I have been an Audiophile and Audio store owner now semi retired .
I had 6 figure audio systems but, it proves Nothing , system synergies Is much more important .when I was younger I would buy many products in the A or B
catagory but sometimes hit or miss results . Sometimes you can spend 60% less and get better harmony ,that’s why now I loook to find quality products
and like Loudspeakers the weak link is the Xover in the vast majority of Loudspeakers even in $50-even $100k speakers I have seen parts that are good but not be far superior which for that price they should be , This guy has Wilson speakers they build a good product but for sure their capacitors ,they bought Rel caps they are not even close to the best - foil capacitors are far more linear and better conductors then most caps that have a sprayed particle conductor ,
land resistors they use $10; resistors or less the best I personally use Path audio,
or the Mundorf Ultra with a heat sink ,best 2 I have used that are available ,
the Xover is the ♥️ and 🧠 of all loudspeakers . Tony Gee is a Great Loudspeaker builder , for decades ,his capacitir cook book is over 95% accurate
Humble homemade Hifi capacitor test just check it out Duelund are the best but big and very $$ costly I use their smaller ones as bypsss caps on all the Tweeters
in Xovers I rebuild , and the Loudspeaker purifiers I have been building ,mainly to Europe and Asian markets for they are very picky and know quality parts. That being said Quaity counts ,rule of thumb still applies 25% or less go into the total ,
Loudspeakers as well as electronics at most including packaging , the rest goes to R&D overhead and markup. Most Loudspeaker mfg never spend 1,000s of hours like Tony Gee , I have over 10,000 hours at least in listening comparing parts quality over the last 20 years , most companies find something that sound decent and that’s it , they are not trying to get to Bentley best of everything quality it’s about $$ making monies 1st and for most . I got hung up on by Allen Shaw of Harbeth when I had my store in the U.K when I called him out for using Taiwan gum drop capacitors , when u.k clarity caps were in the same country, since then he now uses better quality parts ,still not high quality but pretty decent.
marten Logan I called their engineers and told them what are you thinking ,in their $85k flagship using mid grade white Mundorf Evo capacitors which are not expensive whatsoever ever Mundorfs Black Superior line are their top quality, the Silver oils sound good ,and silver gold oil Supreme caps , just look at their website
many companies won’t even show you the Xover , it baffles me why even in $30k speakers they are using midline rating around 9 out of 15 Mundorf Evo white caps
and $3 -$10resistors . It’s $$ before quality . Thsts why when I buy a very good speaker I always pull a driver and look to see what upgrades I will do .I purchased a Dynaudio Contour floor stander and put in $1600 just in parts labor would be another $1k I use only foil capacitors with zduelund foil bypass caps and path audio resistors, the inductors were the very good Jantzen open core which came stock .
you are talking a solid 10-15% increase in fidelity which is a great investment
most don’t even know this though.just a heads up look inside
