They come with tiny capacitors to block low frequencies. Does one wire these capicitors in line with the positive or negative wire or does it not make a difference?

 

it is designed to filter high out put signals from damaging the tweeter wich runs through the positive side of the speaker

 

true story

 

It makes absolutely no difference which wire you put it on, it’s just a series circuit.

 

well I would like to know where you got your info from??series circuit?? its a resistor..

 

what those capacitors do is filter the the lower frequencies,i.e bass and midrange. in other words it's a crossover. the cone on a tweeter is designed not to move much because it doesn't need to in reproducing high frequencies. if you were to connect a tweeter to an amplifierwithout the cap or a passive crossover , it would not live long at all.this is also why you want to block the high frequencies to a sub . it is designed to reproduce the low frequencies and running a sub full range will detract from that.the smaller a speaker is , the less it can reproduce lower frequencies but the better it will reproduce highs.also, it is best to always put the cap in series on the positive side. i realize that the amplifier puts out an ac (alternating current) signal but look at the passive crossovers, you 'll see the cap on the positive side. hope this clears this all up for ya.

 

First of all it is not a capacitor a capacitor stores power in a dry cell trust me I have 2 of them and each one stores 1000 watts.
a resistor ie; resists certain frequency's from entering through the positive side of a tweet. and yes a resisitor does try and act like a cross over but it really cant do a good a job as a cross over or an amp set on high(that has a built in cross over). when a resistor burns up you wont know it and guess what go's next ???the speaker

 

well ,ok ,i've been installing professionally since 1984 and these are called capacitors. the power cap you describe is a polarized capacitor, there is a positive terminal and a ground terminal. if you connect it backwards , you gonna see a lot of smoke and a pop and a whole lotta cap innards.the capacitors used in the tweeter crossovers are non -polarized , there isn't a positive or negative terminal so you can't get it backwards. once again ,the amplifier signal is an alternating current ,it changes polarity so you couldn't use a polarized capacitor. the power caps you described are storage modules to compensate for brief peaks of energy (a hard loud bass note) so the amplifier is not as prone to "clip"(cut the top off of a sine wave). a resistor does NOT filter frequencies, it changes the resistance(ohms) that that amplifier output "sees". also ya might notice some manufacturers put a light bulb in the passive crossover , that is used to absorb the dc current that an amplifier puts out if clipping.the dc voltage will heat up the voice coil and burn it in half.this is why an amp that doesn't have enough output to do what you want it to do will burn a speaker up just as fast as an amp that is too large for for speaker's rms (root mean square) rating will.but hey what do i know? i've only been an professional installer for 20 years and am MECP certified first class.

 

yes it is a capacitor, no its not the same as the ones you hook up to "help" your system out better. crossovers consist of caps, resistors and inductors. heres a little bit of an article on how to build one...http://www.speakerbuilder.net/web_fi...xo/xoconst.htm

caps store watts??? since when?

 

What is this, see how wrong we can be?

I've read a couple of your post, you just keep on making me laugh. Try and do some reading. You couldn't be more wrong.

IT's not a resistor, it's a capacitor. And when you put a capacitor (Aka Base Blocker) on a tweeter, it IS a series circuit, or your doing it wrong. And it makes NO difference which wire you put it on.

 

absolutely correct, an capacitor does not store watts. the one thousand watts you see on the that cap is a generalized reference(and inaccurate) for what size amplifier it's designed to work. a .5 farad is made to be used for a smaller amp ,a 1.0 for a larger amp,1.5 for an even larger amp.

 

Jesus christ.

This is quite possibly the dumbest thread I've ever read in the car audio forum, and considering the massive amount of stupidity I see on a daily basis, that's a huge statement.

Some of you guys should learn how to knit and stay the hell away from electricity.

 

geez jim , why don't you tell us how you really feel about this thread

 

:yourock:

 

jim summed up everything i was gonna say. but he was more blunt