Opinions on this crossover?

[Fryguy]

www.madisound.com/audaxrear.pdf
www.madisound.com/audaxhometheater.html

I'm using those rears as computer speakers for a while. I got the cabinets built to spec, and the drivers sitting next to me. Now it's just the crossover.

As you can see, the design is a simple 12db crossover with tweeter attenuation, but I have a few questions:

1, what is the 10+1 cap on the mid? They just trying to get a .9 value or ??

Is the crossover optimal? I noticed that madisound conveniently happens to stock all the components necessary, and I'm wondering if maybe the crossover was built based on what was in stock?

Can anyone suggest some improvements?

[kelticwizard]

Back when high quality poly caps were not so available, loudspeaker books were advocating using electrolytics for high values of capacitance and bypassing it with a smaller value of nonelectrolytic. Electrolytics can get inductive at high frequencies.

Here, the designer decided to use the bypass method to save the builder money, I guess.

I notice on the tweeter branch, the designer specified a Solen poly. So the poly is more important on the tweeter than the woofer.

So the designer is saying you don't have to go completely nonelectrolytic on the woofer branch.

That being explained, if you are looking to improve the crossover, (albeit at extra cost), well, that would be a place to start.

[kelticwizard]

Originally posted by Fryguy
www.madisound.com/audaxrear.pdf
www.madisound.com/audaxhometheater.html

They just trying to get a .9 value or ??

I'm guessing these two capacitors are hooked up in parallel, and their sum is 11 uF.

[Fryguy]

any reason to run them in parallel instead of just finding an 11mfd? And what type of sonic benefit would I get by making the mid cap a poly instead of the electrolytic it is now?

[Jonathan Bright]

The 10+1 is not big deal. 11uF is probably a non-standard value and unless they were doing a big production run they probably weren't in a position to ask a cap manufacturer to do an 11uF cap. As was said earlier a combination is not unusual. it is cheaper to have a 10uF electro' and a smaller plastic film in parrallel. You then get the value you want with some theoretical advantage at least by having a cap with better hi-frequency characteristics. There is probably not agreat deal of advantage in a plastic cap in the mid range. Purists would have them all Polypro' but "you pays your money and takes your chances". I just never believe there is such a thing as "No-compromise" sound system. Almost everything I've seen has been somesort of compromise and it boils down to cash/time/size etc in the long run. The cross over shown is a compromise like everything else.