Free Tip for Jumpers

Where the line is separating high SQ standards from obsessiveness is an interesting (and personal) question.

Nelson Pass used Mills resistors in his First Watt B4 crossover I own, because the cost of doing so (not cheap) was justified by the SQ that resistor affords. He made the B4 fully-discrete (no opamps or integrated circuits) for the same reason.

Most loudspeakers contain not only junk hookup wire, but junk crossover parts. Take a look inside any given speaker and see what you find.

Danny Richie is not just some guy on the internet. He is a professional designer with many loudspeakers to his credit. He offers upgrade packages that not only replace the junk parts commonly found in loudspeakers built to a price point (almost all are) with high quality capacitors, resistors, coils, and-yes-wire, but also "fixes" the flaws he finds in the design of most speakers sent to him. That includes frequency response aberrations (often the result of sub-optimum crossover design), stored energy resonances (revealed in spectral decay---i.e. waterfall---plots) in both drivers and enclosures, any many other flaws (watch a GR Research video or two---see below).

He also sells loudspeaker kits for DIYers, which contain those same parts (as well as drivers built to his specs). And then there is the GR Research/Rythmik Audio subwoofers, designed in a collaboration between Danny and Brian Ding of Rythmik. A sealed 12" model, and a remarkable OB/Dipole sub, THE sub for use with dipole loudspeakers (whether employing electrostatic, planar-magnetic, ribbon, or dynamic drivers).

In one of his most recent YouTube videos (well worth your time), Danny Richie of GR Research recounted his experience of years ago auditioning loudspeakers in a dealer’s showroom, in a system that including a pair of $5,000 speaker cables. He was amused that a system using loudspeaker cables of that price was powering a pair of loudspeaker’s with the cheapest internal wire available, i.e. garbage-quality. Do all the bi-wiring or jumping you want, the loudspeaker’s internal wiring will remain a bottleneck in the system. One of the most-overlooked links in the hi-fi system chain.