didn't realize when you said put the crossover between the preamp and amp that you meant the actual internal crossover, I thought you knew enough to be referring to a separate active crossover. I can tell you how to separate the high and low pass, but biwiring will do nothing for sound. Biamping will do very little, and it seems your understanding of electronics is a bit limited still. I don't mean this offensively but I have concern that if I tell you how to do it, and you don't do it right, you might damage yours speakers or amp and blame me. I think it would be better if you leave it as is. If you want to make some upgrades, thats fine, but your better off changing some caps and resistors rather than trying to set it up to biamp or biwire.
How experienced are you with soldering and desoldering? You can do damage to both the parts and the pads, even on robust boards like these from over heating them. If you aren't very experienced I would highly recomend building a kit or something first to get some soldering practice in before chancing damaging a set of very expensive speakers with very expensive replacement part costs.
How experienced are you with soldering and desoldering? You can do damage to both the parts and the pads, even on robust boards like these from over heating them. If you aren't very experienced I would highly recomend building a kit or something first to get some soldering practice in before chancing damaging a set of very expensive speakers with very expensive replacement part costs.
Bi-amping is only useful on 2.5 or 3 way systems and up,
an excellent intro here:
http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm
an excellent intro here:
http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm
What are your objectives?
SoundEngine355,
What are your objectives to begin with? Here are two objectives which would lead to very different paths:
Sample objective 1: Feel good that you have spent money plugging in some esoteric components.
Benefits: Feel great
Drawbacks: Spend lots of money with no audible difference. Eg $50 on a super-low-inductance resistor with 0.01mH of inductance versus a "bad" resistor that has 0.1mH of inductance, blissfully ignoring the fact that it's in series with a 3mH inductor coil anyway, or merely in series with a meter of wire that has more inductance than the resistor.
Sample objective 2: Improve transient response at the cost of something (there are always tradeoffs), say flatness of passband response.
Benefits: Obvious
Drawbacks: You need to learn about crossover alignments such as Bessel, Butterworth, LR etc., maybe by paying someone to do it for you and possibly remain with a feeling that you were not entirely in control as in the spirit of DIY.
SoundEngine355,
What are your objectives to begin with? Here are two objectives which would lead to very different paths:
Sample objective 1: Feel good that you have spent money plugging in some esoteric components.
Benefits: Feel great
Drawbacks: Spend lots of money with no audible difference. Eg $50 on a super-low-inductance resistor with 0.01mH of inductance versus a "bad" resistor that has 0.1mH of inductance, blissfully ignoring the fact that it's in series with a 3mH inductor coil anyway, or merely in series with a meter of wire that has more inductance than the resistor.
Sample objective 2: Improve transient response at the cost of something (there are always tradeoffs), say flatness of passband response.
Benefits: Obvious
Drawbacks: You need to learn about crossover alignments such as Bessel, Butterworth, LR etc., maybe by paying someone to do it for you and possibly remain with a feeling that you were not entirely in control as in the spirit of DIY.
This is what I want to do.
And I would prefer to build a clone of the current crossover, but with seperate HF and MF.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
And I would prefer to build a clone of the current crossover, but with seperate HF and MF.
do you feel that the speakers don't play loud enough?
If that is the issue then I'm assuming it's because the dynamic range is lacking for you, and your hoping that biamping will fix that? The primary reason I stopped playing around with Focal speakers and went to the Gedlee kit was that the focals simply couldn't achieve the realistic dynamic range I was looking for. No matter what we do, that speaker will easily reach it's maximum safe output well below realistic levels. Based on my experience with the midbass drivers and other focal tweeters, I would argue around 105db's (which is still quite loud).
Without the crossover in hand and an ability to study it a bit, I can't really tell you exactly what the schematic of that crossover is. However, if you lift the first capacitor in series with the tweeter (it starts at the input pad and is film), as well as the smaller of the two inductors tied in at that point, tie those together off the board, you will have lifted positive side of the tweeter (though I believe the tweeter is actually wired in reverse polarity). Then you just have to remove the ground, which requires removing the resistor lead at the - input pad and inductor, tie those together, and now you have the negative lead.
It will be so much easier to give you more exacting and specific directions with crossover in hand, so to make your life easier, here is what I would do. Think about the way all crossovers are made. They always have a capacitor in series to act as a high pass and a capacitor in parallel to act as a low pass. An Inductor in parallel is a low pass, and in series is high pass. When combined in alternate order, you increase the order. Focal commonly uses electric third order or 4th order crossovers, often with an C-R filter on the woofer. Film caps are thought to make the biggest difference in series, so are used mostly with tweeters, where as electrolytics are thought to not matter in parallel, and are commonly used in parallel. If you know that, you can begin to trace out the crossover with your finger by carefully following it backwards. Look for the tweeter inductors and one of the resistors to tie into the ground input. Look for the electrolytic caps to also tie into a central ground plane, with one of them likely having a resistor between it and the ground plane. Draw it up and post it, and I will see if it makes sense for you.
If that is the issue then I'm assuming it's because the dynamic range is lacking for you, and your hoping that biamping will fix that? The primary reason I stopped playing around with Focal speakers and went to the Gedlee kit was that the focals simply couldn't achieve the realistic dynamic range I was looking for. No matter what we do, that speaker will easily reach it's maximum safe output well below realistic levels. Based on my experience with the midbass drivers and other focal tweeters, I would argue around 105db's (which is still quite loud).
Without the crossover in hand and an ability to study it a bit, I can't really tell you exactly what the schematic of that crossover is. However, if you lift the first capacitor in series with the tweeter (it starts at the input pad and is film), as well as the smaller of the two inductors tied in at that point, tie those together off the board, you will have lifted positive side of the tweeter (though I believe the tweeter is actually wired in reverse polarity). Then you just have to remove the ground, which requires removing the resistor lead at the - input pad and inductor, tie those together, and now you have the negative lead.
It will be so much easier to give you more exacting and specific directions with crossover in hand, so to make your life easier, here is what I would do. Think about the way all crossovers are made. They always have a capacitor in series to act as a high pass and a capacitor in parallel to act as a low pass. An Inductor in parallel is a low pass, and in series is high pass. When combined in alternate order, you increase the order. Focal commonly uses electric third order or 4th order crossovers, often with an C-R filter on the woofer. Film caps are thought to make the biggest difference in series, so are used mostly with tweeters, where as electrolytics are thought to not matter in parallel, and are commonly used in parallel. If you know that, you can begin to trace out the crossover with your finger by carefully following it backwards. Look for the tweeter inductors and one of the resistors to tie into the ground input. Look for the electrolytic caps to also tie into a central ground plane, with one of them likely having a resistor between it and the ground plane. Draw it up and post it, and I will see if it makes sense for you.
5 cents worth fro Sydney...
Hello Soundengine355 ! Pjpoes is absolutely right....
I think you are trying to dive into the deep end, without actually understanding the complexities of the exercise. Circuit topology & system response are far more significant then actual "parts quality" I know this goes against the hifi tweaker's spirit, but a well designed crossover using the most electrically sufficient yet basic parts will outsound a badly designed crossover using the most expensive unobtanium parts... What I would attempt to acertain & evaluate first, is what you can improve in your system to make it sound better ?
Again, in most cases the biggest problem is the room itself & the positioning of the loudspeakers in it.
The component quality of the electra is definitely high enough - I am almost certain, that the capacitors that you've got are made by Solen & in ozz, this is where you get them from http://www.wescomponents.com/capacitor/solen/sm.htm
In something like the electra, the caps will be either metalized poly or tin foil - a simple means to tell them apart without hacking into them is that the metalized poly cap will be about 1/4 of the mass of a similarly speced tin foil unit. Tinkering with a crossover is not as simple as replacing with "better" quality parts, you will most definitely change the Q of the circuit in the process & unless you know what you're doing & you know how this interacts with the acoustical alignmnet of the vented box, you can end up stuffing things-up.
If u r still of the opinion that you can improve on the Focal designed crossover by simply getting "better parts" I suggest that you leave the Focal crossover intact & u build-up an equivalent out of the "better quality" parts & @ the end of the exercise u can do an AB comparison & u'll still have the original crossover to fall back on ;-)
Hello Soundengine355 ! Pjpoes is absolutely right....
I think you are trying to dive into the deep end, without actually understanding the complexities of the exercise. Circuit topology & system response are far more significant then actual "parts quality" I know this goes against the hifi tweaker's spirit, but a well designed crossover using the most electrically sufficient yet basic parts will outsound a badly designed crossover using the most expensive unobtanium parts... What I would attempt to acertain & evaluate first, is what you can improve in your system to make it sound better ?
Again, in most cases the biggest problem is the room itself & the positioning of the loudspeakers in it.
The component quality of the electra is definitely high enough - I am almost certain, that the capacitors that you've got are made by Solen & in ozz, this is where you get them from http://www.wescomponents.com/capacitor/solen/sm.htm
In something like the electra, the caps will be either metalized poly or tin foil - a simple means to tell them apart without hacking into them is that the metalized poly cap will be about 1/4 of the mass of a similarly speced tin foil unit. Tinkering with a crossover is not as simple as replacing with "better" quality parts, you will most definitely change the Q of the circuit in the process & unless you know what you're doing & you know how this interacts with the acoustical alignmnet of the vented box, you can end up stuffing things-up.
If u r still of the opinion that you can improve on the Focal designed crossover by simply getting "better parts" I suggest that you leave the Focal crossover intact & u build-up an equivalent out of the "better quality" parts & @ the end of the exercise u can do an AB comparison & u'll still have the original crossover to fall back on ;-)
R1 is 7.1ohms
Mundorf only make the following values:
1 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.5 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.8 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
2.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
2.7 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
3.3 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
3.9 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
4.7 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
5.6 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
6.8 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
8.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
10 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
12 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
15 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
18 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
33 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
Any ideas how I could get 7.1ohms?
Mundorf only make the following values:
1 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.5 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
1.8 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
2.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
2.7 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
3.3 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
3.9 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
4.7 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
5.6 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
6.8 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
8.2 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
10 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
12 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
15 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
18 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
33 Ohm 20W MRESIST Supreme Resistor
Any ideas how I could get 7.1ohms?
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
L1 and L2 are calculated guesses.
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