Orion Car Audio Orion HCCA Competition - Manual (Page 9)

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CROSSOVER INSTALLATION
Connecting the system
Trim the speaker wire as needed. Strip no more than 1/4" (6mm) of the insulation from the
ends. Twist the exposed strands thoroughly to prevent any loose strands from causing a short
circuit. If possible “tin” the wire with a soldering iron. Either the tweeter or woofer input of each
connector can be used when not bi-wiring/bi-amping (when the bi-wire/bi-amp jumpers are not
cut, the tweeter and woofer inputs are connected in parallel). Insert the wires in the removable
connector and tighten screws.
Carefully route the wires from the HCCA tweeter and woofer to the crossover mounting location.
The crossover installation location should be reasonably accessible to allow easy connection of
the wires, tweeter level adjustment and tweeter phase selection. If the crossover must be mounted
in an inaccessible location make the speaker wire connections and adjustments before final
installation.
Bi-wiring / Bi-amping
The HCCA competition system allows bi-wiring, or bi-amping using the supplied passive crossovers.
While conventional wiring can provide excellent sound, bi-wiring or bi-amping will further enhance
the performance in no-compromise systems.
Bi-wiring uses a separate pair of speaker wires for the high frequency and low frequency signal
between an amplifier channel and its associated crossover network. This gives you the option of
choosing wire which may have slightly different sonic characteristics in order to optimize
performance of each frequency range. Also, it reduces the overall wiring resistance between
the crossover and amplifier, much like the use of larger gauge wire. This option provides the
most benefit when the crossover network is mounted a long distance away from the amplifier.
If the crossover is mounted close to the amplifier it is doubtful that there will be an appreciable
difference between bi-wiring and conventional wiring.
Bi-amping is similar to bi-wiring except that it uses a separate amplifier channel for the high-
frequency and low-frequency sections, instead of the single amplifier channel used in conventional
and bi-wired connections. Bi-amping provides the additional advantages of reducing amplifier
distortion and allowing the amplifier’s level controls to provide an additional level of fine-tuning
not possible with the tweeter-level switch alone. In addition, at high power levels, a bi-amplified
connection protects the tweeter from amplifier clipping, which is most likely to occur on channels
driving the midrange, due to the higher energy levels of midrange signals. When bi-amping
using the passive crossovers, the midrange low-pass filter and tweeter high-pass filter on the
amplifier or external electronic crossover should be bypassed.
Important note: When bi-amping or bi-wiring, you must cut the red and black wire jumpers on
each side of the crossover that connect the low and high frequency sections of the crossover.
Failure to do so could cause damage to the amplifiers or the crossover.