Crossover upgrade decision for beginners: when and why?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2024
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Greetings, János
Dear Janos! Your todays video topic fits exactly to what I am going to do a little later. I was invited to a presentation of a crossover genius, who builds gigantic crossovers with really huge air coil inductors and capacitors. He also has a youtube chanel but has not put out as many videos as you do.
I think building loudspeakers makes more sense as the mark-up is huge and you don’t get quality crossovers. I pick my drivers first and then have the cross-over designed and built.
Here is the the cost for an 8 inch two-way book-shelf I had designed
Parts (Including Sidewinder 16 awg Air Core inductor on woofer, ClarityCap CSA cap & Mundorf MOX resistors on tweeter) = $81.50
Circuit Board = $37.50
Labor = $30.00
Price per assembled crossover = $149.00
Price per assembled stereo pair of crossovers = $298.00
They measure +/- 2 db but I agree with Janos that crossing over at 2.5k hz is sub-optimal
Never again with a cross-over in the mid frequency area where hearing is most acute
Now I am going to do a variation of LaGrande and then onto the Voigt Pipe
After that….
I have compression tweeters and horns and 15 inch woofers and cross-overs at 500 hz
The drivers are 100 plus sensitivity for my SE tube amplifier with a very large woofer horn cabinet I am thinking about based on the large LaScala cabinet
I doubt I will do anything else once I finish with all that
Thank you Janos
After changing the internal wiring to OCC copper wire, replacing the binding posts, but also adding high quality bypass caps to the crossovers of my already great sounding speakers, took the sound up a noticeable amount with a more fleshed out natural midrange and sparkling highs. They sound quicker overall, if that makes any sense…lol.
This was just by adding bypass caps to the already upgraded crossovers. Every little bit adds up.
Hi Janos, thanks for the subject. You present this as an option for the beginner. But the approach also works for the veteran, based on what he wants of-course. I guess it goes without saying that if you want to do this, it is worth while watching some GR Audio videos. Danny has made this his business and he seems to be good at it. He also has a fetish for flat frequency curves. If this is your first battle, I would not bother with that and I would stick with the original component values (If that is the better approach in general, is a different matter for discussion). Many cross over coils do not have the inductance value written on it, so you may have to invest in a cheap LCR meter. e.Bay is your friend here. If you are on a budget and you like your cables, hard wire them in the cross over and save some money on the tube connectors. Even though the speaker you are going to upgrade is probably not a life design (Janos has many videos on this subject) be careful with bracing a commercial dead speaker, specially if you like the tonality and dynamics of it. A dead speaker can actually be seen as a narrow band life speaker. And many *good* speakers have those resonances at frequencies (by design or coincidence) that are as little obnoxious as they can be. If you start bracing the cabinet you will make it stiffer, but it is not a given that it will sound better. If it is booming, then go for it :)
Have you thought about just showing a picture of a crossover and explaining all that's going on in a detail explanation explaining how things can improve by upgrading them? My current speakers drain 30% of the voltage away which hurts the signal so I've learned. I wish someone with an understanding of this would explain it. This is one area that very few people really understand. We're counting on you😊
European guy replying here, it is such a pity that there is not an English version of the YT channel: franks werkstatt der lautsprechertechnik. This is exactly what you ask for, plus a workshop to demonstrate everything. It is in German. I am not sure if there are translate plug ins, but it would be worth while.
Before anyone invests serious money in upgrading speaker, I'd consider the bigger picture. My best two choices in hifi recently have been moving to high efficiency drivers and adding an analogue source which allowed me to listen to recordings with little to no post-processing, which greatly helps any tweaking. Now, to go back to best thing no1, high dynamic efficiency drivers have their built-in benefits such as way less compression, more nuance/detail, less distortion, sounding good at low levels... but they also minimise compromises for power in the amplifier which I now see as the most influential in an audio system in matching the source to the speakers.
So yes once one has their system worked out this optimising is awesome and totally appropriate but if you're working with low efficiency dynamic drivers, to me that appears somewhat like carefully arranging deck chairs on the titanic...
Ok one last thing and nit-picking on one comment you made in this video, but the advising a Voigt pipe with a (high quality) 90dB/W driver seems to be a choice for a very particular type of listening.. you have the experience Janos but I see a very small sweet spot, needs a particular sized room, the aesthetics commission can allow proper placement of the voigt pipe... and depending on the room size and listening levels, it's likely to need power-derived quality compromises on the amplifier for it.
Hi Eduard, I can totally see where you are coming from. But there are many reasons why somebody wants to do this. The most important one in my opinion is for people who have treated their Hi-Fi components as black boxes so far. It is a very important gate way in getting confidence with DIY Hi-Fi. Some other people may have confidence but cabinet building is not something they are geared up to. Or they are stuck with certain types of gear for esthetic reasons, for good or for bad, that is not up to us to prioritize. Any way, I agree with you that if sound is the end goal, the combination of high efficient speakers with low powered valve amplifiers is something you ignore at your own detriment.
@@hugobloemers4425 Hi Hugo totally agree, upping components or perhaps put a passive preamp, kit speaker or cables together is a great start for DIY and getting inspired. It's just that I found the area of optimising crossovers/speakers very hard and if you see experienced designers like Devore taking 9 months on average to get an xo right,.. ..what I really was saying in a long winded way, have a pause and take a helicopter view for second..
@@EduardBroekman That gets us to Danny, who knows his filters. But his approach is to flat line every speaker he gets. In some cases that is warranted to a certain extend, but as a general approach I am not so sure about that. If you start as amateur, the best thing is to improve on the quality of the components and leave the design for what it is.