Originally appeared in the January/February 1989 issue of Car
Stereo Review magazine. Amplifiers, speakers, cassette decks,
tuners, and CD players. These are some of the more familiar
components used in the reproduction of sound. And while all of
these components play an important part in this process, the
quality of the sound you hear will only be as good as the
weakest link in the system. For this reason, you must select
every component for your auto sound system carefully. Probably
the most neglected, yet critical component in this selection
process, is the crossover network. The need for a crossover can
be attributed to the inability of most drivers to reproduce the
entire musical spectrum smoothly and efficiently. Because of
this, most speaker systems are comprised of several drivers,
each of which is dedicated to the reproduction of a specific
range of frequencies. These frequencies are routed to the
appropriate driver by a crossover network. This is a device that
divides the audio spectrum into two or