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===== Passive Crossover Designer 8 =====

{{pcd8.png?600}}

The Passive Crossover Designer 8 is a crossover simulation and speaker design tool built into an Excel spreadsheet. The design tool has now been expanded to include a box model, an impedance modeler, and a full active crossover design section for each driver that can be used along with the passive crossover features if desired. In addition to these features dozens of textbook crossover, electrical, and acoustical calculator tools are included as well. Analysis Toolpak must be installed and macros must be active for the program to function. Version 8 has been debugged to work more fluidly in Windows 10 and in Excel / Office 2016.

This spreadsheet will produce the frequency, phase and impedance response of 2 way, 2.5 Way standard and cascaded versions, and 3 way parallel systems, as well as 2 way series, 2.5 combined series/parallel designs, and can even be used to design 3 way series networks. It is designed to work with actual driver frequency and impedance data in the form of .frd and .zma/zda files which can be imported into the program from most measurement systems.

It makes use of full x,y,z  relative geometric location of the individual drive units and gives you a movable listening axis, both vertical and horizontal which will allow you to see an accurate driver summation at almost any point in the front hemisphere of the speaker. This model now includes driver directivity, so off-axis simulations will also include directivity response variations as well. This proprietary tool offers very accurate simulations of the summed and individual driver's response at various axial locations.

The program has individual sections for woofer, tweeter, and midrange circuits, each with SPL and Impedance charts, as well as System charts that show summed SPL response, approximated power response, phase response, system impedance, and crossover transfer functions. There is a section for system input impedance equalization also.

Other features include - options for two woofers, or two midranges, and either wired in series or parallel, automatic calculation of L-Pads, Zobels and series RLC compensation circuits at the click of a button, user selectable built-in or imported Target responses that are overlaid with the driver's response in each section. And all crossover values can be continuously changed via "spinners" with the response will changing in real-time on the charts, allowing for quick curve-fitting of the response or impedance curves.

As mentioned above, the program includes an accurate box design tool with the ability to model the response of both vented and sealed systems. This add-in includes a unique and proprietary impedance modeler that will accurately model the impedance of the woofer in the box used and allow you to use this impedance curve in the crossover design section if desired. In addition, an active crossover section is included that contains high and low pass slopes up to eighth order, five band parametric equalizer (for each section), Linkwitz Transform, and level and delay adjustments. This section can be used with the box model to design subwoofers using active EQ and filters.

The program includes the ability to save out all individual driver, crossover (active or passive), and system SPL and Impedance responses to frd and zma files that can be used in other software. It has the ability to print or save charts. Included are Pop-up parts layout schematics for each crossover section. You may save a fully loaded project under a new name and be able to reopen the file with the project intact. Simply click on "save as" in Excel, and give it a new name for your project. The spreadsheet will compress and save containing all data including frd and zma file data. When the file is reopened, the project will be exactly as it was when filed. (Files saved in this way will about 5mB in size)

**Notes**:

PCD 8 has the ability to import second woofer and second midrange frequency response and impedance data files, so five different drivers can be imported if desired. (Note: If, however, you wish to model two woofers or two midranges and do not want to import a second set of data, that is OK, as the program will automatically use the original data as it did before as a default. The ability to import the second set of data is under the selection for two woofers and two midranges and is only an option to be used as desired. This allows you to import two different diffraction responses for drivers in an MTM, for example. Or you can import two completely different drivers with different frd and zma file if desired as well.)
Note that the Z-offset convention is negative if the acoustic center is "behind" the zero plane, as in the case of the woofer's acoustic center being behind the tweeter
There are buttons to remove the woofer or the tweeter (or both) from the simulation if desired for greater versatility. This can allow for modeling of single driver systems on the main graph, or to allow for simply modeling a woofer or tweeter's response individually on the main graph if desired.
There are special buttons to compress all calculations or to re-expand the calculations, if desired. (Note: when saving the file, it will compress the calculation automatically. If you wish to continue working in the same project, you must click the "Expand" button to restore the program.)
There is a button to unprotect the main page of the file for better chart management. This was a tough decision to make because when the page is unprotected it is possible to inadvertently make other changes that would break or alter the program's function. Because of this nearly all other function buttons will reset the protection automatically. However, while unprotected you can select a chart, view the value for a given point, and even change the scale, line weight, or line color, etc. With this feature you have the ability to highly customize your presentation of the data as you see fit. (Note: The end-user is responsible for all changes made to the program while the main page is unprotected.)
I believe this is the last revision that we will have for this file, it has been almost 10 years since the last one, but with the issues that arose with Office 2016, I felt it was necessary to try to put some fixes in. However as of this release - The program is no longer fully supported by the author.

Spreadsheet (and all previous versions), its VBA Modules, and its file structure -
© Copyright 2001- 2019
Jeff Bagby - File Design, Structure, Mathematics, and selected VBA routines
Paul Verdone - Selected VBA routines
 
File is Free for personal DIY Speaker Design use.
Commercial use is prohibited without prior authorization of the author

===== Downloads =====

  * {{passive_crossover_designer_8.0.xlsm.zip}}: The application spreadsheet in .xlsm format.
  * {{pcd6_user_guide_and_sample_files.zip}}: User guide and sample files for the application.
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