Blog: Upgrade Inductors with Care

@agisthos over in the DIYaudio forum you'll find builders who have, and many prefer iron core for woofers due to bass slam.

Thank you, @carlsbad2 

Need to make a correction for clarity. I should have said:

You’ll find that for the most part the power dissipated in crossover components before the driver is far less than the power dissipated in a driver so it’s not the issue you think it is.

Hi @lemonhaze - The whole point of the post was that in real life inductors are not ideal and you should take DCR into account before making modifications because any good speaker designer will use it to their advantage, and design the entire circuit with that DCR in mind.  If you are just replacing coils with bigger and bigger conductors without compensating for lost DCR you are basically ignore an aspect of the crossover you should not.

This is something you can do and should do when using modern crossover simulators. I’m sorry this went completely over your head.

I don’t say not to upgrade the coils. I say to measure what you are doing carefully and take into account possible unexpected effects.

Watt for watt, coils are more thermally stable and often handle power much better than resistors. I wrote a whole section on why this is and you totally read past it. <sigh>

Thermal compression is something we worry about much more in a driver, but again, run the math. That’s what simulators are for. You’ll find that for the most part the power dissipated before the driver is far less than the power dissipated in the driver so it’s not the issue you think it is.

@carlsbad2  Glad to hear it, but I just can't get my hear around using wax in a coil. :D