Danny speaks the truth. As a hobby In the 2000's, i used to buy vintage speakers for cheap and replace the crossover parts with much better caps, resistors and new wiring. ( Never messed with the coils) I would put Dynamat and new foam on the inside of the cabs as well. Stamped steel drivers would get clay or dynamat damping. Every speaker would transform! The best were Pioneer HPM 40's and 100's and a pair of early 90's KEF uniQ. Sounded amazing afterward.
@Jondahl Davis Yes, these speakers have electrolytic caps that deteriorate over the years. Dayton poly caps and mills resistors make a huge difference. I have Pioneer HPM 40's in my basement workshop that sound phenomenal and still surprise me with how good they sound.
I've measured the flux density in the air gap for the same magnet assembly on an 8 inch Magnavox (Australia) MV8 diecast housing versus a thin iron metal pressed basket when I was in R&D at Magnavox. The pressed metal baskets absorb roughly 10 to 15% of the gaps flux. The result is a corresponding decrease in speaker sensitivity in dB SPL / W of drive. Similarly, at Dolby Labs (great company) I designed and mic'ed up a small low freq driver, placed an accelerometer on the speaker box. For every dB of box vibration I lost the corresponding amount of audio from the speaker cone. In all, for the particular box I was tuning, I gained 4dB extra sound from the woofer cone just by bracing the box. Not to mention the reduction in non linear distortion at box excitation frequencies as I ran up through the frequencies on the low frequency driver. The distortion is due to evenescent near- field air streaming behaviour between the vibrating box adjacent to the cone as the cone pumps air. BTW, Great video
I’m a vintage type guy. I still have 5 sets of old JBLs that I love even if they can’t keep up with a top of the Mark modern speaker. Also spent years in the studio using Yamaha NS 10s until I wouldn’t mix on anything else. At this point at 67 years my ears most likely can’t tell the difference anyways. I still love your videos.
@@rickparker7707 take out the Crosssovers and replace the parts with better quality like for like values and line the cabinet walls with No-Rez. I'll be doing that on my buddies JBL L59's soon as I've done on several of my own speakers
From my turntable to my speakers, the fun is always in upgrades and/or mods. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the outcome is mostly always better SQ, but tinkering around with my gear is definitely part of the hobby to me.
Great video. The segment on inductors and capacitors is FANTASTIC! Consider pulling that out for its own stand-alone video. SVS is saying, "Danny, why do you have to be so difficult?" Danny: "I'm wearing the correct shirt."
I have some 30y old towers - my 1st pair of speakers i bought myself. Drivers are all still ok. At somepoint i will order alot parts off you Danny and upgrade my old babies :-) Thanks for the series!
Great video Danny. If you recall I emailed u a few months back about norez-ing my 1970 Rectilinear 3 Tallboy’s with all those tweeters and super tweeters and the 5 inch mid driver inclosed with the plastic deli container, lol. Because the speakers were my late dad’s it was worth it for me to see how I could improve them. I left the big hollow cabinet as it was. What I did do was exactly as you recommended in this vid, all new xover parts, ersy air cores, auri-cap like sonic caps, mills resisters and all new silver plated copper 14 gauge wires and tube like (KLEI) connectors. Rebuilding the internals made such an improvement it blew me away. These old relics probably wouldn’t measure too well but to my ears they sound heavenly and that makes it all worth it. Thanks again for doing these videos with we enthusiasts in mind. Marc.
I am so impressed by your knowledge and pragmatic approach to getting the best out of components! Just subscribed and will scan your video library now.
I’ve always Been amazed when I convert speakers to active crossover with separate amps and I never considered that a big part of the upgrade is that I would run the wires straight from the amp and soldered to the driver. I was trying to be cheap and simple but it sounds like this is even better than tube connectors because there’s not even a break in the wire at all.
Old KEF drivers like the ones used in IMF, Rogers, Spendors, Fried, etc.. seemed pretty fantastic. KEF drivers like the R200, T27, etc .. were also used in BBC designs as well. Great Video!
I used to own a pair of late 1960's Rogers LS6/3 BBC Monitors. 3 way inc a supertweeter. The crossover board was enormous. Cost £55. Probably worth £1000 nowadays. They were only 25 watt but were very capable if you kept the volume down. They were particularly good on vocals. My present (vintage) speakers are thirty year old active ATC SCM20SL. They have cast aluminium cabinets and weigh over 30kgs each. There are very few modern speakers that I would swap them for, apart from bigger ATCs and maybe Sonus Faber.
Great Video! and Explanations about parts! WOW! I've been an AudioPhile since I was 20! I'm 65 now! And never knew about how crappy and cheap the parts are used in over 99% of All Loudspeakers! really makes you think! Kudos to Danny! - Thank you!
Thank you. Great video. Very informative. It shows the problems found not only in audio but in other industries where more money is spent in marketing than research or parts and engineering.
I loved the way u laughed with frequencies coming out of the speakers.....please do a review on the new magnepan lrs speakers and the ways that they can be combined - implemented with your open baffle subs
Danny......I like so much the way you explain and work things.......simple.....logical......and very important.....saving money to get into the real Hi-fi world .......keep going.......
I always learn so much after watching your vids. I'm not yet initiated into diy audio. But your knowledge is inspiring me to want to understand electronics and audio components in a hands-on way. I feel like there is a whole world I'm missing out on. I'm tempted to make my own tube amps, preamps etc. But I can't wait to put together the GR studio monitor though when it's off back order. That should get me off to a nice start. 👍 Thanks danny for all your effort in keeping this channel and your company going.
Another great video,thanks a lot. I like to add buying a vintage speaker be careful of old cone surroundings. I had the experience of much higher resonance frequencies due to hardened foam or rubber surrounding. If this is the case, you can recone them in a professional reconing workshop. This is mostly not very expensive 😀
You are correct that "frequency" is a measurement, but is also commonly used to describe the pitches emanating from the speaker elements which is transmitted to the air and then into our ears. That is why we are able to "hear" the frequency response of a speaker.
It is used to describe what we hear but still as a measuring stick. The pitch is described to have a certain frequency or wavelength to describe its position on a scale. But we don't hear "frequencies".
Designs and approaches change over the years but also remember that new and expensive designs can also be flawed...after all everything still revolves around a speaker driver which hasn’t changed much in 80 years.
@@marcl8814 very aware of contemporary designs that have been flawed, I am an ex-distributor of high end audio and also ran a restoration business too. Some very exotic pieces of audio equipment over the years have become very expensive door stops! The actual physical make up of a loudspeaker driver has not changed much but the materials used definitely has changed a tremendous amount. My initial comment was a slight sarcastic dig at some vintage gear that seems to command very high prices on the used market which baffles me (pun intended)!
You’re right about that vintage gear, mostly just nostalgia and remembering the good ol days like in the case of my 70 Rectilinear’s. And using exotic new materials like diamond tweeters and hemp woofer cones always sounds (pun intended) better. Appreciate your point of view, Marc.
@@marcl8814 Diamond, ceramic, tungsten, beryllium, graphene, aluminum, polypropylene, polyurethane.... "speaker driver which hasn’t changed much in 80 years" Sure, the essential principles of speaker drivers are largely the same. But bass drivers, for example, are much more rigid, and much lighter and faster than they were 80 years ago when the only available cone material was pulp. Materials science and various advancements in technologies have significantly elevated all of the elements of modern speaker systems, including electronic components and enclosure panels. Moreover, most speaker systems today incorporate DSPs which allows the designer much more control over the way the system ultimately performs, and some powered subwoofers such as Paradigm and Martin Logan ship with built in room correction software, which is quite effective in taming acoustical anomalies in listening rooms. Certainly true that "new and expensive systems can be flawed" though.
Very educational, I like it. It builds alot of trust. Have you ever considered designing a DIY portable speaker? You may not be interested, but I was looking at a portable speaker for the backyard or camping, etc and seen how good one called a vifa Helsinki was compared to many many speakers no matter the price. High quality driver selection and attention to detail took it to another level, it's been out for 5-6 years I believe and it's still one of the best, when many companies come out with new models yearly and still can't top it. Made me wonder what gr research could do if you guys were ever interested in something like that.
I've measured electrolytic caps and compared the behaviour to polypropylene, polycarbonate and the ultimate, mica-silver for crossovers. Non polar electrolytics are composed of two back to back polarized electrolytics. As you lower signal voltage through them you see distortion occur at the zero voltage crossover from positive to negative and vice versa. There is a dielectric absoption going on where it takes energy to reverse the voltage on the cap (signal going through the cap is AC). The greater the dielectric absoption, the greater this zero crossover signal flattening, as the signal fights to allow a release of electrons from the dielectric. So what I used to do, was measure this distortion at low signal levels to select the type of capacitor with the least of this effect. That gets me to the silver mica caps. Hellishly expensive by suffers the least from this effect. It even gets down to there where differences in dielectric absoption between different batches of the same capacitor type and brand. The green dipped metal film plastic caps where the absolute worst. Up to 30% of them would fail tests. Got to the point they where banned from use.
I did that (upgraded the cheap one) with a pair of Jensen 2 ways. Someone had put them on the curb with a "free" sign taped to the side. The tweeters were blown, but the woofers were good (albeit a couple push on terminals had fallen off). I braced the cabinet walls, stuffed them, replaced the paper tweeter with a silk dome. For the crossover, the original was a single series ferrite core on the woofers (i left that) and the tweeter had a single series electrolytic. I kept the "principle" of first order, and just upgraded to a cheapo poly cap. Its amazing that for scrap wood and a couple caps i had laying around, I could completely transform the sound of the speaker, while keeping all the components the "same" (on paper at least). Going to the inexpensive silk dome was a night and day difference though. The amount of enjoyment those speakers provided was orders of magnitude more than the money I put in.
I should add that I had a bag of ~25 of those poly caps, and I sat for a half hour measuring and matching as close of a pair as I could find. It shouldn't be understated how important matching L/R components are in a stereo setup.
Great vid. Definitely thinking about pimping up some speakers. Unfortunately I will be restricted to working with speakers with a sensitivity of 88 or about which wasn’t particularly common 30 years ago and even less likely with contemporary speakers
I'm curious how you feel about oldschool Klipsch Heritage speakers and the parts they used vs possible upgrades. Especially the Heresy1 and Forte 1 Speakers.
Hi there, and thank you very much ! Do you have a video showing the effects of various capacitor, inductor and resistor types ? Of course good quality is always better, but perhaps cheaper elements are not critical in certain locations ...like avoiding using a gun to kill a fly ? For instance capacitors in parallel with a resistor, for slight resonant pole absobtion ?
I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, just an audio enthusiast and I just discovered your channel. It is one of the best channel on youtube! I just subscribed.
I love upgrading speakers also! I would actually love to talk speakers with you for a few hours sometime! I wish you lived closer to me, up in Albuquerque, NM... Maybe someday I can take a roadtrip down to Texas and check your shop out, because I'd love to see what all you do! I just do speaker upgrades for a hobby and for friends and family, but I'd love to learn some more about making a business out of it someday maybe!... Anyway, I would actually really love to see what all you can do to improve BOTH of these speakers in this video, because it looks to me like they both have MUCH room for improvement, but also great potential to be really good afterwards, so please make a video about your improvements to both of these models, along with their final improved measurements and listening results! That video will be very intetesting to see!!
I love your videos sir!! Love them! One question: why use a center channel as part of this comparison? Is that not similar to comparing apples and oranges? Thank you sir!
When I built my first speakers, back when Hi Fi was just coming into being, the conventional wisdom was to cross from the woofer to the mid at 500 Hz and from the mid to tweeter at about 2500 Hz. I really liked Danny’s explanation as to why from the woofer to mid you don’t want to do this. It seem so obvious once he said it. So, why don’t speaker manufacturers know this? Also, I learned something new with his explanation as to why iron core and low end capacitors smear the sound. Danny - thanks for the 30 min lecture on speaker design. A suggestion on video - Take a second round of video doing close ups for parts you want to show in detail and then edit it in at the right place(s). In general your videos are great, this would help to make them even better...
Look at Andrew Jones designs. His crossovers are 2200/2500 to the tweeter and 90/100hz to the woofers. The midrange is a pretty much a full range from 2200hz to 90hz.
That sounds like a good design. But, clearly even today some manufacturers are missing the point that Danny makes. Danny’s videos do a great job of explaining the “why” of things, which has helped me to have better understanding, at least in part, as to what makes his 2 way designs work as well as they do, and the pitfalls of designs that claim to be really good.
I have a pair of KEF 105/3's that I simply replaced the factory Electrolytic Caps in the Woofer/Midwoofer/Midrange sections. In the Tweeter section as you mentioned, I used SoniCaps. I kept all the original Inductors due to the cost of replacing them with Air Cores would not have been worth it sonically. Same goes for the Cap values which are as high as 680uF ! I'm sure the entire thing can be re done by yourself but again the cost of shipping the Speakers and the parts expense aren't worth it for me financially. I'd be much much better off getting one of your awesome open baffle kits for that kinda money. I did notice an improvement especially in the midrange/tweeter section (there's a mix of Solen/SoniCaps between the two. I kept the factory Bennic Resistors. again for cost. I was given 2 pairs of KEF 105/3's and a pair of KEF 104/2's for free from a mutual friend of Ron & I. I don't have much money sunk into them (I've actively amplified the *'Coupled Cavity" Woofers with 1000W Class ICE Power Amp from Parts Express with the Factory Crossover in series and the KEF Cube EQ profile inserted via miniDSP. For the Midbass/Midrange/Tweeter section, I'm running a pair of McIntosh MC50's (measured power of 70W@4Ω). Which is more than enough power even with the overtly complex Crossovers that they run through. Enjoy your Videos and again, I want to build a pair of NX-Otica's one day instead of buying a pair of Consumer Speakers that have crap inside for parts but have awesome marketing and a cult following. When I saw your Sonus Faber video. It was another eye opener. Keep up the awesome work Danny. Cheers, Joe
I think a good quality MDF is one of the best materials for most speaker needs. It is pretty dead and non resonant. It's also incredibly consistent. Easy to use different thickness's for different panels. Easy to work, screw and glue. It's also very easily obtainable and relatively inexpensive. It's the best for building ones own designs or building a kit. Which I would suggest for most people who aren't all fingers and thumbs, and have a little time to do it. A quality, sturdy, dead, stiff box is a great place to put quality parts into. It's surprising just how poor and downright shonky some speaker cabinets are. Even some that should not be at the price. Some appear to imagine bracing isn't even worth the effort. Remarkable. Always identify the biggest panel, and give it a few good raps with your knuckle. It shouldn't sound like an old tea chest.
Thanks for your work here, and all other videos. I was shocked viewing them about what they put into those mega overpriced speakers. Do you have any recommendations on how can I improve Polk Audio T15s for surrounds, T30 for Center, and T50s for front LR in Home theater? Is there a way to upgrade those significantly? Maybe you have upgrade kits?
Try lining the inside with 1.32 - 3.15mm lead sheet on polyurethane adhesive additionally held with multitude of wood screws topped up with engine room damping panels used in ship building and glass fibre infill. It's a mildly toxic, politically incorrect combination, certainly not recommended for vented enclosures, but with sealed it's as "dead" as it gets and passes the knuckle test wth flying colours. Dampen both the lead and MDF lightly before before applying glue and as soon as it starts to turn yellow and expand, stick them together, drive the screws into pre-drilled holes and clamp it. You can trim the excess once dry and seal the exposed lead with oil to prevent discolouration, prior to applying self-adhesive open cell engine room panels on top. Considerable weight gain brings about an additional benefit of providing stable, inert platform for heavy diaphragm drivers under excursion. It's like having an anechoic chamber inside the speaker, which should also be braced in a matrix fashion. Multiple, interconnected chambers with rounded edge, large aperture openings in-between.
“Lossy” speaker cabinets were a crucial aspect of BBC speaker designs to ensure the critical mids ie voices were less affected by cabinet resonance. They tuned the cabinet to move cabinet resonance to the lower frequencies where you’re less likely to hear them. However stiff, all cabinets make noise, it’s just where you want that noise to happen. As a British company Kef were involved with the BBC and today other British companies like Harbeth, Spendor, Falcon Acoustics, Graham Audio etc have carried forward the BBC R&D principles ie the legendary LS3/5a. People will say with BBC designs (including modern ones like Harbeth) they don’t use T-nuts and bolts, just wood screws...but that is intentional to tune the cabinet so the mids are least affected by cabinet resonance. So when you rap a cabinet based on BBC design principles they can seem a little “boxy” but that is part of the design. I don’t know if these principles are part of the Kef’s you have there but damping and stiffening them may make the mids worse. Kef were and still are brilliant engineers so know the compromises to make a balanced speaker at the price. Not saying you can’t improve old ones with better crossover components, connectors etc as everything is made to a price.
Actually lowering cabinet resonances down (out of the mid-range) into the bass region makes them more easily excitable and easier to hear. A stiffer cabinet lowers the magnitude of the resonances, and with the addition of a little No Rez, will knock the resonance issues right out. So it is not hard to do away with most of the coloration allowing the real music to be heard more easily. And I have been into and upgraded quite a few Kef models and from what I have seen I can't agree with your opinion of their engineers. I've yet to see one with even mid-fi level parts inside, and I've yet to hear one that didn't sound any better than the next budget level speaker.
@@dannyrichie9743 I’m sure you know more than me on old Kefs. I’ve just looked that model up and it looks like the cabinets were not designed to BBC principles, so withdraw my suggestion 🙈. If you haven’t already, take a listen to the likes of Harbeth who follow some of the BBC principles who have lossy cabinets don’t react the way you describe. Having had a number of high end speakers over the years and now have Kef Blade 2’s which are incredible...never enjoyed my system more or listened to more music in my life. I have Kef LS50’s in another room which again are magic, especially for the money. Perhaps you would the engineering in those more!
@@neilgaydon5430 And there is no amount of box buzzing that will make the music sound better. If the original artists wanted to add some buzzing at a certain frequency then they would have added to the recording.
@@dannyrichie9743 Mmmmm...no one is talking about buzzing cabinets!!!...it’s worth understanding the science before making a comment like that, there are numerous white papers and research on the subject. We are talking about world class designs that have stood the test of time and continue to from giants in the industry. Try a pair of LS3/5a’s for example to hear how the science is put into practise. Or be closed minded, your call. For me I won’t be tuning in again.
Superb! I wrote an article on upgrade of the KEF Carlton II some years ago in DIY Audio, replacing the tweeters with Seas T22AF. You are right the original cross overs were built with very cheap parts. The FUN is in the Upgrade! Cheers!!
I have an early set of vintage Pioneer CS-53's that I got for (in my opinion) a really good deal at a goodwill a couple or so years ago. As they are they sound pretty great, but with how they're built I think Pioneer poured most of the budget into the box itself since it's made of plywood and not mdf or particle board, the 12" mid-bass woofer and the tweeter. So there's literally no crossover network in them, just some caps soldered to the tweeters. The speaker wire coming from your sound source also hooks the box either by spade terminals or a 1/4" jack. I've really been wanting to put some nice crossovers in them to make them better and possibly some better binding posts in the back. But I have no clue what frequency to cross them over at. Nor do I have the experience building crossovers.
Always learn a ton from your videos!! This one was super helpful!! Here's an odd question. What or how do you upgrade an older speaker that doesn't have a crossover?! I have set of the old British Epos ES12 speakers, that sound great (to me), but they are "old", and have one single capacitor on the tweeter! Can these be "upgraded" or improved?
Hi, I have a pair o0f Grundig Fine Arts BX3 (BX300) and sound really good, but de inductors are with ferrite core, this is a 2 way speaker with a crossover frecuency of 2000 Hz. Do you think that by changing the inductors for ones with an air core, there will be a significant improvement in the sound? Thank you
Well nothing has changed my mind one will carry on using the Westminster royal gr .inherited them plus all of my dad's o!d gear incl a pristine tborens124 tt .
I'll be looking for some signal analysis showing these inductors, capacitors and steel connectors "smear" the sound. Let's see what Eevblog has to say.
Great video, this analogy applies to everything, especially big purchases like houses and cars - most people only care what they look like, not their internal quality.
Hi Danny, just found your channel. Would like to get your opinion on a couple of vintage Panasonic SB-400 speakers that i left at my mom's like 20 years ago. I would like to get them fixed as one tweeter got busted and a little nice punched a hole on both woofers. Later replaced woofers with cheap ones but they are now laying without being used. Do you recommend upgrade or is a waste of money? Would be better to get a set of modern speakers?
I use have used audio spectrum software from TrueRTA for years (paid -$100 for it back in 2005). It works great and is fairly easy to use. The test mic I use with it is a Behringer ECM8000 comes with calibration curve you can put in the software for totally flat response curve. This mic is phantom powered so you need to buy a phantom power supply to go with it (Behringer sell one for around $40 but there are cheaper ones available).
So in car audio we run active. So in home audio wouldn't it be better to remove the crossovers all together and run active and tune it with a processor with RTA to fix the problems the crossovers present?
Vintage all the way. You could section off the resonator and add a another driver. Possibly add an adjustable tweeter high pass switch. The vintage will sound better in my opinion.
so would it be worth having my old JBL L220's Gone thru I had the surrounds done 8 years ago on both the LE 14 DRIVERS and the passives but I think the crossovers and the LPADS need to be replaced
Tinned copper cable is best if you think about durability over time. Has had a lot of truble with copper cables that turn black to green after soldering. even if they are OFC. copper. Tinned cobber are the best!
The woofer it's not paper on KEF , it's a Bextrene cone ( plastic and foam composite ) Every cone that is black , shiny and from the 70's and 80's , it's pretty much a Bextrene cone !!
I wish i could have your knownledge! I have a video showing how i made the sound on my car with 4 mid range on the doors and 2 woofers+ tweeters on the boot cover. I noticed that when i used crossovers to the speakers the sound was not so great and i can remember being better with only capacitors on mid-tweet and the woofers directly to the amplifier. Can this be true? Can the crossover destroy the quality or does it sound like this cause i had bigger range coming out from each speaker covering each other? sry for my english but im not native .
An improperly designed crossover can be pretty bad. You may have also experienced a polarity issue. Ideally the passive filter needs to be designed based on the measured output in the car.
@@dannyrichie9743 Thank you for taking the time to response. Polarity is ok cause i checked one by one with dc to be sure. The speakers are the same i suppose i need to measure one woofer one tweeter and one mid range right? Then adjust the crossover to my needs.
@@DerbyRepairs When I said a polarity issue, I should have really said a phase issue. Polarity can be common between a tweeter and a mid, but they can be acoustically out of phase. Reversing a polarity can often bring the phase (or time arrival) back into alignment. Then yes, measure each driver and then the sum of the drivers to see how they look.
I have KEF reference 103 and the sound is very accurate. Recapping can bring problems. The resistances of film capacitors are different from the electrolytics you are swapping out. The tweeter is most sensitive to this disparity and may need a resistor to compensate. The tweeter can be subject to enough current to cause voice coil failure. The circuit boards are designed around the footprints of smaller components and film caps and air core inductors can be vast compared to the space you want to add them to. The support needed to stop large components from vibrating is absent and could be a source of a resonance signature. The crossover may need to be done outboard and hardwired on a larger scale. The reference series KEF models were similar to the BBC thinking on design where the use of fairly thin walled birch ply, bracing and bituminous pads with long haired wool was an approach. I would be interested to see what you could do with a KEF reference speaker. But I think the crossover would need to be redesigned around the new style parts rather than straight swaps
The resistance of film caps compared to electrolytics is not different within their pass band. There is zero change in current that would cause tweeter failure. There is 100 times more disparity between two electrolytic caps of the same value. They're rated at +/-5% tolerances and they can be worst than that over time.
@@dannyrichie9743 Thankyou for replying, I was just revisiting the video. I was thinking about what you said. The model of speaker I have dates back to about 1976 and it has a rotating steel baffle with the tweeter and woofer mounted on it. This is square and allows the two drive units to be turned so that their positions relative to each other can be one of four ways. The crossover is also mounted on the baffle. The woofer magnet has a cylindrical brace to the back panel of the cabinet. There is a peripheral brace below the baffle stiffening the cabinet so that there is about 40% of the volume below the baffle and 60% behind it. I bought components to refurbish the crossovers from Falcon acoustics. They sent replacement electrolytics. I bought better wirewound resistors and upgraded the resistor quality elsewhere with Dale and Riken and another brand. The inductors are small cylindrical ferrite or iron dust types and everything is fitted onto a small crossover board that sits on stand-offs on the steel baffle. I upgraded the internal wiring. I know that the speaker sounds good as it is and I also know that the inductors and capacitors are potentially a bottle-neck in performance terms. KEF were using computers to design this model and it was one of the first speakers designed this way so they were probably learning a lot of lessons at that point. I liked what you said about magnetic hysteresis in the inductors and it feels as if the crossovers have to be physically larger to accommodate the film capacitors and air core inductors. The tweeter pass band might need care because the film capacitors would reach and pass higher frequencies which may increase voice coil stress. The tweeter is the same 40mm dome that they used in the Reference105. The woofer is the large magnet long gap short coil version of their B200 bass midrange driver. It would be interesting to see what you would do to get better performance from them. The crossover boards might have to me external or fitted into the cabinet instead of on the baffle. Really great show Danny!
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Danny speaks the truth.
As a hobby In the 2000's, i used to buy vintage speakers for cheap and replace the crossover parts with much better caps, resistors and new wiring. ( Never messed with the coils) I would put Dynamat and new foam on the inside of the cabs as well. Stamped steel drivers would get clay or dynamat damping.
Every speaker would transform! The best were Pioneer HPM 40's and 100's and a pair of early 90's KEF uniQ. Sounded amazing afterward.
@Jondahl Davis Yes, these speakers have electrolytic caps that deteriorate over the years. Dayton poly caps and mills resistors make a huge difference. I have Pioneer HPM 40's in my basement workshop that sound phenomenal and still surprise me with how good they sound.
I've measured the flux density in the air gap for the same magnet assembly on an 8 inch Magnavox (Australia) MV8 diecast housing versus a thin iron metal pressed basket when I was in R&D at Magnavox. The pressed metal baskets absorb roughly 10 to 15% of the gaps flux. The result is a corresponding decrease in speaker sensitivity in dB SPL / W of drive.
Similarly, at Dolby Labs (great company) I designed and mic'ed up a small low freq driver, placed an accelerometer on the speaker box. For every dB of box vibration I lost the corresponding amount of audio from the speaker cone. In all, for the particular box I was tuning, I gained 4dB extra sound from the woofer cone just by bracing the box. Not to mention the reduction in non linear distortion at box excitation frequencies as I ran up through the frequencies on the low frequency driver. The distortion is due to evenescent near- field air streaming behaviour between the vibrating box adjacent to the cone as the cone pumps air.
BTW, Great video
Awesome info! Very interesting. Thanks.
That Magnavox is known as 8.30 woofer, 30 being the watts
I’m a vintage type guy. I still have 5 sets of old JBLs that I love even if they can’t keep up with a top of the Mark modern speaker. Also spent years in the studio using Yamaha NS 10s until I wouldn’t mix on anything else. At this point at 67 years my ears most likely can’t tell the difference anyways.
I still love your videos.
I also have many vintage JBL 4311B, (4) to be exact. I have the original pair from high school, and three more pair from estate sales.
@@rickparker7707 take out the Crosssovers and replace the parts with better quality like for like values and line the cabinet walls with No-Rez. I'll be doing that on my buddies JBL L59's soon as I've done on several of my own speakers
Thanks for letting us into 'your world'. We love hearing your thoughts on this equipment. Thanks DR!
From my turntable to my speakers, the fun is always in upgrades and/or mods. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the outcome is mostly always better SQ, but tinkering around with my gear is definitely part of the hobby to me.
Another fabulous video Danny! So much to learn from your knowledge and recommendations. Great comparison on both models.
Great video. The segment on inductors and capacitors is FANTASTIC! Consider pulling that out for its own stand-alone video. SVS is saying, "Danny, why do you have to be so difficult?" Danny: "I'm wearing the correct shirt."
I have some 30y old towers - my 1st pair of speakers i bought myself. Drivers are all still ok. At somepoint i will order alot parts off you Danny and upgrade my old babies :-) Thanks for the series!
Thanks Danny, this is why I come here! Excellent video.
Great video Danny. If you recall I emailed u a few months back about norez-ing my 1970 Rectilinear 3 Tallboy’s with all those tweeters and super tweeters and the 5 inch mid driver inclosed with the plastic deli container, lol. Because the speakers were my late dad’s it was worth it for me to see how I could improve them. I left the big hollow cabinet as it was. What I did do was exactly as you recommended in this vid, all new xover parts, ersy air cores, auri-cap like sonic caps, mills resisters and all new silver plated copper 14 gauge wires and tube like (KLEI) connectors. Rebuilding the internals made such an improvement it blew me away. These old relics probably wouldn’t measure too well but to my ears they sound heavenly and that makes it all worth it. Thanks again for doing these videos with we enthusiasts in mind. Marc.
Thanks for another great video Danny! 👍
Thank you Danny, All the info is fantastic.
I am so impressed by your knowledge and pragmatic approach to getting the best out of components! Just subscribed and will scan your video library now.
Outstanding explanation of the technologies and science behind the music. Thanks!!!
I’ve always Been amazed when I convert speakers to active crossover with separate amps and I never considered that a big part of the upgrade is that I would run the wires straight from the amp and soldered to the driver. I was trying to be cheap and simple but it sounds like this is even better than tube connectors because there’s not even a break in the wire at all.
Old KEF drivers like the ones used in IMF, Rogers, Spendors, Fried, etc.. seemed pretty fantastic. KEF drivers like the R200, T27, etc .. were also used in BBC designs as well.
Great Video!
I used to own a pair of late 1960's Rogers LS6/3 BBC Monitors. 3 way inc a supertweeter. The crossover board was enormous. Cost £55. Probably worth £1000 nowadays. They were only 25 watt but were very capable if you kept the volume down. They were particularly good on vocals. My present (vintage) speakers are thirty year old active ATC SCM20SL. They have cast aluminium cabinets and weigh over 30kgs each. There are very few modern speakers that I would swap them for, apart from bigger ATCs and maybe Sonus Faber.
Great Video! and Explanations about parts! WOW! I've been an AudioPhile since I was 20! I'm 65 now! And never knew about how crappy and cheap the parts are used in over 99% of All Loudspeakers! really makes you think! Kudos to Danny! - Thank you!
A lesson in shade throwing, thank you for this class.
Danny I can watch these videos for hours!! ❤
Thank you. Great video. Very informative. It shows the problems found not only in audio but in other industries where more money is spent in marketing than research or parts and engineering.
Very informative video, I've learned a lot, thanks!
I loved this one! Thank you 🔥❤🔥
Outstanding presentation.
I loved the way u laughed with frequencies coming out of the speakers.....please do a review on the new magnepan lrs speakers and the ways that they can be combined - implemented with your open baffle subs
thanks for helping to understand these magic boxes. great informations
Great watch and very informative + eye opener too
Very interesting and informative. Thank you from the U.K.
Danny......I like so much the way you explain and work things.......simple.....logical......and very important.....saving money to get into the real Hi-fi world .......keep going.......
I always learn so much after watching your vids. I'm not yet initiated into diy audio. But your knowledge is inspiring me to want to understand electronics and audio components in a hands-on way. I feel like there is a whole world I'm missing out on. I'm tempted to make my own tube amps, preamps etc. But I can't wait to put together the GR studio monitor though when it's off back order. That should get me off to a nice start. 👍 Thanks danny for all your effort in keeping this channel and your company going.
are you still in witchita falls? i want you to help me with some diy speakers
Another great video,thanks a lot. I like to add buying a vintage speaker be careful of old cone surroundings. I had the experience of much higher resonance frequencies due to hardened foam or rubber surrounding. If this is the case, you can recone them in a professional reconing workshop. This is mostly not very expensive 😀
You are correct that "frequency" is a measurement, but is also commonly used to describe the pitches emanating from the speaker elements which is transmitted to the air and then into our ears. That is why we are able to "hear" the frequency response of a speaker.
It is used to describe what we hear but still as a measuring stick. The pitch is described to have a certain frequency or wavelength to describe its position on a scale. But we don't hear "frequencies".
Bought the same KEFs last week, and the capacitors measured well within spec and no leakage. My boxes had bracing, though.
Absolutely fantastic and tactful way of explaining that some vintage speakers with multiple drivers are flawed in their original design
Designs and approaches change over the years but also remember that new and expensive designs can also be flawed...after all everything still revolves around a speaker driver which hasn’t changed much in 80 years.
@@marcl8814 very aware of contemporary designs that have been flawed, I am an ex-distributor of high end audio and also ran a restoration business too. Some very exotic pieces of audio equipment over the years have become very expensive door stops!
The actual physical make up of a loudspeaker driver has not changed much but the materials used definitely has changed a tremendous amount.
My initial comment was a slight sarcastic dig at some vintage gear that seems to command very high prices on the used market which baffles me (pun intended)!
You’re right about that vintage gear, mostly just nostalgia and remembering the good ol days like in the case of my 70 Rectilinear’s. And using exotic new materials like diamond tweeters and hemp woofer cones always sounds (pun intended) better. Appreciate your point of view, Marc.
@@marcl8814 Diamond, ceramic, tungsten, beryllium, graphene, aluminum, polypropylene, polyurethane.... "speaker driver which hasn’t changed much in 80 years"
Sure, the essential principles of speaker drivers are largely the same. But bass drivers, for example, are much more rigid, and much lighter and faster than they were 80 years ago when the only available cone material was pulp.
Materials science and various advancements in technologies have significantly elevated all of the elements of modern speaker systems, including electronic components and enclosure panels. Moreover, most speaker systems today incorporate DSPs which allows the designer much more control over the way the system ultimately performs, and some powered subwoofers such as Paradigm and Martin Logan ship with built in room correction software, which is quite effective in taming acoustical anomalies in listening rooms.
Certainly true that "new and expensive systems can be flawed" though.
@@RFIDemocracy Pulp i still considered good, though.
Nice! Great new Website also!
Very educational, I like it. It builds alot of trust.
Have you ever considered designing a DIY portable speaker? You may not be interested, but I was looking at a portable speaker for the backyard or camping, etc and seen how good one called a vifa Helsinki was compared to many many speakers no matter the price. High quality driver selection and attention to detail took it to another level, it's been out for 5-6 years I believe and it's still one of the best, when many companies come out with new models yearly and still can't top it. Made me wonder what gr research could do if you guys were ever interested in something like that.
What beautiful lesson about hifi sound.
Tnx
thankyou, very helpful.
Excellent video
Excellent presentation, kind of eye opener. Just about to buy a B&W HTM71 and wondering now, if for CAD 1800, I will get the same cheep parts inside.
Great info!
I've measured electrolytic caps and compared the behaviour to polypropylene, polycarbonate and the ultimate, mica-silver for crossovers. Non polar electrolytics are composed of two back to back polarized electrolytics. As you lower signal voltage through them you see distortion occur at the zero voltage crossover from positive to negative and vice versa. There is a dielectric absoption going on where it takes energy to reverse the voltage on the cap (signal going through the cap is AC). The greater the dielectric absoption, the greater this zero crossover signal flattening, as the signal fights to allow a release of electrons from the dielectric.
So what I used to do, was measure this distortion at low signal levels to select the type of capacitor with the least of this effect. That gets me to the silver mica caps. Hellishly expensive by suffers the least from this effect. It even gets down to there where differences in dielectric absoption between different batches of the same capacitor type and brand. The green dipped metal film plastic caps where the absolute worst. Up to 30% of them would fail tests. Got to the point they where banned from use.
I did that (upgraded the cheap one) with a pair of Jensen 2 ways. Someone had put them on the curb with a "free" sign taped to the side. The tweeters were blown, but the woofers were good (albeit a couple push on terminals had fallen off). I braced the cabinet walls, stuffed them, replaced the paper tweeter with a silk dome. For the crossover, the original was a single series ferrite core on the woofers (i left that) and the tweeter had a single series electrolytic. I kept the "principle" of first order, and just upgraded to a cheapo poly cap. Its amazing that for scrap wood and a couple caps i had laying around, I could completely transform the sound of the speaker, while keeping all the components the "same" (on paper at least). Going to the inexpensive silk dome was a night and day difference though. The amount of enjoyment those speakers provided was orders of magnitude more than the money I put in.
I should add that I had a bag of ~25 of those poly caps, and I sat for a half hour measuring and matching as close of a pair as I could find. It shouldn't be understated how important matching L/R components are in a stereo setup.
Great vid. Definitely thinking about pimping up some speakers. Unfortunately I will be restricted to working with speakers with a sensitivity of 88 or about which wasn’t particularly common 30 years ago and even less likely with contemporary speakers
I'm curious how you feel about oldschool Klipsch Heritage speakers and the parts they used vs possible upgrades. Especially the Heresy1 and Forte 1 Speakers.
Hi there, and thank you very much ! Do you have a video showing the effects of various capacitor, inductor and resistor types ?
Of course good quality is always better, but perhaps cheaper elements are not critical in certain locations ...like avoiding using a gun to kill a fly ?
For instance capacitors in parallel with a resistor, for slight resonant pole absobtion ?
Great video ...
I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, just an audio enthusiast and I just discovered your channel. It is one of the best channel on youtube! I just subscribed.
Ditto! So much to learn just in this video alone!👍👍
Have you made a video on how to install one of your upgrade kits? I’m looking for my SVS speakers.
I love upgrading speakers also! I would actually love to talk speakers with you for a few hours sometime! I wish you lived closer to me, up in Albuquerque, NM... Maybe someday I can take a roadtrip down to Texas and check your shop out, because I'd love to see what all you do! I just do speaker upgrades for a hobby and for friends and family, but I'd love to learn some more about making a business out of it someday maybe!...
Anyway, I would actually really love to see what all you can do to improve BOTH of these speakers in this video, because it looks to me like they both have MUCH room for improvement, but also great potential to be really good afterwards, so please make a video about your improvements to both of these models, along with their final improved measurements and listening results! That video will be very intetesting to see!!
Also suggestions for surround sides and maybe even rear
I love your videos sir!! Love them! One question: why use a center channel as part of this comparison? Is that not similar to comparing apples and oranges? Thank you sir!
I definitely loved this video
My KEF LS35a's still sounding great after 30 years!
REF 101’s? They are not LS3/5A - The crossover is completely different. Same drivers! Nice speakers!
I'm still using my early 90s Technics SB-L160 speakers and they sound great, so I'm not sure if upgrading would be any benefit.
Purchased a set of SVS speakers and returned them in less than a week.
When I built my first speakers, back when Hi Fi was just coming into being, the conventional wisdom was to cross from the woofer to the mid at 500 Hz and from the mid to tweeter at about 2500 Hz. I really liked Danny’s explanation as to why from the woofer to mid you don’t want to do this. It seem so obvious once he said it. So, why don’t speaker manufacturers know this? Also, I learned something new with his explanation as to why iron core and low end capacitors smear the sound. Danny - thanks for the 30 min lecture on speaker design.
A suggestion on video - Take a second round of video doing close ups for parts you want to show in detail and then edit it in at the right place(s). In general your videos are great, this would help to make them even better...
Look at Andrew Jones designs. His crossovers are 2200/2500 to the tweeter and 90/100hz to the woofers. The midrange is a pretty much a full range from 2200hz to 90hz.
That sounds like a good design. But, clearly even today some manufacturers are missing the point that Danny makes. Danny’s videos do a great job of explaining the “why” of things, which has helped me to have better understanding, at least in part, as to what makes his 2 way designs work as well as they do, and the pitfalls of designs that claim to be really good.
@@Enemji Eddie is talking about a 3 way design and you are talking about a 2 way design. How does that compare? It doesn’t.
I have a pair of KEF 105/3's that I simply replaced the factory Electrolytic Caps in the Woofer/Midwoofer/Midrange sections. In the Tweeter section as you mentioned, I used SoniCaps. I kept all the original Inductors due to the cost of replacing them with Air Cores would not have been worth it sonically. Same goes for the Cap values which are as high as 680uF ! I'm sure the entire thing can be re done by yourself but again the cost of shipping the Speakers and the parts expense aren't worth it for me financially. I'd be much much better off getting one of your awesome open baffle kits for that kinda money.
I did notice an improvement especially in the midrange/tweeter section (there's a mix of Solen/SoniCaps between the two. I kept the factory Bennic Resistors. again for cost. I was given 2 pairs of KEF 105/3's and a pair of KEF 104/2's for free from a mutual friend of Ron & I. I don't have much money sunk into them (I've actively amplified the *'Coupled Cavity" Woofers with 1000W Class ICE Power Amp from Parts Express with the Factory Crossover in series and the KEF Cube EQ profile inserted via miniDSP. For the Midbass/Midrange/Tweeter section, I'm running a pair of McIntosh MC50's (measured power of 70W@4Ω). Which is more than enough power even with the overtly complex Crossovers that they run through.
Enjoy your Videos and again, I want to build a pair of NX-Otica's one day instead of buying a pair of Consumer Speakers that have crap inside for parts but have awesome marketing and a cult following. When I saw your Sonus Faber video. It was another eye opener.
Keep up the awesome work Danny. Cheers,
Joe
Particleboard has excellent dampening and is being used again of brands like Wharfedale in top models.
KEF used it because it was good.
I think a good quality MDF is one of the best materials for most speaker needs. It is pretty dead and non resonant. It's also incredibly consistent. Easy to use different thickness's for different panels. Easy to work, screw and glue. It's also very easily obtainable and relatively inexpensive.
It's the best for building ones own designs or building a kit. Which I would suggest for most people who aren't all fingers and thumbs, and have a little time to do it.
A quality, sturdy, dead, stiff box is a great place to put quality parts into. It's surprising just how poor and downright shonky some speaker cabinets are. Even some that should not be at the price.
Some appear to imagine bracing isn't even worth the effort. Remarkable.
Always identify the biggest panel, and give it a few good raps with your knuckle. It shouldn't sound like an old tea chest.
Thanks for your work here, and all other videos. I was shocked viewing them about what they put into those mega overpriced speakers. Do you have any recommendations on how can I improve Polk Audio T15s for surrounds, T30 for Center, and T50s for front LR in Home theater? Is there a way to upgrade those significantly? Maybe you have upgrade kits?
Great shirt.
The addition of 1/4 in MDF with GreenGlue works great for damping.
Try lining the inside with 1.32 - 3.15mm lead sheet on polyurethane adhesive additionally held with multitude of wood screws topped up with engine room damping panels used in ship building and glass fibre infill. It's a mildly toxic, politically incorrect combination, certainly not recommended for vented enclosures, but with sealed it's as "dead" as it gets and passes the knuckle test wth flying colours. Dampen both the lead and MDF lightly before before applying glue and as soon as it starts to turn yellow and expand, stick them together, drive the screws into pre-drilled holes and clamp it. You can trim the excess once dry and seal the exposed lead with oil to prevent discolouration, prior to applying self-adhesive open cell engine room panels on top. Considerable weight gain brings about an additional benefit of providing stable, inert platform for heavy diaphragm drivers under excursion. It's like having an anechoic chamber inside the speaker, which should also be braced in a matrix fashion. Multiple, interconnected chambers with rounded edge, large aperture openings in-between.
“Lossy” speaker cabinets were a crucial aspect of BBC speaker designs to ensure the critical mids ie voices were less affected by cabinet resonance. They tuned the cabinet to move cabinet resonance to the lower frequencies where you’re less likely to hear them. However stiff, all cabinets make noise, it’s just where you want that noise to happen. As a British company Kef were involved with the BBC and today other British companies like Harbeth, Spendor, Falcon Acoustics, Graham Audio etc have carried forward the BBC R&D principles ie the legendary LS3/5a. People will say with BBC designs (including modern ones like Harbeth) they don’t use T-nuts and bolts, just wood screws...but that is intentional to tune the cabinet so the mids are least affected by cabinet resonance. So when you rap a cabinet based on BBC design principles they can seem a little “boxy” but that is part of the design. I don’t know if these principles are part of the Kef’s you have there but damping and stiffening them may make the mids worse. Kef were and still are brilliant engineers so know the compromises to make a balanced speaker at the price. Not saying you can’t improve old ones with better crossover components, connectors etc as everything is made to a price.
Actually lowering cabinet resonances down (out of the mid-range) into the bass region makes them more easily excitable and easier to hear. A stiffer cabinet lowers the magnitude of the resonances, and with the addition of a little No Rez, will knock the resonance issues right out. So it is not hard to do away with most of the coloration allowing the real music to be heard more easily.
And I have been into and upgraded quite a few Kef models and from what I have seen I can't agree with your opinion of their engineers. I've yet to see one with even mid-fi level parts inside, and I've yet to hear one that didn't sound any better than the next budget level speaker.
@@dannyrichie9743 I’m sure you know more than me on old Kefs. I’ve just looked that model up and it looks like the cabinets were not designed to BBC principles, so withdraw my suggestion 🙈. If you haven’t already, take a listen to the likes of Harbeth who follow some of the BBC principles who have lossy cabinets don’t react the way you describe. Having had a number of high end speakers over the years and now have Kef Blade 2’s which are incredible...never enjoyed my system more or listened to more music in my life. I have Kef LS50’s in another room which again are magic, especially for the money. Perhaps you would the engineering in those more!
@@neilgaydon5430 Pop those Blades and LS50's open and tell me what you see. I bet there is a LOT of room for improvement there.
@@neilgaydon5430 And there is no amount of box buzzing that will make the music sound better. If the original artists wanted to add some buzzing at a certain frequency then they would have added to the recording.
@@dannyrichie9743 Mmmmm...no one is talking about buzzing cabinets!!!...it’s worth understanding the science before making a comment like that, there are numerous white papers and research on the subject. We are talking about world class designs that have stood the test of time and continue to from giants in the industry. Try a pair of LS3/5a’s for example to hear how the science is put into practise. Or be closed minded, your call. For me I won’t be tuning in again.
I'm intrested to see you try and fit a high quality crossover in that center speaker 😀
Go active :)
Superb! I wrote an article on upgrade of the KEF Carlton II some years ago in DIY Audio, replacing the tweeters with Seas T22AF. You are right the original cross overs were built with very cheap parts. The FUN is in the Upgrade! Cheers!!
I have an early set of vintage Pioneer CS-53's that I got for (in my opinion) a really good deal at a goodwill a couple or so years ago. As they are they sound pretty great, but with how they're built I think Pioneer poured most of the budget into the box itself since it's made of plywood and not mdf or particle board, the 12" mid-bass woofer and the tweeter. So there's literally no crossover network in them, just some caps soldered to the tweeters. The speaker wire coming from your sound source also hooks the box either by spade terminals or a 1/4" jack. I've really been wanting to put some nice crossovers in them to make them better and possibly some better binding posts in the back. But I have no clue what frequency to cross them over at. Nor do I have the experience building crossovers.
I've got some 3-way technics with 15s in them...God I would love all these upgrades for them.
could you please try and test some kef concerto 1970 and some 104 ab refrence
Great video. Can you test JBL L830 AND JBL LC1 CENTER speakers. Thank you! Maybe also JBL es25c?
After your upgraded part kit. Would you recommend the SVS ultra center or look elsewhere?
Always learn a ton from your videos!! This one was super helpful!! Here's an odd question. What or how do you upgrade an older speaker that doesn't have a crossover?! I have set of the old British Epos ES12 speakers, that sound great (to me), but they are "old", and have one single capacitor on the tweeter! Can these be "upgraded" or improved?
Stay tuned. Someone is sending me a set of them.
That's the neat part you don't
I wonder if there any upgrades for a b&w dm560 that I got ripped off on.
I still have my polk audios from the 80's , Other than changing the tweeters they still run like new.
Me too. They out sound ANYTHING new. Nothing built their size comes close and even much bigger speakers can't compete with them.
@@mikehanks1399 Yep. Exactly. Me too!!! Got two sets of Monitor 10s. THE best.
You guys have to go put some new MKP polypropylene caps in those polks. It gets so much better!!
Have a pair of Polk Monitor 5s from the late 80s. Great sound.
@@jwrobin1Got a pair of 5 Jr. Plus with the passive radiator. No bookshelf made today can hang with them on the low end.
Have you ever reviewed the Polk LSiM series?
Hi, I have a pair o0f Grundig Fine Arts BX3 (BX300) and sound really good, but de inductors are with ferrite core, this is a 2 way speaker with a crossover frecuency of 2000 Hz. Do you think that by changing the inductors for ones with an air core, there will be a significant improvement in the sound?
Thank you
Hi Danny, do you sell the better quality capacitors and resistors
Well nothing has changed my mind one will carry on using the Westminster royal gr .inherited them plus all of my dad's o!d gear incl a pristine tborens124 tt .
I'll be looking for some signal analysis showing these inductors, capacitors and steel connectors "smear" the sound. Let's see what Eevblog has to say.
WHAT UP GRADE WOULD YOU RECOMMEND ON A PAIR OF KLIPSCH R 28F
Enjoyed the video, where do you get the tube connectors?
www.gr-research.com/store/p44/Electra_Cable_Tube_Connectors.html
Haha , loll , i enjoyed a lot 😆 u roasting about crossovers are audiophile grade components haha , funny 😄 things, great job danny 👏
Is there any benefit to having to center channels as left and right?
Is that residual charge of the iron (feromagnetic) called hysteresis?!
Great video, this analogy applies to everything, especially big purchases like houses and cars - most people only care what they look like, not their internal quality.
I would love to see this kind of analysis for something like the Canton B100 or maybe the Ventos
Send them over.
I want to build my own speakers to go with a 200w/channel 1988 Sony amp. I was thinking of building 4 ohm speakers. 4 vs 8, which is better?
Hi Danny, just found your channel. Would like to get your opinion on a couple of vintage Panasonic SB-400 speakers that i left at my mom's like 20 years ago. I would like to get them fixed as one tweeter got busted and a little nice punched a hole on both woofers. Later replaced woofers with cheap ones but they are now laying without being used. Do you recommend upgrade or is a waste of money? Would be better to get a set of modern speakers?
How do we measure frequency response at home ?
I use have used audio spectrum software from TrueRTA for years (paid -$100 for it back in 2005). It works great and is fairly easy to use. The test mic I use with it is a Behringer ECM8000 comes with calibration curve you can put in the software for totally flat response curve. This mic is phantom powered so you need to buy a phantom power supply to go with it (Behringer sell one for around $40 but there are cheaper ones available).
So in car audio we run active. So in home audio wouldn't it be better to remove the crossovers all together and run active and tune it with a processor with RTA to fix the problems the crossovers present?
Vintage all the way.
You could section off the resonator and add a another driver.
Possibly add an adjustable tweeter high pass switch.
The vintage will sound better in my opinion.
If only replacing the binding posts on the speaker, and not the amplifier feeding it - with the tube connectors, is there still much benefit?
There is still quite a bit of benefit in most cases.
14:14 engineer vs customer service:) Very instructive, I made the decision to bring my B&O speakers back to life rather than the Davis Acoustics
Oh, but those Davis Renoir sounds simply brilliant, though.
so would it be worth having my old JBL L220's Gone thru I had the surrounds done 8 years ago on both the LE 14 DRIVERS and the passives but I think the crossovers and the LPADS need to be replaced
absolutely
Tinned copper cable is best if you think about durability over time. Has had a lot of truble with copper cables that turn black to green after soldering. even if they are OFC. copper. Tinned cobber are the best!
I love you, man! 😀
The woofer it's not paper on KEF , it's a Bextrene cone ( plastic and foam composite ) Every cone that is black , shiny and from the 70's and 80's , it's pretty much a Bextrene cone !!
How do i send my speaker to you for improvement Thanks Richard
I wish i could have your knownledge! I have a video showing how i made the sound on my car with 4 mid range on the doors and 2 woofers+ tweeters on the boot cover. I noticed that when i used crossovers to the speakers the sound was not so great and i can remember being better with only capacitors on mid-tweet and the woofers directly to the amplifier. Can this be true? Can the crossover destroy the quality or does it sound like this cause i had bigger range coming out from each speaker covering each other? sry for my english but im not native .
An improperly designed crossover can be pretty bad. You may have also experienced a polarity issue. Ideally the passive filter needs to be designed based on the measured output in the car.
@@dannyrichie9743 Thank you for taking the time to response. Polarity is ok cause i checked one by one with dc to be sure. The speakers are the same i suppose i need to measure one woofer one tweeter and one mid range right? Then adjust the crossover to my needs.
@@DerbyRepairs When I said a polarity issue, I should have really said a phase issue. Polarity can be common between a tweeter and a mid, but they can be acoustically out of phase. Reversing a polarity can often bring the phase (or time arrival) back into alignment.
Then yes, measure each driver and then the sum of the drivers to see how they look.
@@dannyrichie9743 Crystal clear! I know alot about electronics but a few things about audio. I will measure and check the phase.
Do you ever tear apart any Active Studio Speakers?
The laws of physics have not changed, and it's a 50 year difference.
Automobile deaths p/100 million, 1972: 4.33, 2018: 1.13. Physics hasn't changed, so what has? Design, education, materials, experience?
@@levondanko628 ✔👍
@@levondanko628 legislation. Trust me, most car companies only care about your safety as much as the govt. makes them or for it's marketing value.
I have KEF reference 103 and the sound is very accurate. Recapping can bring problems. The resistances of film capacitors are different from the electrolytics you are swapping out. The tweeter is most sensitive to this disparity and may need a resistor to compensate. The tweeter can be subject to enough current to cause voice coil failure.
The circuit boards are designed around the footprints of smaller components and film caps and air core inductors can be vast compared to the space you want to add them to. The support needed to stop large components from vibrating is absent and could be a source of a resonance signature. The crossover may need to be done outboard and hardwired on a larger scale. The reference series KEF models were similar to the BBC thinking on design where the use of fairly thin walled birch ply, bracing and bituminous pads with long haired wool was an approach. I would be interested to see what you could do with a KEF reference speaker. But I think the crossover would need to be redesigned around the new style parts rather than straight swaps
The resistance of film caps compared to electrolytics is not different within their pass band. There is zero change in current that would cause tweeter failure. There is 100 times more disparity between two electrolytic caps of the same value. They're rated at +/-5% tolerances and they can be worst than that over time.
@@dannyrichie9743 Thankyou for replying, I was just revisiting the video. I was thinking about what you said. The model of speaker I have dates back to about 1976 and it has a rotating steel baffle with the tweeter and woofer mounted on it. This is square and allows the two drive units to be turned so that their positions relative to each other can be one of four ways.
The crossover is also mounted on the baffle. The woofer magnet has a cylindrical brace to the back panel of the cabinet. There is a peripheral brace below the baffle stiffening the cabinet so that there is about 40% of the volume below the baffle and 60% behind it.
I bought components to refurbish the crossovers from Falcon acoustics. They sent replacement electrolytics. I bought better wirewound resistors and upgraded the resistor quality elsewhere with Dale and Riken and another brand.
The inductors are small cylindrical ferrite or iron dust types and everything is fitted onto a small crossover board that sits on stand-offs on the steel baffle.
I upgraded the internal wiring. I know that the speaker sounds good as it is and I also know that the inductors and capacitors are potentially a bottle-neck in performance terms. KEF were using computers to design this model and it was one of the first speakers designed this way so they were probably learning a lot of lessons at that point.
I liked what you said about magnetic hysteresis in the inductors and it feels as if the crossovers have to be physically larger to accommodate the film capacitors and air core inductors. The tweeter pass band might need care because the film capacitors would reach and pass higher frequencies which may increase voice coil stress. The tweeter is the same 40mm dome that they used in the Reference105. The woofer is the large magnet long gap short coil version of their B200 bass midrange driver.
It would be interesting to see what you would do to get better performance from them. The crossover boards might have to me external or fitted into the cabinet instead of on the baffle.
Really great show Danny!