Maybe 50 years ago, poorly designed crossovers was an issue.
Not today.
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.
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@curiousjim You ask why you see so few active crossovers in home systems. There are very good reasons having to do with sales and marketing. A system with an active crossover means that you need more channels of amplification. How easily do you think a hi-fi shop owner would do offering a loudspeaker with an active crossover and telling his customer that he needed to buy two power amps, not just one? Most customers already have an amp and are now looking for a good loudspeaker to go with it, so theyʻre not going to want a loudspeaker that demands they buy at least one or two new power amps and thus having to sell off the old amp. |
Lets talk cheap big film caps for the bass section. A number of people I've trusted have reported positive experiences from switching caps from bipolar to film. I believe Solen has an even cheaper brand named Axon which is useful here. My one comment and concern is that in the bass section caps are usually in parallel with the woofer, and the ESR is a critical factor. Reducing this willy nilly is bad and can negatively affect the minimum impedance of the speaker. Keep an eye on it and adjust when needed. Strongly recommend you use a Dayton DATS or similar if you don't already. Also in the bass, the DCR of a coil may be part of the baffle step compensation, so again, reducing it without a full analysis of the crossover + drivers electrical behavior is risky. |
The VH Audio V-Cap ODAM are an oil damped advanced metalized caps, reportedly very nice in crossovers, and everywhere else for that matter, and relatively smaller physical size. Available up to 47uf. It is crazy to see the large value electrolytics used in some crossovers. If they only in for woofer use, I'd still replace mid and tweeter caps if possible.
Another nice mod I've found is the Duelund bypass caps, specifically made for use in speaker crossovers, I use the silver as a bypass on a Jupiter VT, balances out the warmth of VT with the openness of silver. You'll see the Duelund bypass caps raising ratings of most any cap by a couple numbers in the cap shootouts.
And this brings me to another advantage of passive vs. active crossovers. Myself and others are intentionally manipulating voicing to get exactly the sound quality we seek. An active crossover may give me exactly the freq response I want, but doesn't offer flexible voicing, timbre important here, this not just about tonality. Also, a class D or A/B SS active crossover is the last thing I want to add to my SET tube system. I'd much rather use DSP software such as HQPlayer to tweak my sound, much less obtrusive on the voicing. |
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