Capacitor Quality and Placement

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When selecting the quality of capacitors used in a crossover, I would assume that the most critical capacitor would be the capacitor in series for the tweeters highpass. I assume that the capacitors in parallel for the woofers section or any traps, etc are less critical.

I have used Solen capacitors throughout my design and am curious what kind of effect I will see from upgrading to something like Hovland or Infinicap and where in the circuit will I get the most bang for the buck.

Any thought??????

Thanks,
Jeff
 
diyAudio Senior Member
Joined 2002
UPGRADES

Hi,

While I agree in general, the trick is to keep proper balance between the speaker units.

For example:imagine you had a bi-polar elco in series with the tweeter,changing it to a higher effeciency filmcap may very well upset the tonal balance of the entire speaker system.

So,if you change anything you're actually becoming you're own designer and I would advise to change components (especially caps) for the best possible balance.

Finding the best balance may require some experimenting on your side and will quite likely yield a more revealing speaker.

Inductors can be just as critical,especially on finely tuned x-overs so the same advise of caution applies.
Measure series resistance and inductance before you invest in anything fancier.

Components in an impedance correcting Zobel network are less critical sonically and I usually put those last on my list.

Happy tweaking,

Cheers, ;) ;)
 
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