Best Loudspeaker Crossover Capacitors
Dear All
After many months of changing, checking, listening to sound differences between lots of types of capacitors I finally found out this:
a) Best capacitors (for me) for use with Tweeters are the Polycarbonate ones; they are marked as MKC and come in different values.
b) Best capacitors for mid-woofers & woofers are the MKT ones. If you bypass these with MKP ones (use 1/5 value of the main bypassed capacitor) you will get amazing results.
c) First try to find those that come from ERO Company.
Prefer any of their polycarbonate (MKC) ones & The MKT1822 bypassed with the MKP1837 ones. They have some kind of secret recipie in them.
d) When you change your crossover capacitors let your speakers play for about 50 hours. No need for big volumes. Then listen.
e) There is a case of sensitivity change to the speaker units when you do this. If this happens use a 10ohm potentiometer, connect it to the (+) of the tweeter. Adjust to the desired level. Disconnect & measure its value. Then put a 5w resistor with the ohm value you measured. Done. By this way you can manage the sound of the tweeter not to come forward .
f) The PIO capacitors are best for valve/tubes pre-amps & amps.
Hope I helped you out.
Dear All
After many months of changing, checking, listening to sound differences between lots of types of capacitors I finally found out this:
a) Best capacitors (for me) for use with Tweeters are the Polycarbonate ones; they are marked as MKC and come in different values.
b) Best capacitors for mid-woofers & woofers are the MKT ones. If you bypass these with MKP ones (use 1/5 value of the main bypassed capacitor) you will get amazing results.
c) First try to find those that come from ERO Company.
Prefer any of their polycarbonate (MKC) ones & The MKT1822 bypassed with the MKP1837 ones. They have some kind of secret recipie in them.
d) When you change your crossover capacitors let your speakers play for about 50 hours. No need for big volumes. Then listen.
e) There is a case of sensitivity change to the speaker units when you do this. If this happens use a 10ohm potentiometer, connect it to the (+) of the tweeter. Adjust to the desired level. Disconnect & measure its value. Then put a 5w resistor with the ohm value you measured. Done. By this way you can manage the sound of the tweeter not to come forward .
f) The PIO capacitors are best for valve/tubes pre-amps & amps.
Hope I helped you out.
Can u show a simple sketch about the potential meter connecting the tweeter. Is it at the input to the crossover or the input to the tweeter. How would you do it, considering the crossover will have a hole after u open the crossover unit.
Some of the speakers may have used electrolytics. So when u replace, do you follow the 'printed' cap value or by open the cap and do a measurement.
I am using Jantzen cross cap on my KEF Cresta 10 (sadly, this is a third order). Sound is quite neutral. Heard that Jantzen Z-superior is better.
Some of the speakers may have used electrolytics. So when u replace, do you follow the 'printed' cap value or by open the cap and do a measurement.
I am using Jantzen cross cap on my KEF Cresta 10 (sadly, this is a third order). Sound is quite neutral. Heard that Jantzen Z-superior is better.
Somebody was asking here about high quality resistors with low inductance.
TC components and also BI make thick film resistors that are awaillable from 5 to 30 Watts. It is thick film on alumina (aluminum oxyte ceramic). It is thoose white plates with a sputtered layer of thickfilm. The inductance is as low as a piece of wire with the same lenth. They cost from 1€ a piece with 5W. The sound is neutral. You can get them from Farnell.
Mills makes noninductive wirewound with 12W. Partsexpress sells them. They have a good reputation but i never tried them.
My favourite resistor is the Mundorf Supreem. A very expensive non inductive wirewound. I use them whenever i can afford them. They sound somewhat more musical then the thickfilms but it is actually very hard to put that in words.
Interesting enough i just made a measurement survey about inductance in power resistors and the output was quite frustrating. It reminds me of the Morley-Michaelson experiment where they tried to measure the speed of light in an hypothetical "ether).
The outcome was the most famous "zero result" in the history of experimental physics. Michaelson did the experiments many times again with bigger and bigger sofitication and could not beleave himself what he got.
Comming to a point i measured inductance of various resistors for speaker crossovers up to 200kHz and got a zero result too. even the cheepest concreet wirewounds had extremely low inductance so the differences we hear may come from something else.
i do not say they do not have inductance and in a high frequency topology that may count but rather not in loudspeaker crossovers.
TC components and also BI make thick film resistors that are awaillable from 5 to 30 Watts. It is thick film on alumina (aluminum oxyte ceramic). It is thoose white plates with a sputtered layer of thickfilm. The inductance is as low as a piece of wire with the same lenth. They cost from 1€ a piece with 5W. The sound is neutral. You can get them from Farnell.
Mills makes noninductive wirewound with 12W. Partsexpress sells them. They have a good reputation but i never tried them.
My favourite resistor is the Mundorf Supreem. A very expensive non inductive wirewound. I use them whenever i can afford them. They sound somewhat more musical then the thickfilms but it is actually very hard to put that in words.
Interesting enough i just made a measurement survey about inductance in power resistors and the output was quite frustrating. It reminds me of the Morley-Michaelson experiment where they tried to measure the speed of light in an hypothetical "ether).
The outcome was the most famous "zero result" in the history of experimental physics. Michaelson did the experiments many times again with bigger and bigger sofitication and could not beleave himself what he got.
Comming to a point i measured inductance of various resistors for speaker crossovers up to 200kHz and got a zero result too. even the cheepest concreet wirewounds had extremely low inductance so the differences we hear may come from something else.
i do not say they do not have inductance and in a high frequency topology that may count but rather not in loudspeaker crossovers.
My speaker has an EQ network to flatten a 20 Ohm peak @ 2.2kHz. Three components are in series: 3 Ohm resistor, 12uF capacitor, .45mH coil. The three series components connect in parallel on the +/- circuit between the amp & speakers.
The original cap was a $5 Dayton PP. The first surprise was finding audio performance to vary depending on the polarity of the cap (one direction preferred). Later, even more shocking, was the outright transformation when the above cap was replaced by a special very high quality dual 6uF capacitor of unknown type
It was almost like a different musical performance w/ different instruments. The upgrade was shocking, even more so because the cap is only in parallel. Looking forward to experiments w/ the 9uF parallel cap on the midbass.
The original cap was a $5 Dayton PP. The first surprise was finding audio performance to vary depending on the polarity of the cap (one direction preferred). Later, even more shocking, was the outright transformation when the above cap was replaced by a special very high quality dual 6uF capacitor of unknown type
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
It was almost like a different musical performance w/ different instruments. The upgrade was shocking, even more so because the cap is only in parallel. Looking forward to experiments w/ the 9uF parallel cap on the midbass.
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