Building passive crossover

[tony Ma]

I am planning to build DIY speaker
My questions is there any different result in term of Sonic when I am using Expensive capacitor and resistor?
Can any one suggest what brand to use for CAPACITOR and RESISTOR?

[singa]

Hi,According to Lynn Olsen there is a difference about what you use for crossover.You get what you pay for but that does not mean the most expensive are the best.Most people who use expensive parts don't talk about it because if they have bad results they don't want to look like fools.But essentially the ones that give good results don't come cheap.

Film and foil capacitors are the way to go.So forget about Solens,SCR or other similiar ones although they are polpropylene and don't touch polyester caps.Try Auricaps and those in this price range.If you want more exotic
Mundorfs are value for money like silver in oil or SGO (silver/gold in oil).Even the non oil silvers.Then for the truely exotic Audio note and Dueland.

As for resistors don't use the cheap white ceramic power resistors although you could use them for testing initially to set the values.Try to get non inductive wirewound resistors like Ohmite and Dale but when comes to the crunch even non inductive ones will have to do.Lastly only use air core inductors and not iron cored ones.All the best.

[Cal Weldon]

What you use depends on your budget and your design. A cheap little speaker will be fine with electrolytics, iron core and sand cast resistors. As the drivers get more expensive consider using higher quality XO parts.

It's all relative. There's no point in using really expensive drivers and cheap XO parts just like it makes no sense to spend a heap on your XO parts if you have only mediocre drivers.

[TerryO]

Originally Posted by tony Ma

I am planning to build DIY speaker
My questions is there any different result in term of Sonic when I am using Expensive capacitor and resistor?
Can any one suggest what brand to use for CAPACITOR and RESISTOR?

Tony,
I'm a bit of a heretic, but depending on how much you intend to spend, Non-Polar Electrolytic caps can work fine. I've built many crossovers using them, although I do use small value polypropylene bi-pass caps (Dayton) in parallel with them. Non-inductive wirewound resistors work fine as well. I do like fairly large guage air core inductors as they can be heard. The Erse iron-core inductors aren't too bad either.

If you really feel that you must spend more, then by all means do so, just don't expect a lot of improvement. If you really want to know what the difference might be, just build one crossover with bi-passed electrolytics and non-inductive wirewound resistors and another using all the trick stuff with the same values. Use the same inductors in both to make it a level playing field and then have a friend listen to each and tell you which is better, or if he can even tell them apart.

Best Regards,
TerryO

[Bimphert]

Originally Posted by TerryO

Tony,
I'm a bit of a heretic, but depending on how much you intend to spend, Non-Polar Electrolytic caps can work fine. I've built many crossovers using them, although I do use small value polypropylene bi-pass caps (Dayton) in parallel with them.
Best Regards,
TerryO

What size/value do you normally use for the film bypass caps?


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[Burge0114]

Maby of some help



link removed as not relevant to topic. Burge, we have rules against spamming, please respect them or further action will be taken.

edited by moderator

[Burge0114]

Originally Posted by Burge0114

Maby of some help



link removed as not relevant to topic. Burge, we have rules against spamming, please respect them or further action will be taken.

My bad sry

[Andersonix]

Apex Jr has lots of large film caps and power resistors.