Difference between Dayton wire wound inductor vs. foil inductor

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
I don't know if this story true or not but I heard the guy who discovered the buoyancy effect of water while he was in a bathtub and he got so excited he ran from his bathtub naked to the street to tell everybody about it.

So I got a chance to swap between Dayton wire inductor and Goertz foil inductor and found some interesting differences. What I found seem consistent from what I observed and posted on a thread about inductance and capacitance of speaker wire and another thread about the misconception of critical component in the signal path.

Naturally wire wound inductor, and assuming everything being equal, has more inductance whereas foil inductor has more capacitance. Based on what I heard, the Dayton inductor has a slight lift in the lower treble and emphasizes sibilance, whereas the foil inductor definitely is warmer sounding. The vocal on the Dayton inductor has a slight bit more trailing edge and sustains a little bit longer whereas the foil coil is just a touch more damp so the trailing edge ends just a touch abruptly, relatively of course. Given my speaker voicing, I actually like the Dayton better. Between the two, the Dayton actually sounds a little more dynamic and the soundstage is a little bit more 3 dimensional, whereas the foil inductor because of the slight over-damp nature, the soundstage is a little more close in and to be honest, the sound is a little bit anemic and lacking a little slam and energy.

Another important fact is my speaker uses 1st order filter so it is very sensitive to the xover component because the woofer has to operate at such a wide frequency range. But if your speaker uses for example 4th order roll off then the effect may not be too apparent, because by the time the extra inductance of the wire inductor starts to have any effect, the woofer has already rolled of too much already. Before I installed the foil inductor to my xover, my speakers always had this slight harshness on the lower treble which I thought because of my speaker cable but after having the foil inductor the harshness is almost gone.

Awhile back when I was poor, I made a pair of speaker cables out of the Goertz 16AWG foil inductor which was alright. So I thought maybe if I made a pair using 12AWG it would be even better, but I was wrong. The sound was just way overly damped with the 12AWG so I went back to the 16AWG foil. So maybe there is something to the capacitance of the foil inductor.

So can we make any generalization? I am pretty confidence what I observed is accurate. If you want the sound a little more dynamic if risking a slightly elevated sibilance, use wire wound inductor. If you want something slightly warm, use foil inductor but you could lose some dynamic.
 
I would presume that having more or less capacitance will change the "Reactive" component of the crossover filter. But, this should be far below a listenable threshold.

The last time we experimented with crossover inductors/capacitors it was 2 weeks break-in each time something was changed.

:(
 
I think the issue at hand is when we start tweaking a commercial XO dcr of the inductor has been factored into the design. Regardless of what gauge or type of inductor be used, you must maintian the same dcr of the inductor it replaces. Yes for commercial products designers tend to save a few pennies by using the the thinniest gauge wire to attain the dcr of the inductor required in the design. For the expert diy speaker builders they off course can simulate their XO designs bass of all the goodies that they plan to use.

Cheers.
 
Inductor tolerance can easily be 10% - unlikely to be as small as the 0.5% you imply. Two different inductor constructions are likely to have different resistance. If you don't compare like with like then your comparison is meaningless.

Basically you changed one component of unknown value and parasitics for another one of unknown value and parasitics in a mid-band filter (although hopefully each has the same nominal inductance). It is hardly surprising that they sounded different, and not surprising that you prefered one. This result tells us nothing, except that circuit theory still works OK.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.