I have a pair of Focal Utopia 165w I heard that they burn up the supplied crossovers. I havent installed them yet but I was wonderin if I should just use my 4 channel as an electronic crossover....Any ideas
If your useing a high end HU, it should have a three way built in. These days the cross-over is best done in the HU because there's no add noise when crossed in the digital domain.
My Alpine 9815 and my Pionner 860 both do this well.
i would never recommend using a component speaker with its outboard crossover...most headunits provide a shallow 12 db/oct crossover...I'm not sure what focal provides, but I'm sure it has to be in the area of 18 db/oct or 24 db/oct...if your amp crossover is 24 db/oct...use either both the passive andamp crossovers or just the amp crossover as you won't have to worry about the phase shift b/c 24 db/oct = 360 degrees.
It is a 24 db/oct on the crossover that comes with the speaks te amp is the alpine mrv f545 and it has a 12 db/oct rating and my HU Alpine CDA 9835 has a 6-Position HP/LP Digital Crossover (24dB/Oct.) ... So what would you recommend?
The best thing to do is run the passive Focal x-over and cross it at 100 hz. But I have set up lots of systems with a built in the HU x-over with good outcomes. the only draw back to useing a hu x-over is, if you lose power, when you turn on the unit for the first time and forget to set your x-over, you'll blow your tweets fast.
you can use both...it doesn't hurt to have an extra crossover...the sound quality will be much better...you don't want to chance forgetfulness with those speakers...they are expensive...