@paulcreed - thanks, I'd never looked at Miflex components before, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Capacitor
Dear friends, I am interested in changing my crossover capacitor of 100uf 630VDC they are Auydn Q6 caps but I feel there is room for improvement if I put in better caps can anyone suggest what will be the best cap.
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+1 rodman George I think you are probably correct for the main purpose of THAT cap, especially if the circuit has it going to ground. Not super important and Auydn is darn good. If you want to spend $$, my choices are Jantzen and Juniper for capacitors really used in the L/C frequency circuit. More expensive, not worth the $. |
One of mine needed to be 125uF. That is pretty big and real expensive. So to save money I used 122uF Jantzen Premium ELKO with a 3.3uF Alumen Z as a bypass cap. I view this as similar to the way I used Duelund JDM Silver .01uF bypass caps with the Alumen Z. Looking at doing the wire, but with 17 drivers per speaker that is a big project for a Moab! Might still do it but really need to do some planning first. |
That's a big value and can get pricey, I've had good luck with Claity Cap CMR, Jantzen Aumin Z then for a smoother rich sound copper foil, Juniper, Miflex the copper foil are great for bypass also. Sonicaps aren't bad for the money certainly if you bypass them with a copper foil. If you have sand cast resistors pull all those out and add Mills or a little expensive the Path are nice. Re wire the cabinet can make a big difference. If changing out caps gets to expensive the little things like resisters, wire change, cabinet bracing does make a difference. Even with very expensive we'll know speaker company's once you open the speaker up you will be shocked the cheap crap they put in there. |
Indeed. One substantial difference, if the drivers are upgraded they will almost certainly be different response and therefore require at least some crossover changes. If the upgraded driver is a known commodity, like adding a Be tweeter to Moab for example, something the manufacturer actually does and knows how to do, that is one thing. But to just pick a superior driver that fits, well that is almost certainly going to call for a lot of crossover tweaking. As opposed to not really changing anything in the design at all, but merely implementing it with superior quality parts. That is what I did. Also keep in mind, not only the caps, resistors and inductors. Also the inductors are now oriented better, their axes all at 90 degrees to each other. Also they are mounted on Omega eMat. They are no longer mounted on a wafer thin bit of fiber board, they are now on massive dense carbon fiber BDR Shelf. They are no longer hot-glued to a brace, but isolated on Townshend Pods. Each and every one of these changes would be a pretty decent improvement on their own. All of them combined is why this upgrade elevates these speakers to such a high level. The beauty of this approach is that by being so careful to use all the same electrical values this means all Eric’s original work is retained and nothing needs to be trimmed or adjusted or experimented with. |
Even Troels with all Z caps = xovers cost more than the drivers,,!!!!!... How much to invest, and where the diminishing returns lay, is how well the drivers could possibly play together, how the cabinet works, and the crossover points implementation on the chosen drivers... - rixthetrick @mozartfan - There's no surprise superior engineered drivers will produce a better result. Yes, it is more complicated to know where and when to spend the money to get the best results for the investment. I am assuming you didn't just upgrade the capacitors and nothing else in the crossover networks? There's no blanket statement for crossover upgrades in the many varying speaker designs out there, on that we wholly agree. Though, depending on the parts used, upgraded parts can be as results varying as using different ingredients in a recipe - substantial differences. |
barely noticeable improvement, this crossover upgrade transformed the Moabs to a whole new level, night and day.
I was hoping the new Mundorf high priced caps would have transformed my Millennium tweets into something VERY XXP. But sadly onlya miniscule nunace = wasteful experiemnt, Now on the woofers, yes, there I got more than a nunace. But sadly all the oney I put into new high tech xovers should have gone into my High sens driver purchase. Now i am behind that budget some $1200++ Maybe you can tell your mids/highs are now more than a nuance superior, while others listening o your new xovers may say *eh, well...i guess...* To others thinking upgrading xovers is going to make your speakers into some all new, you are going down the wrong path,. Save your cash, go xover-less high sens. based on a painful experiement. Even Troels with all Z caps = xovers cost more than the drivers,,!!!!!... Can not match a high sens performance in mids/highs. |
As Rick knows, that JDM Silver was one that went into my Moab crossover upgrade. Along with Jantzen Alumen Z, Jantzen Premium ELKO, Path Audio resistors and Goertz Alpha Core inductors. Mounted on eMat and BDR Shelf, on Townshend Pods, and treated with TDF, fO.q tape and Herbie’s Grunge Buster, all mechanically crimped direct and soldered component to component with Cardas Quad Eutetic. Original crossover values were maintained, as determined by measuring all the stock crossover individual component parts. The result is easily my greatest mod type upgrade and exceeded all expectations. Compared to the Talon X crossovers professionally built by Michael Farnsworth and that cost almost as much but provided a barely noticeable improvement, this crossover upgrade transformed the Moabs to a whole new level, night and day. The question of what is ’best’ is as far as I’m concerned a chimera. A phantom. A ghost. The only way to even begin would be to try all the different parts. Inductors alone on this cost $300. For one set. There were at least three possible contenders. One of them, Deulund, would have cost much more than the $2k total cost of what I have. The capacitor review sheet that was used to select mine had some hundred caps on it. Resistors, at least three, probably six contenders. Then there are the combinations, permutations. What I did, weigh all the listener comments, and selected what I thought would get me darn close to cost no object for a fraction of the COTA price. I will never know how close I got. But, guess what? Don’t care! 😂🤣 Full crossover details can be found here: https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 |
As someone else mentioned the values of every component in the crossover are the more important in the voicing of the speaker, taking into account the character and limitations of the drivers used together, than the quality of the crossover components (well almost always). Could a better engineered crossover for a particular group of drivers, taking into account their measurements, particularly breakout, frequency response, impedance curves, anti-phase measurements with lower grade components beat out a higher quality crossover in parts? Absolutely. However, recreating the same circuit (within reasonable tolerances) with better engineered components that will introduce less noise, not choke transients, and reveal more detail is almost certainly going to produce a better sound. How much to invest, and where the diminishing returns lay, is how well the drivers could possibly play together, how the cabinet works, and the crossover points implementation on the chosen drivers... Duelund JDM Silver .01uF bypass cap - yeah, you might want to research this, it’s a gem of an upgrade for little outlay. |
I have no personal experience with trying different caps, inductors and resistors in crossovers. A local builder of high end speakers that employ compression/horn drivers and wide range cone drivers does not like at all Mundorf and Duelund capacitors. This is a matter of taste and particular application, so it is not necessarily a comment on the quality of such parts. But, it does mean that "best" can only be determined by experimentation, with the recognition that any particular swap might not work out for the better. That builder will be supplying me with a new crossover for my speakers, but, the parts are quite exotic and hard to come by (Western Electric paper in oil caps). I hope it works out for the better. |
Mundorf Mcap,
I've tried Mundorf's lower priced caps, Not even close in perforance to their top of line SESGO and Supreme Silver Oil. Another member here swears by the SESGO, and he is correct, they out perform the Supreme SilverGold. Something about the EVO winding tech withina Supreme casing, makes the superior sonics. Not cheap, but well worth it for the nuances. |
@erik_squires- 'Man, I no longer have the time and energy to explain the basics, let alone the subtleties of even ordered crossovers. This crap is why I barely post here." Things certainly have been getting silly, in these parts! Crossover gurus, that can't understand (maybe) an 8 Ohm, 130Hz*, 12dB/oct (Butterworth), low-pass network? 🙄 *260Hz, if 4 Ohm |
This really depends. With a value this high I have to assume it’s a low pass filter. If so it is likely to go to ground.@erik_squires, If the cap goes to ground, then it’s shunting all the frequencies above that driver’s cutoff to ground, essentially a short circuit, not a good thing for the amp. Unless the signal through the cap goes to another driver like a midrange or tweeter and then to ground, that’s different. However, a series inductor will block the higher frequencies and send nothing to ground, a "safer" option. We haven’t see an photo or a crossover schematic to tell where the parts are connected. |
The only identified issue with film caps is a potential for mechanical resonance specific to a frequency but audiophiles make up all kinds of things like posts in this thread. Caps can be in high or low pass filter networks. They are critical in both. So which is it then? Because if they are so critical then it would seem we would want the best ones, and you already admitted there are problems like mechanical resonance. Which is indeed a factor. So how can you be sure we are just "making up all kinds of things" about which is best? Help me understand your, uh, reasoning. |
Here's a link to a guy that did extensive listening tests for crossover caps. http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html I've found the copper foil in oil caps from companies such as dueland, Jupiter and miflex sound the best, but these can get quite expensive and are quite large. |
What are you trying to achieve? You have a pretty good film cap already. The only identified issue with film caps is a potential for mechanical resonance specific to a frequency but audiophiles make up all kinds of things like posts in this thread. Caps can be in high or low pass filter networks. They are critical in both. That's simple circuits. Whether the signal passes through them or is shunted to ground through them the effect is the same. You don't have a cheap electrolytic so temper your expectations. There is a reason some quite expensive speakers use sort of average capacities. |
What value is important the uf or the vdc The critical value is uF, micro-Farads, the unit of capacitance. VDC is voltage, which matters only in that you do not want to use a low voltage cap with high voltage as it can destroy the cap. Crossovers are in the single digits to tens of volts, not hundreds, so this number 630VDC is irrelevant. You just don't want one that is too low. Capacitors in crossovers are sometimes called filter caps because that is what they do, filter lower frequencies. The greater the capacitance the more energy the cap stores. Because of this, if you change the value from say 100uF to 150uF this will shift the frequency and this will cause the speaker to sound different. All caps and resistors have a tolerance, typically of a few percent, often printed on the part along with the value. So if your cap is 100uF +/- 5% it can be 95 to 105uF. If the manufacturer specs this cap that alone should be enough to tell you one or two uF one way or the other is not critical. If you really want to know you can buy a LCR meter and measure actual capacitance and inductance yourself. The idea someone had that the only thing that matters is the measured value and gives as his "reason" because, physics, is patently false. The better caps do indeed sound better even though they measure the same. And you want to know why? PHYSICS! What is actually happening inside a cap is electron charges are constantly shifting one way and another, in and out, according to the music signal. When we measure all we get is a static, fixed state number. There is nothing in it having anything to do with how fast and smooth these charges shift back and forth. Which with music is EVERYTHING! That is why some of these expensive caps use such an elaborate manufacturing process, to ensure extreme consistency and sensitivity down to the electron level. It ain’t cheap. It ain’t easy. And it can’t be measured by no meter. Thus the link to the cap comparison page above. |
Hi there, This really depends. With a value this high I have to assume it's a low pass filter. If so it is likely to go to ground. If so these rarely matter as much as caps in series. They DO matter, but it's hard to really judge their sonic worth as much. To hear the difference here you might want to try a non-polarized electrolytic before you spend too much money. Here's one that costs $2. https://www.parts-express.com/100uF-100V-Non-Polarized-Capacitor-027-360 Try it and see if you feel it's an important capacitor in your circuit. What value is important the uf or the vdc The uF determines the frequency of the crossover filter (gross oversimplification) the VDC determines the maximum voltage. If you apply too much it will short the capacitor and it will no longer work as expected. That's a very high value for a speaker where I can't imagine ever needing more than 200 VDC rating in extreme high power speakers but with film caps it's hard to make a lower voltage cap sometimes, do don't go looking to optimize this. Best, Erik |
There's no easy answer. According to the laws of physics, the best cap is the one with a value closest to 100uF, (a twenty nine cent 101uF cap should in theory perform better than a one hundred dollar 110uF cap, both 100u nominal). However, considering the tolerances of capacitors, the designers had to settle on a nominal value of cap that sounds best to them, and reject values that fall out that tolerance. So if your expensive substitute falls out of that design tolerance, it may not improve things at all. (I am assuming this is a commercial made speaker and not a DIY. If it's a DIY then the answer is: experiment with different makes) |
Jantzen Standard Z-cap (it comes in 100mf 400v), otherwise most likely you should add up values to get the 100mf you are looking for. Depending on your space and budget, economic availiable alternatives would include Solen Fast, Audyn MKP Plus, Mundorf Mcap, Clarity cap SA. If budget is no issue then add whatever you fancy. |
I recently upgraded my entire crossover with huge, huge improvement! https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/millercarbon-s-mega-moab-mod-meander The two smaller value caps I was able to do with the very highly regarded Jantzen Alumen Zcaps, with a Duelund JDM Silver .01uF bypass cap. There was one cap of 125uF which would have been very expensive to do that way. So instead I used one 100uF and one 22uF Jantzen Premium Elko, with a 3.2uF Alumen Z bypass cap. (Voltage btw is not a factor, that is for use in a tube amp or other applications not in a crossover that will never see even 100V.) Pictures of actual parts used are on my system page here https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Alumen Z are not cheap, but compared to Duelund they are! And they are very highly rated. http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html Thank you very much, Rick! If you go this way please be sure to pay attention to your space and the dimensions of the upgrade parts as the physical size of quality parts is huge compared to lesser quality parts! Also everyone focuses for some reason on caps, but do not underestimate the contribution of inductors and resistors. Read my thread, I did all of that and more, and it is not just a huge improvement it is like better than I ever heard before. |