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How good is the crossover in your loudspeakers?

 

I just watched a Danny Richie YouTube video from three weeks ago (linked below). Danny is the owner/designer of GR Research, a company that caters to the DIY loudspeaker community. He designs and sells kits that contain the drivers and crossover schematics to his loudspeakers, to hi-fi enthusiasts who are willing and able to build their own enclosures (though he also has a few cabinet makers who will do it for you if you are willing to pay them to do so).

Danny has also designed crossovers for loudspeaker companies who lack his crossover design knowledge. In addition, he offers a service to consumers who, while liking some aspects of the sound of their loudspeakers, find some degree of fault in those loudspeakers, faults Danny offers to try to eliminate. Send Danny one of your loudspeakers, and he will free of charge do a complete evaluation of it's design. If his evaluation reveals design faults (almost always crossover related) he is able to cure, he offers a crossover upgrade kit as a product.

Some make the case that Danny will of course find fault in the designs of others, in an attempt to sell you one of his loudspeaker kits. A reasonable accusation, were it not for the fact that---for instance---in this particular video (an examination of an Eggleston model) Danny makes Eggleston an offer to drop into the company headquarters and help them correct the glaring faults he found in the crossover design of the Eggleston loudspeaker a customer sent him.

Even if you are skeptical---ESPECIALLY if you are---why not give the video a viewing? Like the loudspeaker evaluation, it's free.

 

 

https://youtu.be/1wF-DEEXv64?si=tmd6JI3DFBq8GAjK&t=1

 

And for owners of other loudspeakers, there are a number of other GR Research videos in which other models are evaluated. 

 

 

bdp24

Showing 1 response by simonmoon

simonmoon's avatar
simonmoon
573 posts
 

A friend and I used to have a bit of a "cottage industry" upgrading crossovers in vintage, and not so vintage speakers. This was back in the late 90’s and 00’s. 

Even if the speakers were engineered well (reasonably flat response, no major phase issues at the crossover between drivers, etc), upgrading crossover components, i.e., better caps, replace iron core inductors, replace sand cast resistors. This was at least 2 decades before Danny’s videos and upgrade kits. 

We also added bracing when needed

Our findings were almost exactly what Danny has found.

I also believe there are certain aspects of speaker design and implementation, that are not a matter of "voicing". If there is a hole in the response, especially if it is at the crossover point, that is simply bad engineering. 

If the spectral decay plot shows stored energy, that is distortion, and a sign of poor design and implementation.  

My friend and I didn’t have the ability to do spectral decays when we were upgrading speakers, but we could easily hear the improvement after we added cabinet bracing and used one of several methods to dampen resonant enclosure panels.  

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