What is crossover frequency (an audio noob here)

[Zuhayr378]

Just as I mentioned above, what exactly is crossover frequency when it comes to audio. I'm messing around with my X-fi motherboard control panel and default is 80Hz. What happens when I put it up? Will I get an audio improvement? By Hz it kind sounds like it has to do with processing the sound (it's ok to call that wrong and dumb, I'm a complete audio noob).

EDIT: They're headphones

 

[mbreslin1954]

I'm not sure how exactly it fits with your sound hardware, but in general crossover frequency refers to frequency filters. In engineering school we used to design frequency filters that would be high-pass filters, that would block any frequencies below a certain high frequency, while letting anything above it pass through. For instance, a circuit designed to feed a sub-woofer would have a filter in it designed to filter out anything over 80 or 100 Hz.

Here's a fuller explanation:

http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_crossover

 

[mbreslin1954]

See if this image comes through, it provides a good graphical representation of crossovers. It shows how a passive crossover frequency filter would send the high frequencies to the tweeter, the low ones to the woofer:

http/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Passive_Crossover.svg/450px-Passive_Crossover.svg.png

 

[Zuhayr378]

See if this image comes through, it provides a good graphical representation of crossovers. It shows how a passive crossover frequency filter would send the high frequencies to the tweeter, the low ones to the woofer:

http/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Passive_Crossover.svg/450px-Passive_Crossover.svg.png

Getting a better sense of what it might be, but I still don't get it.

 

[shag00]

It's very simple, all sounds below 80Hz are sent to your sub woofer, sounds above 80Hz are sent to the other 5 speakers.

 

[mbreslin1954]

I was going to say that it depends on what you're feeding the signal to. Headphones wouldn't care, for a 5.1 speaker system it would matter a lot, as shag00 said.

 

[Zuhayr378]

It's very simple, all sounds below 80Hz are sent to your sub woofer, sounds above 80Hz are sent to the other 5 speakers.

What use would that be in headphones though?

 

[shag00]

For headphones it does not matter because most headphones can't play such a low frequency sound.

 

[Zuhayr378]

For headphones it does not matter because most headphones can't play such a low frequency sound.

Although that was pretty short and simple, I chose it as the best answer as I forgot to mention that I was using headphones...so yeah...thanks for answering the question.