Capacitors purchased

[Madmike2]

Hi i am out buying caps right now so i dont have a camera but the ones i have so far tracked down are these giant yellow Bennics .. if i remember correctly these are FAR superior to electrolytics for passive correct ?

also found truly huge black caps with red ends that say PXA22QY75T 22uF 75VAC

all of these are omni polar and i am thinking they are all film or polypropolene. I am really close to buying these oil filled jobs but they are stupid big . I will post a pic of these when i get home BEFORE i use them so if i screwed up i can return them.

[DcibeL]

Hi i am out buying caps right now so i dont have a camera but the ones i have so far tracked down are these giant yellow Bennics .. if i remember correctly these are FAR superior to electrolytics for passive correct ?

For passive crossovers any cap that isn't an electrolytic is FAR superior . The Bennic caps you speak of I believe are polyester, and are quite good. Not quite as good as Solen Fast Caps (polypropelyne), but they are also cheaper.

I think for the best price/performance ratio polypropelyne caps are the best bet.

[Madmike2]

Ok here is a bad photo of the caps i bought a whole whack of them in various values. Are these poly or metalized mylar something or others ?

I didnt buy the oil caps although i am sure they would have been fun they are just too damn big. mini flask size

Are these good ?

[Madmike2]

I just built the left side x-over with those other caps i purchased in the picture above. I kept the electrolytics in the right side. Then i played music. Fading left to right was a revelation. You would have to be deaf not hear the difference. It appears to be a wide open unmuffled midrange.

Does this jive with anyone else experiences with proper caps ?

[DcibeL]

The yellow Bennic caps in your picture are polyester ones I thought they were. I have a couple of them in my own crossovers because of the large size I needed the Solen caps were a little expensive.

Like I've already said, anything that isn't electrolytic is far better. Quite a bit more expensive too but it's worth it as I'm sure you know now. Just another note about choosing crossover components, never use an iron core inductor. Always air core. I don't know about any other manufacturers, but Solen provides the series resistance spec for all of their inductors so you can take all factors into account when designing the crossover.

[Madmike2]

At this point in time i dont have a choice but to use the IRon core as i havent had time to finish building my winding 'kit' I am sure there is something off with the iron core because they saturate and a few other undesirable characteristics. But until i hear them differently i will have to get by with it.



COme to think of it, they might be why i cant get a nice smooth mid sound

[Ron Shaw]

Iron core will always outperform an air core, if it is designed to handle the required power. There are good iron core coils available, such as the Erse devices. At H.E.L. we always prefer Erse iron cores to any air core in woofer circuits, if the right value is available. The lower DC resistance is always welcome. The Erse units we use are rated for 500 watts, which should be enough for almost any application. We have found that the 500 watt rating is quite conservative, as we have seen no core saturation even at 1000 watts in our bench testing. We use air core coils in our midrange and tweeter circuits, where the increased Dc resistance isnt a problem, since attenuation is usually required for these circuits anyway.
The blanket recommendation to always avoid iron core coils makes no sense. We do recommend avoiding ferrite core devices, unless there is good data on power handling, since cheap iron core (ferrite) often have no reliable data. Stay with the better iron core devices, using laminated cores for your woofer circuits.

[Madmike2]

Ahhhhhh i asked but no one answered me when i wanted to know if it was frequency or power that saturated it. Now i know. I am no where near that power level so i dont have to worry ? Also these are not cheap iron cores, they are steel/iron whatever wafer cores.

[DcibeL]

I suppose in a high power application using a high quality iron core inductor would be a good choice. The reason I have always stayed away from iron core inductors is that whenever I have seen them used in a crossover it is to reduce the price or size, not to increase the power handling.

[wigginjs]

Be very careful about using the "make a change to one speaker, leave the other one the same, use stereo source material and fade between the two speakers to hear the difference" method of testing a modification. In lots of source material (Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" for example) the left and right channels have the same instruments being played, but they sound very very different. This can lead to false positives or negatives.