He's doing this to find out for himself if capacitors make a difference. How does changing tweeters accomplish that?
If you are quoting my posts, quote them in full or not at all.
I said:
You have a better suggestion FOR HIM? 🙄
I said:
answering to:
and my answes suggests him how to solve his problem, not wasting time and $$$$
You have a better suggestion FOR HIM? 🙄
I do have a suggestion. Let him conduct his experiment, instead of thinking he should blithely obey your pronouncement to abandon it and buy different tweeters. Which most likely would necessitate reworking the crossover, and of course, buying different capacitors, inductors, and maybe designing padding.
That's a decision rife with futility. I don't trust that shill as far as I could throw him.
Look- caps make a difference, as I've been there. There are too many experiences to just deny the existence or potential. Just don't go trusting someone that is looking to part money from your wallet as his endgame.
Some things in audio do occur that skeptics abhor. Just be careful in your endeavors.
Later,
Wolf
A capacitor is a capacitor.
That is some part of a farad.
It might also have a little inductance and ESR.
Will that be enough to make a difference ? Of course
Depends how big a difference you are looking for.
As to whether that is a difference that can be heard is debatable.
That is some part of a farad.
It might also have a little inductance and ESR.
Will that be enough to make a difference ? Of course
Depends how big a difference you are looking for.
As to whether that is a difference that can be heard is debatable.
Well, therein may lie the biggest part of your problem.
Believe what you want, but when people claim that you can actually hear the difference between binding posts and tube connectors it's hard to take anything else they say very seriously.
Good luck with your testing. But as others here have said you can probably find better things to spend your time and money on.
Somebody was saying Denon amps let you know the brand of speaker wires being used.
My ears are not so good.
Maybe later replies to this thread can be moved to a less serious part of the forum.
Crossovers are frequency distributors, the correct frequency range for each part of the speaker is sent by it to different drivers and tweeters, from the input signal.
The design takes into consideration the frequency response and performance expected.
It is a big subject, and you have personal preferences and experience from the designer. Also production tolerances...electrolytics are +/- 20 % typically.
By fiddling values, you just change the distribution among drivers and tweeters.
But if the speakers themselves are average, you achieve little.
And also depends on your amp.
I put a CD4440 based car radio, 20W/channel...on 4" full range.
It causes the speakers to distort at full volume., it is too powerful.
But on big speakers, it is loud and clear.
So that also has to be considered.
And acoustics in a garage are going to be, well, lacking.
My ears are not so good.
Maybe later replies to this thread can be moved to a less serious part of the forum.
Crossovers are frequency distributors, the correct frequency range for each part of the speaker is sent by it to different drivers and tweeters, from the input signal.
The design takes into consideration the frequency response and performance expected.
It is a big subject, and you have personal preferences and experience from the designer. Also production tolerances...electrolytics are +/- 20 % typically.
By fiddling values, you just change the distribution among drivers and tweeters.
But if the speakers themselves are average, you achieve little.
And also depends on your amp.
I put a CD4440 based car radio, 20W/channel...on 4" full range.
It causes the speakers to distort at full volume., it is too powerful.
But on big speakers, it is loud and clear.
So that also has to be considered.
And acoustics in a garage are going to be, well, lacking.
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Wolf,
What would your comments be about mixing caps to build up a certain value? For example, you need a 20uF cap fir a project and don't have that in your parts box; you have a 10uF Dayton DMPC, a 5uF Solen and a 5uF Audyn - can / should one use these in parallel to get the 20uF cap needed?
I would find a 22 uF
And if all had the same chemistry/build, OK but still a hack.
Success or fail is the user's decision.
Here speaker makers connect the big drivers direct, and a small 1 to 4.7 uF electolytic to one pole of the tweeter, the other is parallel, basically the tweeter is fed through the cap.
That's it, the capacitor acts as the filter / crossover, and protector.
And if all had the same chemistry/build, OK but still a hack.
Success or fail is the user's decision.
Here speaker makers connect the big drivers direct, and a small 1 to 4.7 uF electolytic to one pole of the tweeter, the other is parallel, basically the tweeter is fed through the cap.
That's it, the capacitor acts as the filter / crossover, and protector.
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Boy, Wolf, I couldn't agree with you more.
And one of the best examples is the tube connector scam that has already separated a lot of people from their hard earned money.
I decided my system wasn't quite good enough to satisfy the blizzard of advertorial which told me what I was missing out on.
Receiver performance was dramatically boosted with the addition of new 'WTF' branded LED face-plate and wiggly line generator.
With the help of home loan redraw, oxygen free, activated speaker wire was combined with carbon fibre carpet isolation bridge technology and platinum impregnated male, and beryllium impregnated female direct speaker connections, to provide hyper opinionated signal to the speaker crossover.
For optimum sound, lithium based foil capacitors from Blitzen of Bulgaria were matched with hand wound, medicinal grade copper inductors and Wowee brand resistors from S.N. Oil and Co.
Speakers were then located in a new, purpose built listening room with each wall painted a different colour to better enhance reproduction of frequencies over 20kHz.
And the 1926 recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto by Fritz Kriesler still sounded awful!
Geoff
Receiver performance was dramatically boosted with the addition of new 'WTF' branded LED face-plate and wiggly line generator.
With the help of home loan redraw, oxygen free, activated speaker wire was combined with carbon fibre carpet isolation bridge technology and platinum impregnated male, and beryllium impregnated female direct speaker connections, to provide hyper opinionated signal to the speaker crossover.
For optimum sound, lithium based foil capacitors from Blitzen of Bulgaria were matched with hand wound, medicinal grade copper inductors and Wowee brand resistors from S.N. Oil and Co.
Speakers were then located in a new, purpose built listening room with each wall painted a different colour to better enhance reproduction of frequencies over 20kHz.
And the 1926 recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto by Fritz Kriesler still sounded awful!
Geoff
Geoff, I made the same changes in my system, my road racing tracks from 1972 Isle of Man TT have never sounded so good...
A side note: When looking at TG designs, I realized it's cheaper to go fully active than use top of the line analog xo components for 3-ways or more. Keep that in mind if you are looking to find differences between crossovers 😉
I have my father's LP recordings from the 1958, 59 and 1960 TTs with commentary by Murray Walker: scratched, warped, generally knackered, but the bikes sound great! Mike Hailwood, John Surtees, Geoff Duke etc, marvellous stuff.
I only parallel same-brand caps, as they can really muck it up. Keep it 'in the family' so to speak.
Later,
Wolf
While I appreciate everyones advice, I am going forward with my experiment as presented (as much because I already have the stuff on the way as anything). I have a "few" opinions against this upgrade and only 1 for (me) but so you know, I modify everything. It's kind of an obsession, which I'm sure some of you can relate to. When I finish this test I will feel a great level of accomplishment if I improve these speakers but will also feel satisfaction learning that this level of cap upgrade does nothing if that's the result. I m sure this will not be the last time I need to select crossover capacitors. If there weren't so many varying opinions on this stuff I could just read about it. And yes, I could buy better speakers but I would be in the same crossover capacitor position with the better speakers, because I modify everything.
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Lol, I modify everything as well. Keep the leads long on the caps. You can use them on other speaker builds if you choose. You can parallel caps to make the sum of what you may need on other higher-end projects down the road.
Always good to experiment. Just like you, I tend to want to hear things myself. I have heard great things about the tritrix design.
I believe the Tritrix is a Curt Campbell design. I know on the Bordeaux (which I have) they suggested clarity cap CSA series on the tweeters.
Always good to experiment. Just like you, I tend to want to hear things myself. I have heard great things about the tritrix design.
I believe the Tritrix is a Curt Campbell design. I know on the Bordeaux (which I have) they suggested clarity cap CSA series on the tweeters.
The problem is that confirmation bias is a very powerful thing. And people who think that they can escape it are kidding themselves.
Without well controlled testing by an independent third party your results are likely to be predictable even now. You will probably report back that you could hear a difference and the new capacitors made the speakers "sound better". Whatever that means.
You haven't said whether you will be taking measurements of speaker performance before and after the changes. So I assume you will not be doing that and instead relying entirely on your own subjective listening tests. If that is the case, please don't be offended if some of us here question whether there was any real change in the performance or not.
Mixing types of capacitors to obtain the desired value can work very well in crossovers by exploiting the benefits of each type. This, however, requires some experimentation In order to get good results. Some of the most insanely expensive audio-marketed parts do this and package it into a single housing.
Making the smaller, and more revealing part something like 25% of the overall value is what I’m using with the parts I use.
Just having multiple parts, the esr is improved regardless by the increase in connectivity via additional leads, something else to consider.
Making the smaller, and more revealing part something like 25% of the overall value is what I’m using with the parts I use.
Just having multiple parts, the esr is improved regardless by the increase in connectivity via additional leads, something else to consider.
You believe a lot of BS. And GR research (they have no idea what research even is) is one of the biggest sources of lies and rip offs. Faster reactions of what? Time spaces? WTF are you talking about. Science is dead, long live fantasy.
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