment. This is a simple Delay filter in the pipeline.
Going further
The same approach extends to three-way or four-way systems. Each additional driver gets its own band-pass (or high-pass/low-pass pair) and its own output channel. Because everything is in software, crossover points and slopes can be adjusted and heard in real time — no soldering required.
For the available filter types and configuration details, see the CamillaDSP engine documentation.